BUILDING YOUR NONPROFIT VIA SOCIAL MEDIA!

Gain valuable insights from the CEO of TheSocialPuzzle.com as she discusses why a social media strategy should be treated as a dynamic roadmap towards the ultimate goal of community building for nonprofits. Discover why engagement is more important than just increasing the number of followers and learn about the significance of balancing inbound and outbound engagement. More about The Social Puzzle.

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Telecast Transcript:

Julia Patrick
Welcome everybody to another episode of the nonprofit show. We’re really excited to have you with us today because we’re going to be talking with Sarah Suarez about building your nonprofit. Exposure everything via social media and this is a really big topic because Sarah, we talked. About this so often. People get confounded by it. They know they need it, but they’re not sure why. They don’t know how. And so you’re going to help us to kind of understand this so that we can be more proactive. And in realizing how to use this tool so CEO of the social puzzle. I’m super excited to learn from you today, Sarah, but before we get going, I just want to remind everyone I’m Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit Academy Gert Ransom, the nonprofit Nerd herself, is out of town. I believe she’s working in the northwest today, and she’ll be back with us. Shortly, Jarrett Ransom, the nonprofit Nerd, is the CEO of the Raven Group. I like to call her my personal nonprofit and. Hey, we also have some amazing folks that nerd out with US day in and day out and. Those are our. Presenting sponsors and they include our friends at Boomerang, American nonprofit Academy. Your part time controller nonprofit thought leader, fundraising Academy at National University Staffing boutique nonprofit. Nerd and nonprofit tech talk. These are the folks that join US day in, day out, rain or shine. All times of the year and they help support us. So that we can bring the nonprofit show to you what’s really cool. And I was talking with Sarah about this is that. We have now a new app and I want to thank our team here at the American Nonprofit Academy. It’s really super cool. You can take a quick screenshot of this graphic if you’re watching us via our streaming or live, and then that will plug you into everything that we’re doing each and every day. It’s really a cool way to see. What we’re engaging with and how we might be able to help you with some content as you know, with nearly 800 episodes, there’s a lot that we have covered and we’ll continue to cover and this can be one of those fun things that helps you navigate all that information. You can also of course, find us on any of our streaming platforms as well as our podcast, so download. The nonprofit show wherever you like to get your content. OK, Sarah, you ready to go, my friend?
Sarah Suarez
I am. I’m ready.
Julia Patrick
You know I. Love the name of your business because if ever there was one word. For us to associate with social media, it’s got to be the word puzzle.
Sarah Suarez
Definitely, definitely.
Julia Patrick
I mean, it’s a great word.
Sarah Suarez
And and I actually chose it because I wanted my business to be named something that made me happy. And my Nana was a huge puzzler. So it just every time I say it it, it makes me think of her. So it makes me happy but it. Also works in terms of. The puzzle that social media is right now.
Julia Patrick
It is and you know the thing about it is that it’s it’s always changing. And they’re always new and different opportunities. And so it’s like one of those puzzles that you can’t really finish, you just need to kind of think about the next level of playing. And I love, love. Love your approach to this. I think just by looking at the name of your business. It gives me a lot more. Confidence in that you know what you’re talking about and how to think about this in a strategic overview. And so let’s start with that because I’m fascinated by this concept of having a social media strategy. Tell us what that looks like.
Sarah Suarez
So that is going to be based on a few things, but primarily you need to know what your organization wants to achieve through having a social media presence. I don’t know if I just watched my group but went out. Oh, OK, good.
Julia Patrick
Your pick.
Sarah Suarez
Alright, so you want to know what your organization. Hopes to achieve. From the social media presence. And then also you want to know? Who your audience is, because if you don’t know who you’re speaking to, you don’t know what channel is the best channel for you to be on, and you are speaking too broadly to really attract those who might be really drawn to your mission. So once you understand those, you create a strategy for your content and measurable goals for each piece of that content. And you look back at the analytics every month and make tweaks accordingly. So it’s really a road map to achieve those goals that you’ve set out in the beginning.
Julia Patrick
You said something really interesting and I want to follow up with you on this. It almost seems to me like and maybe I misheard this, but you need to be thinking about who you’re already talking to as opposed to focusing on cultivating more. Is that a fair thing or is that in tandem that we worked? On that.
Sarah Suarez
I think it’s in tandem.
Julia Patrick
OK.
