Building a Social
Media Plan
189

What We’ll Cover
• Social Media Planning
• Build Your Strategy
• Tell Your Story
• The Plan
• Get Started
• Get Set Up
• Create Content
• Build Confidence
• Integrate
• Promote
• Assess
• Some Good Advice

Social Media Planning

What is social media planning?
• A plan to use social media appropriately to fulfill a specific
goal
• Integrating social media into your current marketing,
fundraising, and programming initiatives

Do I need one?
• Social media can be confusing and time consuming without
a plan
• Risk losing sight of your strategic goals and objectives if you
don’t plan

Social media is a conversation – a conversation
about you, your organization, and your work.
It’s already happening.
If you are not part of the conversation, others are
defining you, your organization, and your work
for you.

YouTube = 10% of all internet traffic
YouTube & Wikipedia among the top brands
Five of the top ten websites are social
Over 100 million blogs exist
120,000 new blogs launched every day
1.5 million blog posts per day (17 per second)
Courtesy Cisco Systems

Social media isn’t a strategy
• Social media is a tool for accomplishing your goals
• Start with the question “what are my goals?” NOT “I
want to build a social media presence”

Profile yourself: Think about the ways you participate
If you regularly… …your profile is
Blog, podcast, tweet Creator
Write reviews, post replies Critic
Tag objects, use RSS Collector
Update your profile Joiner
Read blogs Spectator
Do none of the above Inactive
Courtesy of Sun Microsystems

Think about your objectives:
Find your comfort level for participating
Profile Example Goal Tools
Creator Amplify word of mouth Blogs
Critic Product development Wikis
Collector Market research RSS
Joiner Public relations Social network
Spectator Canary in the coalmine Brand monitoring
Inactive Getting started Search
Courtesy of Sun Microsystems

Make Connections:
Step 1 – Listen for relevant conversations
• Search
– Google Alerts
• Search the blogosphere
– Technorati
• Find relevant or similar groups: Facebook,
MySpace, LinkedIn
• Tweetscan, twubble
• Search groups on Imagine Canada

Make Connections:
Step 2 – Follow the conversation
• Subscribe to blogs, social sites using RSS
– RSS-aware browser, e-mail client
– Portals, desktop applications
• Friend the people you like
– Follow interesting people on social-networking
sites
• Set up watches on forums and wikis

Make Connections:
Step 3 – Join the conversation
• Post blog comments
– Link to the authors and posts you admire
– Add value to the conversation
• Post forums responses
• Post comments on wiki pages
• Update your social networking profile pages
• Write a blog, create a video or podcast, join a user
group, tweet!

Your digital footprint:
• Try googling yourself to see how the world views you
– Remember that links to and from blogs, social networking
sites, and other sites influence search results
– The sum of your online interactions is your digital
footprint
– Prospective employers, professional organizations and
others use your digital footprint like a resume
– Not happy with the results? Re-evaluate your
participation habits and make adjustments
Courtesy of Sun Microsystems

Step 1: Build your Strategy

Define Your Goals & Desired Outcomes
• What are your current marketing, fundraising or
programming goals?
• What desired outcomes do you wish to achieve?
• Can social media tools be used to accomplish
these?

Define Your Target Audiences
• Who do you want to reach and engage?
• Be as specific as possible:
• Where do they live?
• What do they do?
• How are they currently using social media?

Examples
• Goal: Attract young professionals as volunteers and grow
their engagement in our organization
• Social media tools are likely to help with this goal
• Goal: Build stronger, personal relationships with our older
annual donor base and talk to them about estate planning
• Social media will likely not be helpful

Understand Your Capacity
• Internal
• Do you have the internal skills, expertise and time internally to
use social media effectively
• Poll your staff and volunteers: you might have an expert blogger
in your midst!
• External
• Are there people out there already connecting around your
issues?

Start Your Research
• Research the tools
• Listen to what is already being said about you
• Set up a Google Alert and use Twitter search
• Learn the language, customs and etiquette
• Get ideas about what works and what doesn’t

Step 2: Tell Your Story

Streamline Your Story
• Adapt your story to an online platform:
• Keep it simple
• Easy to remember
• Easy to retell
• Adapt your story to your desired audience
• What’s your elevator pitch? Can you do it in 140
characters?

