Eight Steps for Building Your Nonprofit's Social Media Fan Base

by Laura S. Quinn, Executive Director
Idealware

If you post a message on Twitter and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a noise?

The fact is, there isn’t much reason to tweet if you don’t have an audience—a fundamental truth of all social media channels. As you think about ways to engage constituents and advance your nonprofit and its mission through Facebook, Twitter and blogs, you should also be thinking about how to promote each channel and build your audience.

Whether you call them “friends,” “fans,” “subscribers” or “followers,” they all mean the same thing for the purposes of this article: you need an audience for any social media strategy to work. The good news is, because of the network effect, attracting a few followers can often increase your potential audience exponentially—the very nature of social media makes it easy for your friends to spread the word to their own networks of friends, and so on.

So how do you attract people to “like” your Facebook page, follow your Twitter feed or subscribe to your blog? We’ll walk through the key steps one-by-one.

1. Ensure There’s Something Worth Paying Attention To

It should go without saying that if you want people to pay attention, post something they’ll find useful and relevant. This is true of all communications, not just social media.

If you’re launching a new blog or Twitter account, start out by posting a few interesting things—even though no one is “listening” yet—to show the audience you hope to gain that your resources might interest them.

How do you know what will interest the type of people you’d like to follow you? Ask them. Find a good representative sample of your desired audience and start a discussion with them, through conversations, phone interviews or a survey, about what kinds of posts they’d like to read.

2. Seed Your Community

No one is ever drawn to an empty restaurant, no matter how good the food. Social media is similar—even with brilliant content, it’s difficult to attract supporters to a site that no one else is following.

Reach out to your staff and other core supporters of your organization and ask them to follow your tweets, or “like” your Facebook page—and to invite their personal friends.

Getting them to post comments or reply to your posts can help show an active community. A small, critical mass of followers will make it easier to attract others to your channel.

3. Include Social Media Information with Your General Contact Information

Once you have a few core posts and a reputable-looking number of supporters, it’s time to open the doors to the general public. An easy way to begin doing this is to add your social media profile information anywhere your contact information is given. A Facebook or Twitter logo on your website can link people directly to your pages, and if you have a blog, make sure people can easily find it through your website.

Email signature lines are often overlooked as useful places to distribute information. You put your title, phone number and email address there—why not include a link to your Facebook page and your Twitter profile?

Part of getting people to be part of your social community is simply letting people know you have one.

4. Promote Channels to Your Existing Friends

People who already know you are more likely to join your social media communities than strangers, and you can reach people who already support your organization through email, print newsletters and other social media channels.

It’s common practice to launch a new communications channel by telling your audience why they’re likely to find it useful or interesting. For instance, if you’re launching a Facebook page, include a blurb in your e-newsletter describing all the great things they’ll only find on Facebook.

You might also consider an ongoing, recurring communication to spread the word about your social media world—for example, a “best of” email that rounds up recent blog posts, or a “resource of the week” highlighting a particularly good Facebook discussion or resource you posted on Twitter. Make it clear where the information came from initially, and let people know how to follow or “like” you on social media.

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