Digital communications consultant Margaret Manning offers advice for charities looking to get into social media, including how to ensure your output is effective and how to measure its success.

Misconceptions about social media and its potential to impact charities and other not-for-profit organisations continue to surprise us. A common refrain is that “why would anyone want to engage with us on social media?”

Social media provides charities with the greatest opportunity to attract, engage and retain supporters, but with so much social media “noise” - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs, etc – where does a charity start?

I recommend you focus on two fundamental questions:

• Based on business objectives, what are your social media campaign objectives and how will you measure success?
• How is the way in which your charity is different able to help you meet those objectives?

Think about how social media activity will support your organisation’s goals. Are you setting out to influence and to lobby, to fundraise or to raise awareness? What will success look like and how will you measure it? For instance, if your key short-term objective is to raise awareness, then you might look at how many active Twitter followers and Facebook fans you gather to measure success. Or if it’s to raise fundraising income then you’ll need to track any increases in the number and sums of donations and compare to a time period that you weren’t actively engaging in social media.

Think about what makes your organisation different. How are you going to stand out on the social media scene? The key to successful social media is interesting content and conversations, so you need to think about how you’re going to best articulate this differentiation to your target market through your social media content and messaging.

Time to dip your toe in the water.