Social Media Plans and Policies for Nonprofits: Toronto Cause Marketers Meetup
Tuesday, May 25, 2010 |
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Categories: Marketing communications, Public relations, Stakeholder communications
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Last Thursday’s, Cause Marketers Meetup, Social media plans and policies for nonprofits was presented by Bianca Freedman from the Credit Valley Hospital Foundation and Virginia Middleton from Kids Help Phone. It was a great event, with over 45 people in attendance! In addition to many repeat attendees from our last event a number of new folks joined the group from organizations including:
- Canadian Cancer Society
- Canadian Diabetes Association
- St Michael’s Hospital
- ALS Society of Canada
..and many more, as well as students and those of us providing services to the nonprofit sector.
Bianca and Virginia shared their experiences with creating social media plans and policies, as well as some of the preliminary results/realities of implementation. Both presentations were very rich in content, and generated a large number of questions. Because both presenters were willing to provide their materials, I’ll focus on sharing them here.
Building a Community of Supporters: Social Media Planning
Some of my key take-away points from Bianca’s presentation:
- Establish a meaningful goal for social media and make that the crux of your plan!
- Storytelling is the most valuable asset in your social media activities for nonprofit.
- Your social media plan should flow from your integrated marketing communications planning.
- Make sure to add value beyond your corporate message.
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Bianca also shared a helpful template to get you started on social media planning.
Social Media Policies: Navigating Your Brand and Meeting Stakeholders’ Needs
My key take-away points from Virginia’s presentation:
- Share with and learn from other charities when developing your policies.
- Adapt and adjust: your policies should be organic.
- Policies don’t need to be limiting, consider them an opportunity to actually facilitate engagement.
Virginia shared the Kids Help Phone Twitter guidelines and Facebook guidelines.
The realities
Like any marketing communications or PR activity, being present in social media only makes sense if you have solid plans and parameters in place. Based on the number of questions from the floor, it’s clear that this is still a new space, requiring a new approach to planning. Some of the related questions/challenges facing nonprofits:
- How do you plan for staff time when we’re already at capacity?
- How detailed should our plans be?
- What tools are available to measure the return on investment?
Related Resources
Once again, a number of group members have shared articles and resources related to this topic:
Tivix - Developing a Social Media Strategy
Mashable - How Non-Profits are Using Social Media for Real Results
NonprofitMarketingGuide - Rough Draft of a Nonprofit Social Media Policy
Mashable - 21 Rules for Social Media Engagement
Samples
Red Cross (U.S.) Social Media Handbook
Environmental Defense Fund Social Media Guidelines for Employees
As always, if you have something to add, correct/clarify or just want to continue the discussion, please do so in the comments!
An important part of getting started (or creating a strategy if you’ve already started dabling in social media) is to perform an audit and determine key messages, staff capacity and, if you have already started, assess your success so far.