Sarah Suarez
So, I mean, I think most organizations you kind of have a general. Audience, who is passionate about your mission. If you know, for instance, an organization that I’m very passionate about is the Children’s Heart Foundation and and the audience for that organization looks. You know, they you pretty much understand who is going to be supporting that mission. And so if you understand primarily the age group, you understand the demographics of your audience, then you can choose a platform that they are more likely to frequent.
Julia Patrick
When when thinking about developing a strategy. Should you have all of that predefined or will? Will these engagements help you define that? And I guess the reason why I’m asking this question is it is, do you advocate that you have a strategy and you just stick to it? Or do you like review it every quarter like how flexible? The flowing is this.
Sarah Suarez
I think it’s it’s a living document. So yeah, you you need to start with the strategy. Preferably you would start with. The strategy and then. I like to sit down with my clients every month and look. Back over what? One of my ear things fell. Out. I’m so sorry. Look back over what worked and what doesn’t work, and then you will make tweaks accordingly because you’re always going to have a post that bombs. It happens, but you learn from it. And so and then sometimes I’ve had posts that shocked me and did amazingly well. And then we look at that and we think, well, how do we. Achieve that again. What was? So great about that post that it resonated with our audience so much. So I think you make small tweaks every month to achieve that, but then I like to also look back quarterly and see if there’s like an overarching change that needs to be. Right.
Julia Patrick
You know, I love that because I think that a lot of times strategies freak people out because they end up being punitive in that you you you achieved or you didn’t, you failed or you succeeded, right? Versus thinking about it in a different way and saying no, this is a tool. But we’re going to use to help us evaluate what we can do. Better what we need to. So I really like your approach on this. I think that’s smart. You know, we don’t do that enough. We don’t. We don’t do that enough. It’s it’s such an interesting thing. Well, let’s move on to another big question that we all seem to get and we seem to kind of freak out about and that is frequency talk to us about this. Help us like talk us off the ledge because. This, I think, makes people want to get engaged or run the other way because they feel like they can’t. Manage it. What do you think?
Sarah Suarez
Right. Well, so I have a couple of thoughts about this. My first thing I’ll say is that HubSpot put out something last year that said you should post two to five times a week to grow on most platforms. But I do know that a lot of nonprofits don’t have a ton of bandwidth. Maybe they have a volunteer. Maybe they have a staff member. That does this and and multiple other things. So I think it’s more important to choose a frequency that you can stick with in the long run rather than saying I’m going to post every day and then you’re just completely. Worn out and decide this isn’t for you. I think I have a client that we post twice a week for them and it works for them and there has been gradual growth. Obviously, the more you post, the more quickly you will grow, but it’s important that you have a consistency that your audience can rely on. And also I think as important as your frequency is how of post is how much you’re engaging. So if you’re spending time engaging with your audience rather than just putting posts up there and then it’s really a A1 sided conversation, it’s not really a community.
Julia Patrick
So I love that you said that and I want to ask a follow up question to that. When you talk about that engagement piece, is it as simple as liking something or are you saying no dig deeper and say yeah, we agree with this, that’s why we offer this program or talk to us about how. How deep we go with that engagement.
Sarah Suarez
Well, so I would recommend and I know this might be difficult for some smaller organizations, but I recommend engaging 15 minutes, five days a week and when you’re doing that, you’re going to have two types of engagement. There’s inbound, which is the easy kind because it’s just responding to likes and comments and and direct messages. But then you’re going to have outbound, which I think is the most effective. Tool you have to. Grow your audience and expand your reach. And for nonprofits, I usually recommend that they do. That they look at hashtags that are relevant to their miss. And so if you follow those hashtags and you comment on maybe the top or the most recent post with valuable content comments about that show that you are passionate about your mission that explain more maybe about your mission and your organization and that will attract. Followers, who were not previously aware of you and the other thing is, if there is an organization similar to your organization and you engage and follow that organization, that’s a great way to get in front of an audience that’s already interested in in what you’re doing.
Julia Patrick
You know when we talk about the frequency of social media, I love that you drilled this down to being more specific. Help me to understand, are those things that we should be tracking as well, not just the the bottom line number of people who follow us, but but really getting a little bit more granular on this or do you feel like this, shouldn’t not you know enter into the fray when we’re trying to figure all this out on our state?
