The remarkable and rapid growth of social media tools has given  nonprofit organizations the opportunity to spread their mission and message more easily than ever before.  Tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube easily enable the sharing of relevant stories and encourage supporters to interact regularly with the organization.  While many nonprofit organizations have launched social media initiatives, few take full advantage of the capabilities the tools provide to quickly spread the mission message to grow membership and donations.

Here are three ideas you can kick off today to begin to leverage social media to your advantage:

1. Personalize your stories: Donors and members don’t really want to hear the details of your job program operations.  They do want to hear the stories of those individuals who have benefited from your job program.  This demonstrates the value you provide because the difference you make in the lives of individuals, for example, ties specifically to your mission.
2. Don’t tell; engage: Pushing out statistics and business news is best left to traditional communication channels.  In social media, it is better to rephrase the news in a way that starts a conversation and encourages interaction.  Doing so will build the sense of community necessary to further the purpose of your mission.
3. Show your member sand donors how to use social media to carry out your mission: Many members will see your Tweets or Facebook updates in their streams, but few know that they can help you spread your message and mission to their circle of friends.  Consider preparing an instruction guide to show them how to share your social media messages with their own circle of friends.  Often, simply encouraging individuals to click the “share” button will go a long way to spread your message.

Obviously, this is just a starting point.  Nevertheless, these social media ideas can be implemented quickly and easily, and will go a long way to building greater support for your mission.

Ed Cabellon (@edcabellon) wrote a great post in The Student Affairs Blog about using Twitter to connect with an individual student at  Bridgewater State College.  Ed personally connected with a disgruntled freshman and turned a faceless institution into a caring community with one, single Tweet.  He discovered that the simple act of interaction could help one student feel more engaged with her college experience.

Unfortunately, most colleges miss the boat with social media.  Nearly every college uses these tools (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace) to “push” an agenda of sorts–alumni events, student activities, sports scores.  However, there is not any real conversation between the college and the students.  Colleges are constantly talking, but they are not listening to (and for) their students within social media channels.  As a result, the message the colleges are sending is not unlike an AM radio signal–it’s streaming out into space, but few students are tuned-in to hear the music.

If colleges want to use social media to promote better relationships with their students, parents, donors and alumni, it is imperative that they follow Ed Cabellon’s lead.  Doing so will help create a greater sense of community for the institution and build trust between the students and the faculty.  What college wouldn’t want this?

It’s easy, really.  All one has to do is to stop talking, start listening, and engage in a little conversation.

On the heals of Dell’s announcement last week about selling $3 million through Twitter, we’ve also seen some revenue coming from our Twitter stream.

A recent promotional campaign pulled it’s first ever response from Twitter after three months of testing. While the conversion rate was less than .05% and the dollars were pretty dismal at just over $1,000.00, we were encouraged that the average order size was $77 — about 50% higher than the standard cart size.  Moreover, it performed better than our Facebook Fan Page (althought the average FB order was just over $100), and our RSS feeds.

Granted, this revenue won’t make or break a campaign and certianly nowhere near that of Dell, but when new media begins to show signs of monetization during testing it is worth continuing to explore.  It’s worth noting that our strategy for Twitter is similar to that of Dell, although we’re not pushing outlet pricing–just sound direct marketing offers. Of course, there’s no real way of knowing the residual impact each of medium might have had on the other. We recognize that each promotional effort could have affected the other and the user could have simply chosen the handiest promotional code to redeem.

Nonetheless, we believe we may be onto something with our testing strategy and we will continue to share  our successes and failures.

We have been subscribing to and monitoring college Twitter streams lately. In doing so, we have learned that colleges are using Twitter to:

1. Broadcast campus happenings (concerts, sporting events, etc.)
2. Few are engaging their students or alumni directly

The communications are one-way, typical of a radio broadcast, a newspaper ad, or other traditional media used by most colleges. Based on our experiences, we believe colleges are squandering opportunities to connect with their students in an increasingly mobile medium. A recent Pew Internet & American Life survey, Twitter and Status Updating, said most avid users are college aged:

Twitter and similar services have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34. Use of these services drops off steadily after age 35 with 10% of 35 to 44 year olds and 5% of 45 to 54 year olds using Twitter. The decline is even starker among older internet users; 4% of 55-64 year olds and 2% of those 65 and older use Twitter.

We believe that higher education’s failure to embrace Twitter and other social media tools is due largely to inadequate staffing; however, a few well-placed student “ambassadors” could help the college gain a foothold and a voice with fellow students in this medium. Who better to communicate with students than other students? Many colleges do this well for recruitment and campus peer support groups, so it seems to us that it is only a small step to take this support and engagement online via Twitter, and perhaps Facebook.

Those who consider Twitter and other social media tools a passing fad run the risk of losing near-term opportunities to demonstrate relevancy in their student lives, and may impact their long-term ability to maintain their connections with these students after graduation.

College administrators take note: Social media is here to stay. It is a product of the Millennial Generation–today’s students–and they will undoubtedly see that it remains useful in their adult lives. Connecting now is the best way to ensure you will remain prominent in the daily stream of information to your future alumni.

I just noted from @BestBuyCMO on Twitter that Best Buy has launched an “Idea Exchange,” to solicit ideas for improving their business and and operations. Successful businesses and organizations have long had ways to gain customer input, but today’s technology makes it easier than ever to do so. Moreover, input, collaboration and consensus are necessary to build long-standing customer relationships (see The rise of a new “Hero”.)

People like to share their ideas and feel like they’re making a difference.  Whether it’s input on new product development or suggestions for operational improvements, collaboration tools connect customers and create a vested interest in the organization. There’s no better way to build a long-term relationship with customers than being interested in what their saying.

If you’re thinking this is difficult to do, please know that its not. You can start gathering feedback and input today, at no cost, using the tools at IdeaScale (www.ideascale.com). Don’t wait. Do it now.

We’re planning to launch our own Idea Exchange using Idea Scale soon.  Watch for it.