099 – Engage to Grow: Social Media Mastery for Non-Profits with Garin Michelson

Episode Transcription

David Pisarek: Today, we’re diving into the secrets of turning your social media presence into a powerful tool for impact and engagement. With expert insights from Garin Michelson, we’ll reveal the strategies that can transform your non-profit’s digital footprint.

Welcome to the Non-Profit Digital Success Podcast. I’m your host, David, and today in this episode, we’re going to be talking about all things social media with Garin Michelson.

Garin is a social media strategist who’s helped over 20 organizations become industry leaders. As the founder of Get Social With Garin, she uses data-driven strategies to deliver real results. As a fun fact, Garin used to teach history to high schoolers in New York. Garin, thank you so much for joining me and all of us listening to the show today.

Garin Michelson: Thank you for having me.

David Pisarek: So what’s it like teaching high schoolers?

Garin Michelson: It’s a wild experience. First of all, I’m on the shorter side, so most of them tower over me, and they’re just sort of at that intersection of being kids and being grown-ups. So they are just ready to soak everything up and not just, you know, what you’re teaching them, but everything else. You know, the way you behave and the way you interact with them, and, you know, they’re a lot of fun.

David Pisarek: Have you been able to take any of your learnings, is what I’ll call it, from being a high school teacher into the work that you’re doing and helping non-profits and organizations with their social media?

Garin Michelson: Yeah, absolutely. A big part of what I do is educational.

Social media is a new-ish industry. Obviously, social media hasn’t been around all that long, so social media marketing is on the newer side. Part of my job is to talk about why you should be doing it, what you should be doing, and how you should do it.

My expertise as a teacher and keeping everything cohesive and based on a goal are very similar. So, when I would do a lesson plan, I would always start with the aim, which was the goal for that lesson.

And every single post that I create for myself and my clients also begins with a goal. So it’s really, really making sure that we stay true to that aim or to that goal. Both when you’re teaching a lesson plan to students and when you’re teaching professionals about social media.

David Pisarek: But I think there’s a lot of stuff around social media. Clearly, there’s content. You can’t have anything happening on social media if you don’t have something to post. So we know that there’s content, and there’s this other part of it, and I guess takes time to get there, which is engagement.

So I know that you talk about content and engagement, and I think they need to happen very cohesively and systematically and have, like, a plan and a path. Why, in your opinion, do you tell people you need to have both of these?

Garin Michelson: Yeah,

I say it’s like 50-50: 50% of what you do should be content, 50% of it should be engagement.

And that is because social media is social, right? That’s the word that we hear at the beginning of social media. So, being social there is how you build relationships. It’s how you find people who might be interested in your non-profit, business, or organization. These relationships that you build really grow over time.

And part of being a business or non-profit on social media is establishing and nurturing these relationships. And I think once you start doing that, you have to be patient because it takes time, just like any relationship in real life. But you start to notice as you do that, that you really are starting to build these connections with people that feel as genuine and as real as they do in the real world.

And again, just like it is in the real world, it’s just as important in the digital world to be authentic, to be genuine, and to really focus on relationships.

David Pisarek: Something that came to my mind as you were talking about relationships, and you’re very right… You know, on a first date, you’re not going to ask somebody to marry you, so your first interaction as a non-profit shouldn’t be “Make a donation to us” when you’re engaging with them. That is a really far-fetched goal.

And yes, it might work about this much of the time; you need a plan that’s going to get you, I don’t know, 98% or 99% of the time with that engagement. So what do you feel that organizations should be thinking about when creating a strategic approach to engagement?

Garin Michelson: Yeah. So every time I create a social media strategy for a client, it always includes an outbound engagement strategy. And so engagement is broken up into outbound and inbound.

Inbound engagement is what most people engage in. It’s responding to DM’s and responding to comments, and things like that. The outbound engagement piece really has to be done strategically. And I typically recommend that you do it by thinking about, first of all, who is your ideal client or your target audience? Who are you speaking to?