Starting Conversations
• Remember: social media is about engaging and building
community
• Don’t just talk at your supporters
• Think of the conversations you want to start

Tips
• Don’t just write about your latest fundraising campaign
• ask your donors to tell their story
• Don’t just publish a news release about government
cutbacks hurting your cause
• give your supporters the tools and platform to take
action and share their passion with others

Step 3: The Plan

Choose your tool
• We recommend starting with one tool at a time
• Take a look at your goals, audience and message: what’s the
best tool for the job?

Still not sure? Try a blog!
• A good first step into social media:
• Use existing content
• Start conversations
• Get used to comments
• Integrate other tools into your blog
• Caution: Blogs do take time to create content and engage readers

Adapt your story to the tool
• Use the tool to its fullest
• Show what you do with pictures and videos

Sample Plan
Goal Audience Tool(s) Message(s) Timeline Resources
Example
Engage a University 1. Facebook Make an Sept – April University
young students in 2. YouTube impact, volunteers to
generation in our town 3. Flickr share your create
fundraising success, content and
campaign build a engage in
movement conversation

Step 4: Get Started!

Get Started (finally!)
Setup
Assess Create
Promote Confidence
Integrate

Get Set Up

What do I need?
• The tool
• Signing up, learning the ropes
• The people
• Assigning responsibility
• The timelines
• Planning updates

Create Content

Turn your story into compelling content
• Example: Fundraising event
• Blog: interview an attendee and ask others
to share their experience in comments
• YouTube: bring your video camera and ask
people to tell you why they came
• Facebook: ask everyone who attended to
share images/stories

Build Confidence

• Get used to the tool and the conversations happening
• Be trustworthy & consistent
• Be authentic, personal
• Create distinctive content that fits with your organization’s
identity and mission

Integrate

Integration Into Your Workflow
• Allocate appropriate time and funds
• Make it part of your work routine
• Creating content
• Responding & engaging
• Create guidelines

Integration With Other Initiatives
• f • t
• Tie into other marketing, fundraising and social media
initiatives
• Be distinctive but cohesive with your story

Promote

Promote In Your Network
• Use other outlets to promote a new initiative
• Leverage your following and promote to whoever you can

Assess

• Is this tool helping to fulfill your goals?
• Determine the return on investment
• Think about the project’s sustainability

Listen, Learn and Adapt
• Get feedback! Ask:
• What is working, what isn’t?
• What else would you like to see?
• Implement changes and keep trying

Start again with tool #2!
Setup
Assess Create
Promote Confidence
Integrate

@CanadaHelps on Twitter

• Every implementation step is visible
• Set up, creating content, gaining confidence,
integration, promotion and assessment

Lessons
• Archive your content
• Go at your own pace
• Try your best to respond to everyone
• People like to talk to people
• Most of the content is shared!
• Be authentic
• Take it offline – remember to build face-to-face
connections as well

Some Good Advice …

Have a great website
• Good usability
• Easy to find information
• Relevant content
• Clear calls to action

Learn from others
•Flickr +
Facebook
• See how other organizations started and see what they
have done
• Recreate their success

Start With One Tool at a Time
• Important if you’re starting out
• You can integrate tools later

Enlist help from interns/volunteers
• Produce quality, timely content
• Conduct Internet research
• Maintain and manage social media presence

Keep expectations realistic
• Success takes time and effort
• Starting up is easy, maintenance is the real work

Make it part of your routine
• Making your social media plan part of your routine helps spread
the work out
• Use RSS feed, widgets (engadget), desktop applications and your
mobile device
• Set up a schedule for yourself (i.e. 2-3 times a day at certain
times, or 10 minutes every hour, or at certain times when
there’s a lull in your schedule)

Remember: It’s a conversation
• Listening is as important as talking
• Don’t talk at your supporters: engage them and listen to
what they have to say

Have fun!
• Interact with different people
• Make it personal
• These are fun tools!

Recap – Start with you
Courtesy Edelman - Digital Public
Affairs

Recap
• Start somewhere
• Build to scale
• Innovate where necessary; do everything else incrementally
better
• Make it easy to find, forward, and act
• Pick where you want to play
• Channel online enthusiasm into targeted, specific activities that
further the campaign’s goals
• Integrate online advocacy into every elements of the campaign
Courtesy Edelman - Digital Public
Affairs

Recap

Your
turn