Last week I wrote an article called “The Ideal Startup Social Media Strategy for Non-Profits.” This evolved as a result of a phone call I had with a small non-profit called Urunji Child Care Trust. They were looking for the ultimate plan to implement through social media to raise awareness of their initiatives and ultimately raise funds. I decided to create a plan for them by following these steps:

• Research similar organizations that have been highly successful using social media
• Choose which platforms you are going to utilize
• Communicate your non-profit’s objective through the platform (s)
• Connect with the people that share your mission
• Create a campaign to raise funds

Research similar organizations that have been highly successful using social media. After a little digging, the non-profits I decided to research were African Promise, A Glimmer of Hope and Ripple Africa. All three have a very strong presence in social and are performing tactics Urunji could benefit from if they followed some of the same practices. (Please note: for the purpose of this article I’ve focused on one social platform per organization).

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/africanpromise

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/aglimmerofhope

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/rippleafrica

Choose which platforms you are going to utilize. Urunji currently has a Facebook and Twitter account although they are not very active to date. I recommend they begin Read more…

Recently we had a non-profit organization contact us for help with their Social Media. They are relatively new and wanted some tips on how they can utilize their social platforms to raise money for their organization. The organization, Urunji Child Care Trust, works to combat malnutrition and illiteracy by providing free meals and educational materials to underprivileged children in Malawi. They currently have a Facebook and Twitter account but have not done much beyond setup.

What do you think is the best social media strategy for fundraising? I can hear it in my head already, people saying “Social Media is about RELATIONSHIPS not a means to an end to raise money.” But through building those relationships, aren’t you setting the stage for those that want to help you?

Below is my ideal strategy for a non-profit starting social media from scratch with the objective to raise funds for their organization.

Research similar organizations that have been highly successful using social media. You won’t be able to tell how much money they have raised strictly through their social efforts but getting an idea of who their followers are and how they communicate their message will be highly beneficial to you in creating a strategy. Ensure you don’t stick to 1 or 2 platforms in this research stage.  You never know which may be the most receptive. Read more…

Recently I was trying to add a Paypal donate button to a Facebook page for a film project I’ve been working on called Elephants Never Forget. I haven’t done this since Facebook changed from using FBML to iFrames and found it extremely difficult to find an up to date tutorial. After a little frustration, I figured out a simple way to do it completely FREE.

1) Start by adding Static HTML: iframe tabs to your page:

• Type “static html iframe tabs” into the search bar
• Select app
• Click the blue button “Add Static HML to a Page”
• Select the page that you’d like to add this app to

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Crowdfunding is growing in popularity. There are always stories in the news lately about a campaign that struck it big and raised a ton of money. However what you don’t hear about are the campaigns that weren’t successful, the ones that completely failed to reach an audience and their funding goal. Kickstarter, the largest crowdfunding platform online, has launched 70,850 projects to date and only 43.88% of successfully reached their funding goal. So what distinguishes the successful projects from the ones that flop? There are many factors that lead to an unsuccessful campaign, however below outlines the top 5 that arise again and again. So before you start your campaign, take these into consideration: Read more…

Are you looking to start a crowdfunding campaign for a project? With traditional funding hard to come by these days, crowdfunding is a great alternative to raising money. There have been many success stories of projects exceeding their funding goals and as a result generating an online buzz for their project. If you want your campaign to be the next success story, ensure you follow these tips in the pre campaign, launch and post campaign. Read more…

I recently worked with a team to launch World Elephant Day (WED) on August  12th, 2012. In the lead up to WED our Facebook campaign was going well; however, we wanted to increase our overall engagement. To do so we implemented 3 key tactics to increase the campaign’s Facebook engagement.  As a result our total reach boosted from 1500 to over 200,000 people in the days leading up to and right after the campaign.  Below outlines the 3 most successful tactics used to generate this increase.

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The first ever World Elephant Day (WED) will be this Sunday, August 12^th. For the past several months I have been working as the Social Media Coordinator to raise awareness for the campaign and gain international support. We have steadily been building a following however it was evident that in order to gain significant traction, we had to go beyond our own social networks. I’ve tried multiple tactics and found the following 3 proved to be the most effective: Read more…

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a single place that offered insightful, useful tips on all of the social platforms we love? Well now there is. It’s called SocialMediaTips.com. The site was launched (by us!) this week. It is based on a crowd sourced model and will allow anyone who logs in the ability to leave their own tips on a variety of popular social media platforms.

What’s so Great about Social Media Tips?

Tips are Current

Isn’t it frustrating when you try and figure out how to do something, and you come across how tos that were written several years ago? Irrelevant social media tips are everywhere and are not helpful. This site will allow people to flag out of date information and post their own updated tips. Read more…

There are a lot of articles out there that provide advice on how to develop a strategy for Twitter, however once you have a strategy, it can be challenging to implement if you don’t know HOW to act on the tactics. This article discusses several key objectives we all want to do on Twitter and how to go about putting them in to play.

Please note: this post will not define Twitter marketing strategy. Instead, it will show you the best ways to make Twitter work for you so you can achieve your objectives.

How to Find New Followers

• Look at who is following your competitors. Scan their past tweets and see what they have been tweeting about. If relevant to you, follow them and engage them by responding to one of their tweets or RTing something valuable they’ve posted.
• Find a link that is a hot topic to do with your industry, enter it on Topsy and see who has been tweeting about it. For example, say I was looking for new followers interested in elephants. I come across this article titled “The Last Day of the Elephant Female.” I enter this link into Topsy, and out pops all people that have tweeted about it. If you highlight over the tweeters, it allows you to follow them directly from Topsy.

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I have been working with an organization called Elephants Never Forget for the past few months helping them raise awareness on the plight of Asian elephants; StepForth takes a great interest in assisting charities and non-profits with marketing and this is my project. In order to gain interest and increase their numbers on Facebook, I’ve stuck to the following 4 key tactics that have proved to be quite successful. Below outlines the specific tactics I used. These relate directly to our campaign; however the principles can be used for any page working to build their fans. Read more…