And every business, every non-profit, everybody should know who they’re talking to first and foremost to be able to market themselves effectively. And once you’ve done that, then you could be thinking about, “Okay, well, what other businesses and accounts might have the same target audience or same ideal client?” Those are the kinds of accounts you want to build relationships with. That’s how you’re going to get seen. That’s how you’re going to get noticed. That’s how the right people are going to find you.

Also, you can engage with ideal clients directly. So, you know, if you want to engage with potential donors, you should be doing so.

You can add them to your favourites list on Instagram, and you can make sure that you’re constantly responding to their posts through comments. You can also DM them. If it’s natural and doesn’t feel forced, you can respond to their stories. You’re just kind of being a normal human, and you’re just kind of building a relationship before you come in with a sales pitch.

David Pisarek: I think part of this is also the metrics, analytics, the KPIs. How do you know if what you’re doing is actually working or not working right?

If your goal is to get a certain number of small donors, let’s say people under $50, to make a donation through social, you can track that, or you can build a landing page, for example, that you send out to people. Social. If it’s on Facebook, you can actually have like a donate function on your Facebook page. If you didn’t know about that, go take a look at that.

But, you know, I think a lot of organizations, they think about, “All right, how many pieces of social did we actually publish? How many views did it get? How many likes did it get? How many comments did it get? Here’s how many followers we have month over month in terms of engagement metrics, how can we track that?”

Garin Michelson: Well, so a couple of things. I’m going to come back to that, but one of the things that you mentioned is what metrics you should be tracking, and that is entirely dependent on your goals.

So, if one of your goals is to increase donations, which, of course, for non-profits, is oftentimes a goal that may not be the only goal, like one goal might be increasing brand awareness, you just may want more people to know about you and to learn about you.

I often start with that for clients. You really kind of build that brand awareness, and then you kind of come in and look for the lead generation, which is the conversions.

And so, you know, one metric you could be looking for, and probably the main one that you’d be looking for, is links in bio, clicks or website tasks as they refer to it in Instagram. Another big one could be linked in stories and clicks. Then there’s also another option out there, which is using automation.

There’s a tool called ManyChat, which is a really nice way to be able to identify who’s looking for something that you’re offering or that you’re promoting.

And sometimes I find it to be even more effective because rather than asking somebody, “Hey, go check out my link in bio,” you can say something like, “Comment or DM me the word,” you know, whatever the word is.

And then you’re automatically going to be sending them something to get them off of Instagram onto your landing page, which is the conversion that we look for on social media.

What somebody does from there, once they get to that landing page, we can’t really control from social media. That has to be done from the landing page. That’s the sales funnel.

But the idea is to kind of get them off of social media, get them onto a paid platform like a website or even to your email list or something like that. And that’s what we’re tracking, how many people we get from A to B.

David Pisarek: We’re producing content, we’re starting to have some engaging conversations with people, and we’re trying to pull them out of social to get them to take some action, whether it’s reading an article, sharing something, commenting, like “get in touch, make a donation, buy a ticket, buy a raffle ticket, gala,” that kind of thing. What tactics, though, can organizations use to grow their following and actually get in front of people? You can post all day, but if nobody’s seeing it, like, you’re wasting your time.

Garin Michelson: So first of all, those conversions that I was talking about, that’s not, should never be your only focus. That is one piece of the puzzle.

Another big piece of the puzzle is brand awareness, which we’re talking about now, right? You’re looking for increased reach. The way that you typically get that, and this is something that the head of Instagram, Adam Osseri, has talked about in the last couple of weeks, is that shares are the metric that people should be mostly paying attention to increase that brand awareness.

The other one, which is just number two, but only by a little bit, would be saved. So, getting shares on your content, which just pushes it out to more people, will get more eyes on your content, and you can kind of focus on the conversions.

You really want to find something that’s entertaining or provides value or maybe is like an unpopular, unconventional opinion, something that’s got a little spice to it that is going to make someone say, “Oh, share that with my friend” or, “Oh, let me share that with my colleague” or whatever it is, so that there’s something in there that is speaking to them that they want to share with someone else.

And for saves, you want to be also thinking about how you can provide value, how you can provide educational value about your non-profit or about whatever is coming up that you’re trying to promote, and just giving somebody something that they are like, “You know what? I do want to return back to that; I am going to tap save.” So that’s the brand awareness piece.

