Thinking Out Loud

When you are a small startup or even just a small staff in the nonprofit sector, it can be challenging to allocate staff and time aside for researching social media tactics and best practices. There is actually A LOT to know about social media and there are always up and coming trends. Staying relevant and purposeful is so crucial so engage your audience. No matter what your capacity, here are four easy tips that can help you better utilize you social media-ness.

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  Add an address to you Facebook page. When you have a complete address listed in your facebook account it allows fans to check-in and review your organization.

  
  


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  A period is the difference between a public mention and a reply on Twitter. When you use a username as the first word in your tweet, you must add a period before the username if you want all your followers to see your tweet. (Ex: .@hootsuite. is the best #app ever!)

  
  


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  Keep your tweets at 100-150 characters. This way you have a greater shot at being re-tweeted.

  
  


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  Keep active, be consistent. Social media followers grow 3X as much as email for nonprofits. Facebook is still ranked as the #1 most effective social media platform for nonprofits. Facebook also now allows you to schedule posts for practically whenever you want. This is incredibly useful considering there are times during the day when your traffic will increase and decrease.

  
  

For more useful information specifically on why social media is important for nonprofits visit: Huffington Post of seven reasons why social media is perfect for non-profits