Social Media Secrets for Non-Profits: Tracking Your Success

In a previous article I discussed tips in ensuring a successful social media campaign. In this article, I will delineate how you can be sure your social media campaign is working. Tracking Your Inroads Social media allows you to spread the word about your non-profit, as well as raise money via online donations. There are several factors that go into ensuring your campaign is successful (see my previous article) and part of this is tracking your progress. You must track these inroads to make sure you are being effective. Once you know how your progress is going, you can strengthen areas that are doing well and proving successful, and fix areas that are lagging. The first step is to decide what to track and to identify the baseline for these items before you launch your campaign. Depending on your social media plan and your online setup there are different metrics you can use. For example, if you have a simple plan that has the following components: • Website, with a landing page for making donationsrn• Facebook Official Pagern• Twitterrn• Blog You could track the following: • Number of unique visitors to the website, • Number of unique visitors to the landing page, • Amount donated, • Number of “Likes” on Facebook, • Number of followers on Twitter, • Number of @replies, • Subscribers to your blog, etc. But don’t forget that these numbers are also part of a bigger picture that includes raising awareness about your cause, engaging potential members and donors in conversations, increased content on the Internet as well as more goodwill. More on Social MediarnAs I stated in my previous article, social media is not, and should not the be-all end-all of your campaign. In order to use social media successfully in your fundraising, at the very least, you must supplement it with a webpage that all social media can be directed to for information, as well as tracking purposes. This page can be part of an existing website. This page would provide simple instruction-like copy for the people using social media so that it continues the communication from the social media site they were just on learning about you. It would also have a donation button so people can donate right on the site. The donation button should tell you exactly what your donation “buys”. A sign-up feature that allows someone who is interested to follow the results of the campaign can be included. The website page can show the stats - how many tweets, fans, money raised, etc., and can highlight the top donors. Remember, in order for your social media to be truly effective, you must also accompany your campaign with the tried-and-true basics such as email, website presence, face-to-face events, and online and mainstream media.