Are You Maximizing Both Facebook and Twitter?

It seems that every time I talk to a nonprofit about its digital strategy, there seems to be some confusion about the benefit of Facebook and/or Twitter. Don't get me wrong, everyone who has these questions is active as an organization in both of these areas — but there just seems to be a question about the value.

I'll even go one step further and say that the fundraisers often think the value is low enough to actually just hand over complete control to their partners in the organization that do not raise money. I'm not saying this is a bad thing — but it makes me worry that organizations are really not thinking of it as a revenue channel.

Putting my worry aside, I have to admit that I am now of the opinion that perhaps the nonprofit confusion, hesitancy, etc., is not that much different from others industries. I found this great article the other day from MarketingProfs, but before you dive in, realize it is a pretty heavy article with lots of numbers and predictions — but there is some super valuable information in it. The biggest takeaways are that 1) other industries seem to be slowly venturing into this arena and 2) the numbers make it clear — we MUST go there and go there more quickly.

As an example of No. 1, the article states "although 85% of [commercial] marketers polled at the beginning of 2013 by AdAge said they use Facebook as a marketing tactic, among them just 61.5% said they have used it for advertising. Facebook's Sponsored Stories ad product gets rave reviews from some, yet less than 30% have given it a shot."

Let's take big breath now and say, "Phew, we (nonprofits) are NOT alone!!"