So, You've Got a Lot of Facebook Friends. Now What?

Are you spending a lot of time on social media for your nonprofit and just kind of hoping it pays off? When it comes to converting social-media friends to donors, people often get it wrong.

For example, B.J. Mendelson, author of “Social Media is Bullsh*t,” had more than 1 million followers on Twitter. He decided to go on a road trip and asked his followers to give to charity along the way, figuring, “Even if 10 percent of my followers gave a dollar, that would be something!”

Well, he raised about $20 from the whole social-media campaign to get people to donate. Imagine that. With 1 million followers. Getting people to donate was incredibly difficult. He realized he didn’t have a lot of engagement that translated to donations.

Now, you could say, “Well, he didn’t know how to fundraise; he could have done better with a real campaign or something.” But the fact remains that Mendelson’s experiment is a cautionary tale on the perils of looking at “follows” or “likes” as a substitute for building a relationship with donors.

If you do have lots of followers or likes already, good for you! How do you take advantage of that? If you’re just starting out, you can use the following as advice for how to do it better than Mendelson.

Starting out on the right foot
First of all, you need to make your social-media updates interesting. That helps people want to click through to learn more. If you’re on Facebook, pictures often work. Pinterest pictures work too. Twitter pictures or movies work well, but even just an interesting text post will get a click.

Top Tip! To make your tweets or Facebook updates pop, use the word “you.”

Once they’ve clicked, what will have people falling over themselves to donate? You have to study the greats — and find your own voice. Follow big nonprofits in your cause area and see what they do. You can also sign up for my list at wildwomanfundraising.com.