Seven Simple Social Media Strategies for Nonprofits

I'm aging myself, but social media didn't exist until my senior year of college when MySpace and Facebook burst onto the scene. I remember being skeptical of both platforms at first, but less than two years later, I launched my first nonprofit Facebook page. Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest all followed.

Since those early days, I've learned some simple strategies that nonprofits can use for managing social media. The main issue with social media management is time -- it takes a lot of time and effort in order to see results. Nonprofits should practice a lot of patience as a social media plan is put into place, and the social media manager should be ready to tweak the plan on a quarterly or semi-annual basis. 

Here are seven simple strategies nonprofits can use to help ensure their social media is effective: 

1. Select key topics that can help generate interesting social media content. For example, a health and fitness nonprofit might choose the following topics – local/regional health and wellness news, healthy recipes, fitness tips, local fitness events, children’s health and wellness, senior health and wellness, etc. It’s important to be really creative with these topics. They should interest our various audiences (donors, volunteers and the community at large) and be worthy of sharing!

2. Generate a weekly or monthly calendar of social media posts. The key to social media is consistency. Donors and volunteers will see content if it’s posted on a consistent basis. If possible, we want to create a calendar that has at least one post each day. We recommend varying the post times to see which time of day is best for specific audiences.

3. Schedule posts using Hoot Suite or a similar service. By utilizing a service like Hoot Suite, we can set up multiple posts at a time.  It’s best to set a calendar reminder until this process becomes routine.

4. Drive social media posts back to the organization’s website on a regular basis. At the end of the day, we want to encourage our audiences to visit our website where they’ll learn more about our work, sign up to get involved as a volunteer or make a donation. In order to do this, we need to create inspiring posts that point back to our website. Ideally, most of our original content should originate from our website blog. For example, a nonprofit that builds homes for low-income families might share a first-person narrative from a homeowner or volunteer. When paired with some great photos, the story makes a great blog post, e-newsletter feature and social media share!

5. Communicate with audiences on a daily basis. We should put the “social” back in social media by taking time each day to connect with each of our social media channels. We can share community partners’ news and updates if they are relevant to our audience(s), interact with volunteers and donors, respond to questions and feedback in a timely manner, tag when possible and encourage reposting!

6. Monitor progress. It is very easy to set up a series of posts and move on to another project. Unfortunately, we don’t learn from that! By spending some time each week or month reviewing our analytics and creating a simple tracking spreadsheet, we are able to measure what works and what doesn’t work. We can track new fans/followers, popular posts/content, the best time of the day/week to post, etc. in a weekly or monthly spreadsheet, and then we can review it and tweak our process on a quarterly or semi-annually basis.

7. Put social media assets to work. Every nonprofit has social media savvy employees and volunteers, so why not encourage them to share our content with their respective networks? This is a great way to spread the word about our organizations and allow our most valuable assets to take pride in their work! Before getting started, we recommend setting up a clear social media policy about what’s appropriate to do/share during work hours. Also, a social media training session is a great way to ensure everyone is on the same page!

Know a nonprofit that needs help building their social media plan? Gerald & Joan can help!

Five Obstacles that Hurt Nonprofit Branding

During my time in college and then throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to work with some great nonprofits. I also saw firsthand that they faced some of the same challenges when it came to their branding, marketing and communications.

Now, after almost ten years of helping nonprofits build and maintain their brands, I decided to take a closer look at these issues so I can use Gerald & Joan to help nonprofits with their branding. Here's my take:

1. Expense – Most nonprofits can’t afford marketing or advertising agencies unless the agencies are donating their time. Agencies in the post-recession world often can’t afford to donate their services, and most nonprofits can’t afford to pay agency sticker price. Nonprofits are left with a few options – hiring a full or part-time marketing person, recruiting a marketing intern or hiring a brand consultant who specializes in nonprofit marketing.

I’ve worked at agencies and been the full-time staff person, the part-time staff person and the intern, and I’ve realized that a brand consultant might be the best way to go for many nonprofits. They work with someone who has great experience and contacts, and they hire them on either a project or retainer basis. By using a brand consultant who specializes in nonprofit work, a nonprofit is hiring someone who knows the nonprofit world’s unique needs and respects the nonprofit’s budget.

2. Perspective – Humans have a tendency to get caught in the daily grind of life, and nonprofit employees are no different. When they are buried in the day-to-day program work, they lose sight of what their donors, volunteers and the greater community see.

For this reason, it’s great to hire a brand consultant who can bring an outside perspective to the organization. This person works closely with the leadership of a nonprofit as well as key volunteers and donors to ensure the organization’s mission, values and culture and social impact are clearly defined, and each point matches the actual work being produced by the nonprofit. The brand consultant presents a report detailing their findings, and then works with the organization to develop a strategy to ensure the nonprofit’s voice is shared in a strategic manner.

3. Focus – When nonprofit program staff members produce logos and materials without an overarching branding and marketing plan, the materials often lack a cohesive focus with differing colors, looks and voices. The result looks messy and unprofessional.