Sarah Suarez
Well, so for strategy, I would say that while follower count is is a very easy way to determine how how fast you’re growing, it’s not necessarily as important as your engagement rate, which you should be able to see in the apps analytics platform that you’re using. Because if you look at your reach and engagement rate. You can see how many people you’re reaching that are in your current audience that are outside your current audience, so you’re expanding your awareness and then you can see based on the engagement rate, how much, what you’re putting out there is resonating. With the people that follow.
Julia Patrick
Right, I think you’re, I mean you said right when we started, you know it it, it can be a mystery. Sometimes you think, wow, this post is going to do great and then other posts you’ll be like, what? Happened, but I think those are the questions to ask. You know it’s it’s a really interesting thing to make us better and and I think to to make. The tools more effective, right?
Sarah Suarez
Right. If you know what works, you can do more of that and if you. Know what doesn’t. Work you can figure out why it didn’t work and and hopefully not. Do that again, yeah.
Julia Patrick
You know, one of the things that I’m dying to talk about and spend a little bit more time with you on this, Sarah, is that I mean, already the things even talking about, they can seem like a heavy lift for organizations. We all know nonprofits work with generally not enough. Staff not enough, not enough of anything. And so then when when we hear about these things that we should be doing, sometimes it just seems like it’s a better thing for us to contract outside of the company versus bringing somebody in. Help us to understand. What this might look like?
Sarah Suarez
Right. So I would start off by saying definitely do your research. Look at the contractors website, their social media presence and see if you feel like they would be a good fit for you. And then when you have that first call with them, ask them what their service is. Include because there are agencies out there or contractors out there who will post for you and manage your community, and then they didn’t necessarily create a strategy. So if that’s the case, I would make sure that you get a strategy before just contracting someone to create content. The other thing I think is really important to ask. Is are they engaging? If they are not doing your engagement, if they’re just posting on your behalf, then someone from your staff will need to pick that.
Julia Patrick
Yeah, that is a really big piece of this. And I think that gets missed. I mean, are you, do you see that like everybody understands that or or are you like me where you’re saying, yeah, not enough people are having that conversation.
Sarah Suarez
I think not enough people are having that conversation for sure. And you know, just as someone who does engage on behalf of nonprofits. I noticed so many other organizations that perhaps I’m engaging on the behalf of a client. They never respond. They never like or they just kind of post it and and leave it, but it. I think you know, once you do sort of get into engagement, you’ll see a lot better return on your investment.
Julia Patrick
Let me follow up with this with another question and that is when you’re talking about engagement in this in this realm, how confident are you as a contractor? Or should we? Be in general with that provider. I mean, do you see what I’m getting at like? Is there do you ever worry about misrepresenting something or using information incorrectly? Like what does that relationship look like with with information?
Sarah Suarez
That’s that’s so important. And so I think it’s very important that you have great communication with the contractor. I’m very lucky that I have great relationships with my clients. One of them is like family at this point and so I feel like I just channel her voice when I’m responding. But if if you’re not having conversations regularly, they won’t be able to do that. And then also you, you need to make sure that that communication is open. Because as an outsider, they don’t necessarily know all of the ongoings of your organization and and you need to let them know what you want to promote.
Julia Patrick
Right. You know, it’s it’s really an interesting thing. It seems to me like that fits back all the way to the very start of our conversation is strategy. You know, if you don’t know what you’re going to be promoting or talking about coordinating with an editorial calendar, you’re going to be missing a lot, a lot of opportunity. You know, how hard is that? To get everybody on board with that same information and and almost, dare I say, branding, message. I mean it’s. You know, not enough nonprofits. I think in the ones that I look at and work with, spend enough time on this. Do you see?
Sarah Suarez
Well, I think it’s important that organizations have branding in place before they are working with specifically a social media contractor. If you’re working with a a larger marketing agency that can do all of that for you, amazing. But it’s going to be difficult for someone that you’re contracting to represent you if you don’t have at least A1 pager based on your brand.
Julia Patrick
OK, smart. So that really should be. In the toolbox before you.
Sarah Suarez
Right.
Julia Patrick
Yeah, I like that. I think that’s I think that’s a I think that’s wise counsel. OK, now the the next piece of this is we we’re we understand more about what we we should be getting at what does it look like help us figure out the cost because. For some of us, this is a lot more involved than maybe we thought. That engagement piece. I think a lot of times we think what are we pushing out, what are we pushing out, but we forget. The engagement part. What does this? Look like if we’re going to go invest in this.