Then the other thing that I think is important is establishing authority, which is important for lots of different businesses and certainly non-profits as well. Establishing authority is ultimately, in my opinion, bridging the gap between brand awareness and conversions.

So, really kind of setting yourself up to be this leader in your industry or niche. And you do that by providing value. You do that by encouraging conversations around whatever you’re talking about. So that could be asking pointed, specific questions in your content that encourage dialogue and conversation.

So I’d say those are other pieces of the puzzle that I think are really important.

David Pisarek: Do you have maybe one or two questions that a non-profit could ask that might help them start to get that type of attention?

Garin Michelson: In terms of questions to get people talking, I think it can just even be as simple as, you know, you share an opinion, and then you say, “What do you think of this?”

Another thing you can do, and this is kind of new in Instagram, and Instagram does like their new features, and if you use them, they tend to signal the algorithm that they should push it out to more people, is use the poll option.

Now, in your caption, you can ask a question, and then you can have a poll. So instead of someone feeling like they have to comment, they can also just respond to a poll sticker, just like you do in stories. So that’s another option because some people just aren’t really comfortable commenting on posts, and this is another way to get them engaged without them having to do so.

David Pisarek: Yeah, I think it feels very much to me like the couch surfer. It’s a little bit of an older term, from 10-15 years ago, when people would sit on the couch with their phone, just flicking through their feed, and it’s like, “All right, yeah, I don’t want to type a reply. I’ll just share this,” or “I’ll like it instead of leaving a comment.”

The poll is another way that somebody can just quickly click and do something without having to exert much effort. And so that’s a great idea—run a poll. What are people interested in? What do they need help with? Do they know anybody? Why do they care about your organization? Give them three reasons, and that might help you down the road with other decisions.

You could maybe leverage responses to some polls. I wouldn’t over-poll because people are going to get bored of that, but it can help you make decisions around things like: What should your email campaign be centred on? Or should you run an event that is a car wash or a community barbecue, for example? So it’s interesting.

Garin Michelson: Yeah. I tend to tell people that another thing that you should definitely consider when you’re using social media is, just like you’re saying here, to poll your audience and find out what it is that they are interested in, what they care about.

And I typically offer that in stories, but I mean, we have this free tool at our disposal where we have access to people who are interested in exactly what we’re talking about and what we’re offering. So we should use it to our advantage.

Ask people questions like, “What’s something that you’re struggling with?” or “What’s something that you’d like to learn more about?” Or whatever it is; give people options. And again, as you said, just giving them the option to quickly click something and not have to type something out is often more effective.

David Pisarek: We’re kind of essentially skirting around the idea of results.

So you’ve got metrics and KPIs that all fall under the umbrella of results. So, what types of results should organizations be expecting when they invest in having somebody like yourself come and help with social media strategy or the actual management of accounts?

Garin Michelson: So, that brings up a really good question, which is… How do you determine ROI (return on investment) from social media? And this is a tricky question.

Since I started doing this, it’s something that I’ve really been thinking a lot about and talking to people about, and it’s not as clear as it might be in other industries.

So, what we do to prove ROI and to show the effectiveness of your campaigns is to, again, start with really clear goals and KPIs, metrics to track, and then look at them month after month.

So, that would look like a chart where it’s showing like, “This is how many shares we got last month, and here’s how many we got this month,” and so on and so forth, tracking them month after month, and also quarterly to look for larger areas of growth.

It’s really important to be analyzing your insights and looking at what you’re asking your audience to do and what’s important for you to sort of drive results based on KPIs and determine what’s working well, what’s not working well, and then use what’s working well in the future months to capitalize on it.

And that is how we see ROI: just by seeing increases in those metrics aligned with our social media goals and KPIs, month after month.

David Pisarek: Just like you would want to have a strategy for your website, you want to have a strategy for your social media that includes the intent of the effort that you’re putting in, and that might change month by month.

So, as you get closer, maybe to October, you start turning into more awareness. So for Giving Tuesday, which is in November, and then end-of-year giving, which is in December, the biggest fundraising efforts that happen.

