The was a recent article posted by Mila Araujo which provided some wonderful tips on the most effective ways for not-for-profits to engage their online communities. The aspects promoted by Mila were as follows:
1. Set up a home base: your blog
The dominant provider in this area is WordPress – by far. Many organisations now use a WordPress website/blog as their central point, with all engagement activities trying to channel people to their site. WordPress has many options (including a free facility) and it is easy to get started or to get some help to set-up.
2. Activate a Twitter, Google Plus and Facebook account. I’d suggest you also add LinkedIn to this list.
3. Sign up for a free social media helper tool. There are plenty of tools but one I’d also suggest is IFTTT.
4. Tell your story – NFP organisations always have plenty of good news stories and what is required is to establish a habit and a process to regularly post your content.
5. Start using video- YouTube is easy to use and there are many YouTube videos which explain how to post a video to your website.
6. Activate an email campaign with a service like Constant Contact or MailChimp – Mailchimp has a free service and is easy to use.
7. Get out into your community and let people know about all this in person!
8. Send media releases about what you’re doing. You can also sign up to SourceBottle which is a free service that connects journalists with sources for stories.
9. Use pictures
10. Follow other bloggers and organizations that provide content focused on the same goals as yours
11. Use Google Hangouts to have brainstorming meetings or spotlight special guest speakers
12. Learn about hashtags
Click here to read Mila’s full article on the ‘Ultimate Ways for Nonprofits to Engage their Communities’.