Even if a nonprofit can’t afford to hire someone to handle all of their branding and marketing needs, they might consider working with a brand consultant to create a strategic branding guide, host a brand training session and create sample templates for them. The branding guide will establish the focus of the organization – a cohesive look and feel with a set of logos, colors, fonts and the overall essence of the brand. Brand training helps staff understand the nonprofit’s official brand, and sample templates ensure all future materials share a common focus.

4. Quality – Many nonprofit logos tend to be low resolution, materials tend to be created in Microsoft Word and printed in-house on computer paper, and websites and social media tend to be outdated - if they exist at all.

A brand consultant creates and shares high-resolution logos to ensure a nonprofit’s logos look professional when placed beside the logos of their partners and funders. They also work with the nonprofit’s budget to ensure materials are always prepared by a professional (but affordable) print company. Finally, they develop a plan to ensure social media and the organization’s website are updated as needed –weekly, monthly or quarterly – and they maintain both if necessary!

5. Time – Nonprofit staff burn the candle from both ends. That’s what makes their work so admirable – they have been bitten by the nonprofit bug and wouldn’t have it any other way. Still, when time is in high demand, it’s important to delegate. Branding and marketing can be easily delegated when the right person and plan is in place.

A brand consultant works with a nonprofit to put together a strategic branding guide that serves as the baseline for all of their future projects. They work with nonprofit staff to put together an approval process and meeting schedule that works for everyone, and they help implement the strategic marketing plan in a way that is as streamlined as possible to ensure everyone is making the best use of their time and skills. They also oversee as many branding and marketing elements of the nonprofit as needed including logo creation, print marketing design, social media, email marketing and website creation/maintenance.

As you can probably guess, these obstacles can hinder even the greatest nonprofits. By offering my brand consulting expertise, I hope to help nonprofits eliminate these obstacles so they can give 110 percent to their missions. If you know a nonprofit that could benefit from my services, please send them my way! I would love to help them improve their branding and marketing efforts.

new nonprofit logos for the common table

For the last three months, I've been lucky to work as a contractor for Common Table Health Alliance, a Memphis nonprofit whose mission is to achieve health equity through trust, collaboration and education. Their focus is broken down into four REAL Community Goals -- Reducing Childhood and Family Obesity, Eliminating Health Disparities, Activating Consumers, Patients and Caregivers and Lifting Health Care Quality. Pretty good stuff.

Fortunately for me, I started working with them right before they began a name change and brand overhaul, so I was able to offer up my graphic design and branding expertise, designing new logos, collateral materials, advertisements and web graphics. The three logo projects I completed for them were pretty cool, so I wanted to share them!

The first logo was for a hypertension initiative that features former Memphis Grizzlies Coach Lionel Hollins as the spokesperson. Jonathan and I were season ticket holders during Hollins' two best years with the Grizz, so this was a huge honor for me. The team knew what they wanted, so they gave me direction and I created the design:

For the agency logo, I was charged with creating several logo options that fit the new mission and vision. I mocked up versions that represented everyone's ideas, and the top three choices were presented to the organization's community partners for a true common table vote. The design that was selected was a collaboration between me and an awesome coworker. It was a really fun project, and everyone was really pleased with the results: 

The Common Table plans three events each year, and the next one is a 5K that is organized in partnership with Memphis Mayor AC Wharton. The 5K is in its second year, and the staff wasn't crazy about the event's logo. They asked me to freshen it up, so I took some inspiration from the old logo (the tape measure) and added a sun icon (from one of my logo mockups). I tied those pieces together with the new CTHA font and the official CTHA colors to create a logo they can use for years to come:  

I hope to share some of the collateral materials I've created for the hypertension campaign and 5K next week. I'm so proud of these projects, and I'm really grateful to the staff at the Common Table for giving me the opportunity to create fresh designs for them. It has been a fun and rewarding experience, one that has really boosted my nonprofit design portfolio and my confidence! :)

New Design Offerings from Gerald & Joan

When I launched Gerald & Joan in January, the focus was strictly on graphic design, event planning, event styling and handmade goods. These are my passions, so it felt natural to build my company around them.

However, after seven years in the communications world, I quickly realized that it is hard to turn off those skills that have been a part of my career for so long. It's also hard to shun that very expensive piece of paper that reads Bachelor of Arts in Print Journalism and Public Relations....so, instead of putting the PR, copywriting, social media, blogging and email marketing that I once did for a living on the back burner, I decided to embrace them. After all, the essence of Gerald & Joan is storytelling, and communications work is storytelling. From that angle, it makes perfect sense that it should be a piece of the larger Gerald & Joan puzzle.

The charitable partnerships piece fits into Gerald & Joan because I would be working for a charity if I wasn't living this dream. I began volunteering in high school, and I worked with charities for the majority of my career. Those experiences taught me everything that I know today and continue to be a huge part of who I am. Whether it’s matching a business to a charity or assisting a charity in the areas of writing, branding and design, I want to support nonprofit work and assist them as they build their brands and tell their stories.

So far this year has been a glorious whirlwind of inspiration and excitement. I'm excited to take this next step and share these new offerings.

Thank you, dear family and friends, for your constant love and support and for being such an integral part of the Gerald & Joan journey. Let me know if I can help you in some way!