There’s no denying it. The way we find information and communicate with people has changed drastically in the last 20 years.
Or should we say has changed drastically EVERY YEAR for the last 20 years?
It’s amazing to be able to track down that alum who moved to Alaska, to read the blog of your big donor or to share your organization’s news in real time. But there’s definitely a down side: constantly changing means constantly adapting.
Remember when you finally got your Facebook page into a good groove? Then pay-to-play arrived. Suddenly, the visibility of all your posts plummeted. And if you’ve decided to pay, now you need to learn online advertising.
The Days of Free Exposure on Social are Done
But despite the relentless change, you can still easily use social media to get your word out by focusing on one constant: The people you’re trying to engage want to connect and share with each other.
Your job is to find ways to help them use today’s tools to do what people have done for eons—rally their circle around a cause they believe in.
Don’t Despair!
Hoping that your fans will see and then share your page posts isn’t working anymore. There’s plenty of data that social media sharing has dropped dramatically.
But what people do see are posts from their friends.
Find Your Army
To begin, you need to rally people who are comfortable and regular uses of the sites that you use.
Gather a group of people who agree to post on your behalf. We call them social media ambassasors. Karen Bantuveris of Signup.com calls them her “Buzz Team.” Karen says using your community to share for you is “broadening, it’s making it autheintic, and really hits home when messages come peer to peer”.
Making it Work
Give your people the resources they need to go out and spread the word for you through their own posts, tweets and texts. It’s more like running a PR initiative than marketing.
To make this work, you need to make it easy. I mean copy and paste easy.
Give your ambassadors a few posts and a picture they can use to share. We call it an “Ambassador Toolkit.” Think of it as the modern way of giving your gala committee a stack of invitations to hand out to their friends or beef-and-beer flyers to distribute at work. Your volunteers don’t have to spend hours creating the message from scratch, and they’re in control of how they spread the word.
The extra effort you spend cultivating your ambassadors will pay off doubly in deeper relationships with them and significantly more visibility on social.
Could you use some help developing a strategy specifically for engaging your people as ambassadors for your cause? Give us a call at 267-468-7949 or drop us a line at info@iriscreative.com!
