The Wild West of Social Media: How Do You Glean Donor Data on Social Media?

You know your donors and prospects are active on social media, and you know you should track donor data in this ever-evolving media. But how do you know what to look for and analyze when it comes to social-media data?

On June 10, we'll host the Engage Virtual Workshop: Driving Donations With Data to help attendees come to better understand and work with their data gathering and usage.

The panel will consist of Page Bullington, director of professional services at Target Analytics; Roger Hiyama, senior vice president and managing director at Russ Reid; and Mazarine Treyz, author, consultant and "The Wild Woman of Fundraising and Social Media."

Here, Mazarine gives a preview of the social-media data best practices she'll share in the webinar.

FundRaising Success: Social media seems to be like the Wild West, in that there doesn't seem to be a lot of hard-and-fast rules (yet) about its use in fundraising. Are there ways to glean important, concrete data information from social-media channels?

Mazarine Treyz: Whenever you see someone touting the new, latest social-media platform, the message comes back down to "KNOW YOUR DONOR." Most of our donors are 40- to 70-year-old women. In that demographic, survey your donors and ask them where they're active. You don't have to be overwhelmed by the number of platforms.

For the most typical donor demographic, I would say that your best social-media tool is your email newsletter. So I do believe being able to create segmented messages to people who open certain emails or click certain links will be concrete data that is more valuable than, say, a Facebook like or a retweet.

I do know a nonprofit that is having great success with an automated series of follow-up emails to their donors, which results quickly in a second donation and greater donor engagement. This same nonprofit is having success with an earned income stream and advertising its offering using Facebook ads.