Tips for Using Social Media to Build Awareness and Enable Participant Fundraising - Page 4 of 4

By Abny Santicola

3. Build authority.

Contribute to forums and community boards.
Participate in online chats.
Answer questions on LinkedIn and Yahoo Answers.

4. Leverage Facebook.

Create an updated professional profile.
Edit for risky content.
Connect with as many business people as you can.
Join groups related to your niche, participate and befriend people with similar interests.
Add links to your profile.
Post on the network.
Post to other people's walls.

5. Leverage LinkedIn.

Create an updated professional profile.
Import your address book to start building your network.
Answer questions to build reputation and authority.
Join groups and participate in them.

6. Use press releases effectively.
Your story can now be headline news. Use free press release services such as Pr.com, PRLog.org, I-Newswire.com, Prleap.com and 24-7pressrelease.com.

7. Use social-news aggregators.
These tools help promote your content, but it depends on the power of the crowd to vote it up or down. If you write a popular article, it can result in massive amounts of traffic. Try Digg.com, Mashable.com, Mixx.com and Reddit.com. Johnston also recommended submitting content simultaneously with sites like AddThis.com, SocialPoster.com and SocialMarker.com.

8. Share documents that other people can use.
This demonstrates knowledge and promotes your openness. Some examples are Slideshare.net, DocStoc.com and Scribd.com.

9. Always be aware of new tools and new channels.
Revisit the first nine steps and be aware of new tools that come out.

10. Listen again.
Always be reacting to what you hear — be a part of the ongoing conversation so you stay up-to-date and relevant.

The most important thing to takeaway from the session, Johnston stressed, is the strong need to test, build benchmarks and learn from the process.

He recommended using a social media checklist that asks:

the purpose of the campaign (e.g., build brand, drive donations, build warm file, advocacy/campaigning);
what the social-media goal in support of the purpose is (X number of e-mails, X number of donors, X ROI);
what social-media actions you need in support of the campaign (leave e-mail address, tell others, user-generated content, donation);
what social-media tools you need to use, given the purpose, goal and actions (e.g., video, blogging, multiple-site publishing, personal page, applications/widgets); and
have you put tracking in place to prove the value of social media for donations or other actions; put marketing support (online and offline) in place; and lay out a beginning/middle/end structure to the social-media campaign to create momentum.