Nonprofits and Social Media -- to Dive or Not to Dive?

I was cruising through Nancy Schwartz's Getting Attention! site, when I stumbled across this thoughtful and thought-provoking article about social media and nonprofits.

I've noticed quite a few of my nonprofit clients -- and really, the rest of us ordinary folks, too -- wondering how to use social media for marketing purposes, how much time to spend on social media, and how to measure its impacts on our marketing or fundraising efforts.

As Nancy reports, there are a lot of social media fundraising success stories floating around, seducing nonprofits into jumping whole-hog into social media. But are those organizations getting back what they're putting in? And, even more important, are they sacrificing the tried and true for what's hot right now?

Nancy's emphasis is on the "marketing cornerstones -- from planning to getting to know your audiences, crafting relevant messages, defining the best channels to engage those folks in productive conversation and action, and measuring the impact of your work."

I agree.

Look, social media is a fascinating frontier! I enjoy Facebook. Twitter keeps me in the loop on what's going on with my industry and in the worlds of my clients. I'd love to spend more time getting acquainted with all the features on LinkedIn. And I am certain there are other social media tools I haven't even heard of that could revolutionize the way I work.

But I owe it to my clients to devote my energies where I know they'll make a difference, with the proven techniques that got us to this place.

Don't get me wrong. When I'm working on a direct mail letter, I take a minute to think about how to incorporate the theme or campaign into social media. A few months ago, a client was working on a "Top Ten" campaign, and I suggested Tweeting one item from the top ten every day for ten days as a way to inform their followers (and their followers' followers through re-Tweets) of the campaign, drive traffic to their website, and, hopefully, boost awareness of and response to the direct mail campaign. It was one of their most successful fundraising efforts of the year so far.

But would that campaign have been so successful without the more traditional cornerstones of marketing? If their "Top Ten" hadn't been so honed specifically for their audience? If they'd ignored direct mail -- for them, a proven fundraising tool -- in favor of a web-only ask?

The Twitter portion of this client's campaign almost certainly enhanced what they were doing, if nothing else, by raising awareness among a slightly different population using a new medium. But it couldn't have replaced the other legs of the campaign.

It's important for everyone to start thinking about how to incorporate social media into their marketing/fundraising plans. But social media shouldn't take the place of a solid, multi-faceted marketing/fundraising plan. Or in other words, go ahead and dive in, but make sure the water is deep enough.