So, quarter by quarter, you might end up shifting your focus in terms of what actually matters to you at that moment, and that is totally fine. You don’t necessarily need, “Here’s the goal for the year, and we’re not going to change what that is.” It’s okay to move and to ebb and flow and figure it out as you go along.

Garin Michelson: Right! Your strategy should be a living, breathing document; it can change, and it should change over time.

If you have a KPI or a goal that you’re just not really meeting, maybe it’s time to switch it up, or if you’re looking at certain metrics based on that KPI and those metrics aren’t really getting you where you need to get to, “Okay, maybe they weren’t the right ones. Let’s adjust as we go along.”

David Pisarek: You’re not printing a book and then sending it out to 50,000 people, right? This is malleable; you can change it; you can adjust it if you’re not happy with how things look.

You can change the templates and colours of the posts. As long as it’s on brand, who cares?

All right, so what works really well on social media in 2024?

Garin Michelson: I will never say that you should have only one type of content.

That being said, video content is still reigning supreme, as it has for the last few years. That does not mean, and I want to be really clear about this, that you shouldn’t be doing other types of content; you absolutely should.

However, I have been finding that reels have been outperforming the other types of content in terms of most reach.

So, if brand awareness is a part of, and is one of your KPIs, which I think should be for everybody, then reels are going to be a really effective way to get there.

What’s effective in reels? Unfortunately, our attention span has decreased as time has gone on, and so we are starting to see that shorter reels and shorter video content are performing the best. So, it’s not necessarily a bad thing because I think that ultimately keeping your message as short, concise, and simple as possible is better anyway.

So, keeping your reels to under 10-15 seconds is ideal. And just remember, as simple as possible, really clear messaging—whatever it is you’re trying to get across, whatever your goals are, just being absolutely clear and straight to the point about what they are.

So, reels and video content, I think, are important. That doesn’t mean the other stuff isn’t important as well.

I think carousels, especially value-packed carousels and educational carousels that really provide some value to people, have been effective.

Another thing that’s been super effective for me and for my clients is a photo, which is interesting because that’s how Instagram started—with storytelling in the caption.

So, I like to do a photo of a human because that’s more squirrel-stopping for humans, and then really kind of walking people through a scenario and a story. This goes back to my time teaching history. History is all about stories.

So, every single day in the classroom, I’m in there telling stories, and so I use that also in my content. We tell stories, and people are typically more interested in reading them when they’re engaging in that way.

David Pisarek: I made a little note as you were talking about the videos, and there’s, I think, something very programmatic and algorithmic around short videos in that the algorithm wants to show videos that have a higher percentage of the video that’s been watched.

And I think if you have a 10-second video and somebody watches that for 2 seconds, so that’s 20% of the video watched versus, I don’t know, a 100-second video that they’ve only watched the first 2 seconds of—that’s only a 2% watch. The 20% would end up getting shown by the algorithm to more people.

I think that’s kind of what’s happening with shorter video content—quick little snippets—and I think that that is part of the technical back end, which is why I think that that’s probably an effective method.

Garin Michelson: I agree with you, and I have two things I want to say about that.

The first thing is that I always encourage people not to try to create content for the algorithm. Instead, focus on good quality content that people are interested in, understanding your ideal client and your target audience, and having clear messaging. That’s number one.

And number two, with video content, it really does depend on what your goal is for that piece of content. So if your goal is brand awareness and you want to just reach as many people as possible, absolutely, go with a short video that’s straight to the point. But there is value in longer videos. If you have something to say that is longer, you may not get as much reach, and you might not get as many plays, but that’s okay if that’s what the goal of that piece of content is.

So, I really try to encourage people not to focus too much on vanity metrics—reach, likes, follows, etc. Yes, there’s value in them, absolutely, no question. But if that’s the only thing that you’re going after, then I think you’re really missing the big picture of what you can do with this free app that we’re lucky enough to have.

David Pisarek: Absolutely.

What’s your opinion of posting through a third-party platform to your social media channels versus using the app itself and posting directly?

