In Need of Some Clairification?

2. The more places I am, and the cooler stuff I use, the more folks will be impressed. Are you substituting shiny objects, bells and whistles for heartfelt stories that speak to your constituents’ desires to make an impact in the world? Not using what is known about the power of empathy and storytelling in order to fill your social-media messaging with compelling content that drives actions is a huge mistake. Your goal is not to have someone think: “What a cool infographic; I’d like to make one like that for my business.” Rather, you want them to volunteer, sign a petition, write to a congressperson or make a donation.

3. It’s fine to send the same message to everyone. Special plug-ins and apps like HootSuite and TweetDeck and Buffer make it easy to send the same message to everyone, on a range of social-media channels. This saves time. But the fact that you’re doing a certain volume of social media is not the point. If you’re not segmenting and personalizing your messaging so that it speaks to what matters to the recipient, then it really doesn’t matter how much or how little time you put into it. Sometimes in social media, as with everything else, less may be more.

4. I don’t need to worry too much where someone is reading my message. Wrong again. Test this out for yourself. Try reading your organization’s e-newsletter on your mobile phone. Do the same for your website, your donation page, your (fill in the blank).

A Science of Email Marketing study by HubSpot this year revealed that over 80 percent of folks are reading e-mail on mobile devices on a daily basis. Very rarely do folks view those e-mails again on a computer. So if you lose them here, you lose. If it’s hard for them to interact with you from their phones you’re missing a huge opportunity.