Is Liking Something on Social Media Hurting Your Org?

A recent study done by researchers from the Sauder School of Business found that people who like a post Facebook or retweet something are less likely to give you a donation. Once people like, share or repost something they are done with the action and are less motivated to give.

Here’s a video describing the study’s findings and what it means to us who work at charities who use social media to drive people to donate and to action.

This study’s findings contradict other studies done like this one done by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and this one from the Nonprofit Social Benchmarking Report that found when social media is incorporated into fundraising, donations increase.

What are your thoughts on this new study?

A reflection from two talks

In the past week I’ve given two talks to two different groups on the same subject – social media and fundraising. The first group was a group of 32 professionals who work or volunteer for nonprofit organizations through the Foundation Center located at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The second group was a group of 18 graduate students in a Nonprofit Communications course at Point Park University. Some of the students already work at nonprofits while others hope to when they are done with the program.

A couple of key questions that arose with both groups were:

1. Should you schedule future posts to social media?
2. How do you measure success using social media?
3. What platform is the right one to use?

Well, the correct answer to each is what is usually my least favorite answer – it depends. Scheduling future posts is great idea if you don’t want to be tied down to your social media account 24/7. But, if you do use scheduled-posts to social media don’t forget about them. You need to be able to reply to questions and inquiries for people who respond. You still need to be social. Some people think that scheduled tweets are bad. That doesn’t have to be the case if you remember the posts!

How do you measure success using social media? It’s not always the number of posts retweeted or share, number of likes, number of people following you on social media or even the number of comments. Sometimes it’s the number of people who took the call to action you wanted, whether that’s making a donation or calling a legislator. Sometimes it’s what is spelled out in your strategic plan, your marketing and communications plan and your development plan.

Is Facebook the right platform? What about LinkedIn? In addition to the major social media networks there are so many niche social media networks and tools and its hard to say. It depends on your intended audience. Just because you have an agency page on Facebook doesn’t mean everyone will interact and engage with you on it. Just like some people prefer email to phone calls, others preer Facebook to Twitter or Tumblr to Facebook or something you may not have heard of before like BlueLine (a social network for cops). What you need to do is try a network to see what type of engagement you receive in addition to just surveying your constituency to see what they use. Just because one network is best of agency X doesn’t mean it will be the same for agency Y.

If you want to see my slides from the two talks just look below

Social Media and Fundraising – Guest Lecture at Point Park University from Dave Tinker, CFRE

Fundraising and Social Media – Davethecfre at CLPGH Foundation Center from Dave Tinker, CFRE

It depends.

121 Billion and Counting

A new study has found that Americans have spent 121 billion minutes on social media this year. That’s up more than 37% from last year alone. How much time is that really? Imagine watching Honey Boo Boo for over 460,000 years nonstop. That’s crazy!

At 121 billion minutes, that means the average American, including all newborns and the most senior of senior citizens, spends 6 hours on social media each year. Needless to say, that’s a lot of time.

If your constituents spend an average of 6 hours on social media each year what are they seeing? Are they seeing anything from your organization? Are they being engaged by your posts, comments and replies?

Tell us what you think in the comments.

Voting, Elections and Real Time Social Media

First, I hope you vote today!

Did you know that Facebook is doing real time tracking of voting today? John Haydon, who is a social media specialist that I have referenced numerous times, has a great brief video showing you what Facebook is up to. After viewing it, think how you can use the demographic information provided by Facebook to better target your audience and to better engage with them.

Google+

Google+ (Google Plus) is Google’s newest foray into social media. The service is about a month old and is still being rolled out on an invitation only basis. It took me a few weeks before I received an invitation for it. It’s now over 20 million users. I, like most others, are kicking the tires to see what it really does. Some think it might be a Facebook killer. Others think it will be the new form du jour of blogging.

I like how you can place people into Circles. Google+ Circles are similar to categorizing your Facebook friends with labels. Hangouts are where you can do group video chats. Google+ integrates your Google tools, like Picasa, into its service.

Marc Pitman has a nice write up why your nonprofit should consider Google+. Here is a cheat sheet with Google+ tips. Mashable has a Complete Google+ guide that is helpful, too.

Here’s a video from Google about the service.

Is Google Plus a Facebook killer? I don’t know yet. Are you using it? Let us know your reaction.

Update (3 p.m. 7/25/11): I came across an additional Google+ best practices resource for nonprofits that I needed to share with you.

Statistics About.Me

What happens when you want to give someone your social media contact information for multiple social media accounts? What happens if you want to see stats on your social media accounts all in one place? Then About.me is a tool for you. Think of it as your social media business card.

It’s a free tool that allows you to post your social media account links and url and rss feeds all on one page. It than provides you with statistics on those who see your page(s), where they come from and what they do on the pages.

They have some fun pre-made templates you may use, or you can upload your own. You may see the one I made by clicking here: about.me/davethecfre.

Here’s a video on how to use it.

If you have an about.me page, please share a link to it in the comments section for others to see and connect with you.

Instant Gratification on Your Phone

According to a new report by TNS Digital Media, using social media is the thing people spend the most time on when they’re using their smartphones. The report found that 4.6 hours are spent on social media per week while 4.4 hours are spent on email.

If you are the 1 in 3 Americans using a smart phone, how are you spending your time on the phone?

If you’re an information geek like me, I recommend that you watch the demo on TNS Digital Media. You’ll really enjoy it.

93 or 7?

Did you know that 93% of charities have a Facebook page? A new study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research also found that 97% of large charities have a Facebook page as of 2009. The study found that charities adopted social media faster and the adoption was more widespread than for-profit use.

Other facts uncovered in the study:

1. 90% of charities had Twitter accounts
2. 65% had blogs
3. 36% had LinkedIn pages
4. 30% had MySpace pages

So are you part of the 93% with a page or 7% without?

Time

A new report from Nielsen finds that social networking is now the #1 thing people do online. Almost one quarter of time spent on the computer is for social networking. That’s a 43% jump in time spent on social networking in just one year.

How much time have you spent on social media yourself? How much time do you spend managing your agency’s social media presence? This should be a wake-up call to make sure you’re connecting with your current and potential constituents who go online for information.

Embracing Social Media Presentation from the 2009 Arc of the US Convention

I am happy to say the Embracing Social Media presentation was well attended (standing room only!) and we had some great questions and insights from audience members.

The slides and video from the presentation can be found below. If you are a regular reader of this blog you have seen this video before.