Sarah Suarez
So it can. It will really depend based on the person, the social media manager or strategist experience. It will depend on their cost of living. If you’re hiring someone in the US versus outside of the US and it will definitely depend based on the services you’re getting. So I, Recently started offering some smaller ticket items because I know that a lot of nonprofits are utilized. Volunteers or interns for social media, and I think that if that’s the case, one thing I would say is that you should get an audit or a a fully done for you strategy because those can start anywhere from 250 to a strategy can be anywhere from 500 to Volunteers or interns for social media, and I think that if that’s the case, one thing I would say is that you should get an audit or a a fully done for you strategy because those can start anywhere from 250 to a strategy can be anywhere from 500 to $1000000. Or more, depending on the agency you go with. But if you have an audit, it can at least tweak some of the issues that may be holding you back. And if you have a strategy, then you’ll have a road map, and so if an intern graduates and moves away, or a volunteer decides to take time off and someone else does it, you don’t really have. Of a hard a difficult transition because there’s already an existing road map for. The person who’s going to take it on next.
Julia Patrick
You know, I’m a big fan of audits all across an organization, especially with marketing. What does that time frame look like? Like, how often should we be doing that? Just as a matter of course and understanding if we’re working in the right direction.
Sarah Suarez
So for your for your social media audit, I would say if you’re if you’re staying on top of your strategy and you’re tweaking it and as you go, then I think it it wouldn’t be too regular. I think hopefully that you’re seeing the things that are not benefiting you and you’re tweaking. Them as you go a full or. It it shouldn’t be. You know, if you contract that out, it should be done within a week and it will really help you make some changes. I did an audit for an organization recently and within a week after we had, I had sent them the audit. They had increased their like reach by like 80% and that’s not a lot, but it’s still a lot. For a. Week so.
Julia Patrick
Well, I think again, it goes back to what you started off with in this conversation is understanding the strategy of why you’re doing things. And it’s more than just how many followers we have, because I think we. We think that that’s like the most important aspect, but that’s kind of like to me it seems. Like you know. If you look at your donor base and you’re like, yeah, I have 5000 donors. Well, OK, yeah. But only like less than 300 are actually donating with any certainty, right? I mean, we have. To kind of. Put away the the glitz and the the bright shiny object of a number and kind of be thinking more strategically and yeah.
Sarah Suarez
Yeah, I think so. And I think you know. You’ll see for businesses and nonprofits for a lot of different accounts. They may have a ton of followers, but then they’re engaged. Is so low. That it’s really not what I think to be the overarching goal should be for a nonprofit which is community building. So if you’ve got a ton of followers, but they’re not engaged, they’re not truly a part of your community.
Julia Patrick
Right, right. I love that. You know, before we let you go and we don’t have a lot of time, so many nonprofits have cyclical periods where maybe they’re heavy into service or they’re heavy into programming or they’re heavy into fundraising or it’s event season or. Or maybe it’s a national moment. Or national month, you know. Dedicated to their cause or their. Topic do you ever see social media management following those those trends and being more active during these times or is that the wrong approach just being more consistent as you mentioned earlier?
Sarah Suarez
Well, I I like consistency always, but I think it’s that opportunity. To work within, say, mental health health, this is, you know, mental health Awareness Month. If you’re an organization like that, I think it would be a missed opportunity not to really. On and bringing that up, bringing up more awareness to your cause and sort of if you have the capacity, maybe increase your post during that time.
Julia Patrick
Pardon me, it makes a lot of sense and I have to say. It keeps going back to strategy and you know the old fashioned word is kind of like content calendar. How often are you seeing the social media managers and that component really understanding that deeper content calendar concept for editorial and pitches or are you keeping those? Are you seeing those? Kept separate.
Sarah Suarez
Uh, do you mean in terms of the calendar and how? It relates to the strategy.
Julia Patrick
Yeah, like so many organizations, especially if they’re fortunate to have a marketing and communications department where they seem to work really hard and be extremely vigilant about that, that. Editorial calendar, right. You know who can they pitch stories to across the general media? But it seems to me that we we’re missing the boat if we’re not meshing that to our social media.
Sarah Suarez
Right. Well, and there should be places in your strategy that allow for. Things that are just happening, you know, upcoming events and then and that is a situation when your strategy needs to be more flexible. So there’s been times when I’ve had a client. Had this like. Really cool opportunity to come up and we had not planned for it. So I just made some tweaks and moved the calendar around and and you just have to kind of. Be willing to be flexible, I think.
Julia Patrick
Last but not least, again this time. Flown by how often are we should we be working with somebody that we contract with or even if we have somebody on our team, what does that look like? I mean, with so many of our departments, like in operations or fundraising, we have those Monday meetings or the Tuesday, you know, roundups or whatever. What should this echo? This this space look like and how do we echo that behavior?
Sarah Suarez
Well, if you are just starting to contract out with someone, I would say that there’s going to need to be a lot of communication in the big beginning as they understand your goals, create your strategy, get your feedback on it and then create your first content calendar. But I would say for me, I speak to my clients at least once a month on the phone like. Zoo and I have I emailed with them regularly and we also now have a slack channel so they can reach me via slack. So I think it’s. I just think that relationship is so important in terms of. Being able to achieve the success for the organization.
Julia Patrick
Yeah, absolutely. OK. Now this is like a curveball. So get your Mitt up because this this might be a really hard thing to answer, but you know, in the nonprofit sector, well, in business in general, we work on this growth model like, well, we need to grow at, you know, X percent a year or quarter. Or in programming. What kind of growth is realistic? I mean, what are some of the numbers that we should set our eyes on?
Sarah Suarez
Well, that again, it just like it very much depends on the organization. So one of my clients is. Super niche and they have probably 800 followers, but all of their followers are very specific to their very, very tiny niche, and they’re very engaged and they’ve built relationships with a lot of these followers. So their growth is going to be slower because there’s less of an audience out there for them to even connect with. Whereas if you have, say, an animal rescue, I mean you have a lot bigger of a pool to grow your audience from. And so it will probably grow more quickly.
Julia Patrick
OK. So again, that’s what you’re provider can maybe help you with to kind of figure that out to look at that to kind of understand and again that goes back to the shiny chase of the number. You know what’s what’s going to be a good number and not just being caught up in that well, I’ve learned a tremendous amount. It’s been really fun and and I mentioned this to you, Sarah, that we were going to. It will go by fast. There’s so many questions that. Come in. And so I want to make sure that we give Sarah’s information, CEO of the social puzzle. You can find [email protected] and there’s some great information on that site and and I think that I’d like your measured. Sometimes we fall into these traps like. We have to have, you know, we have to have this going as opposed to saying wait, step back, take a deep breath, let’s figure out what’s the the best piece of advice. I love that you. You ended our time together with the story of the clients that only have 800 followers. But they’re the right 800.
Sarah Suarez
Right, right. Yeah, that’s. I mean, that’s what matters. Is your audience connected to your mission? Are they the? Are they your community?
Julia Patrick
Yeah, it’s really, I think when you look at it this way, it changes the game. You know, it makes it a lot more manageable and I also think thoughtful because then you’re not just spewing out stuff that doesn’t really matter, but that you take up a lot of time, you burn through money just to get stuff posted and up. But in the end of the day, it’s not going to be as effective and then therefore it becomes. Now it’s been, it’s been really interesting to learn from you today again, the social puzzle. Hopefully if you get a chance to meet with Sarah or go to her website, you’ll find that this doesn’t need to be a puzzle, but it needs to be something that you work on. Again, everybody. I’m Julia Patrick, CEO of the American nonprofit. Academy, the nonprofit Nerd Jarrett Ransom, CEO of the Raven Group, will be back with us shortly. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who allow us to have these conversations day in and day out where we get new perspectives, we learn new. Things and we we can be challenged to to do better for our nonprofits and those partners of ours include Boomerang, American nonprofit Academy, your Part Time controller, nonprofit thought Leader, Fundraising Academy at National University Staffing boutique, nonprofit Nerd and nonprofit Tech. Hey, Sarah, I’m going to rethink. The whole thing that we’re doing for our social media strategy. The nonprofit show thanks a lot.
Sarah Suarez
Thank you. Thank you. So I hope, I’m sorry.
Julia Patrick
No, it’s all good, you know, because you did bring up some things. I I am not immune to chasing that shiny number. Right. And so I like what you had to say. I really did. I’ve learned a lot and it’s going to help me think about. How we can be better and do better. So thank you for joining us today.
Speaker
Right.
Julia Patrick
I really appreciate it.
Sarah Suarez
Thank you. I I’m so grateful for the opportunity to talk with you.
Julia Patrick
Well, it’s been a lot of fun. Hey, we end every episode of the nonprofit show with I’m going to call it our mantra, and that is to stay well. So you can do well. We’ll see you back here tomorrow. Thank you, Sarah.
Speaker
Thank you.