Garin Michelson: Yeah. So there’s definitely been some controversy about that where some gurus out there say, “Your content will not perform as well if you use a third-party app.” I do not buy into that.

Again, I believe that good quality content with good messaging, good visuals, and good lighting—good quality content that is clear, concise, and targeted—is much more important.

So, I don’t have a problem with using third-party schedulers. If it makes your life easier to schedule in advance, absolutely go for it. I’m all for it. Again, just make sure your content is excellent, and that’s what really matters.

David Pisarek: I would argue that picking a platform or two versus going after all the platforms is the right approach when you’re just starting out. What are your thoughts on that?

Garin Michelson: I completely agree with you, and that was advice I was given early on. Let’s make sure you specialize in one thing, and I did that, and it’s Instagram.

I’ve played around with a lot of the other ones, but that is my focus, and the reason is that if you’re going to give a platform your full attention, which of course, you need to do if you want to be successful, it’s going to take that much more of your time.

So, I think you need to be thinking about the value of using more of your time to try to be on all these different platforms versus using less time but having it be more structured and more strategic and just being on one platform and focusing on growth and achieving your goals on there.

So, I don’t have a problem with being on multiple platforms, but I think that’s more for a team of people where different people are managing different things. I think that if one person manages all these different platforms, you’re just not going to get the same kind of attention and care as you would if it’s one or maybe two.

David Pisarek: Then we also have on the topic of multiple channels, repurposing content. So I believe, and I’ve said it on multiple episodes, social media is very fleeting. Something that you post is in the feed for maybe a few seconds before other things kind of take up space, and it scrolls down unless somebody is really actively watching you and following you.

So, repurposing content—something that you posted three weeks ago or three months ago, reusing that, or posting the same thing across multiple platforms—what are your opinions on that?

Garin Michelson: A couple of things.

So, first of all, you’re right that, typically, you see something in your feed, and then it’s gone. However, for carousel posts, if you’ve already seen a post, the second slide of the post will be shown to you the next time you log on to your app. So it doesn’t just go away, which is why I love carousels and why I encourage people to use them.

I have also found that sometimes, with a reel, something you could have posted days or weeks ago can sometimes pick up traction later on. So I don’t think that’s always true, even though it is true a lot of the time.

And in terms of repurposing content, well, there are two different things here. There’s repurposing on the same app or platform, and then there’s repurposing across different platforms.

So, for repurposing on the same platform, if a piece of content does really well—and again, that’s all dependent on what your goals are and what metrics you’re tracking—but if it does well, first of all, I’d like to think about why. What was it about the content that performed well? And I usually kind of go through a few different things to try to determine that.

And then what I might do—and this is something that’s been highly effective for me—is pull out a power quote from that, from a reel or a caption, and repurpose and use that quote over a b-roll video or as a single image quote, and really try to reuse it, but in a different way.

So, if you have something that performs well—maybe it’s the topic that performs well—I would try it as a reel, a carousel, a quote, a story, or in all different ways because there’s something effective about it.

And in terms of repurposing across platforms, each platform is different. So, if your goals are similar or the same across platforms, you can definitely repurpose them.

But, for example, something that does well on Instagram probably won’t do well on LinkedIn. I mean, it could, but it’s not likely to. LinkedIn does a lot better with longer-form content and engagement, and just getting into the comments and the weeds of it is really effective there.

Whereas on Instagram, like we were talking about, it’s more about the first couple of seconds of whatever you’re posting—whether it’s a reel or a carousel or whatever—that’s the most important.

David Pisarek: I love the idea that you talked about—taking this piece of content that you’ve created and then chunking it in a different way, grabbing pull quotes from it.

So, you’re creating multiple different types of content from the same piece of content instead of just reusing the same thing over and over. I think that’s a really great approach, especially for organizations that might not have a lot of money to throw at social media or even time.

In a lot of organizations, there are two or three people who are doing the job of 15, wearing multiple hats and being able to find the time to do everything.

Garin Michelson: Yeah, and that’s all about working smarter, not harder. And I think that’s something we can all do, and definitely in social media for sure.

David Pisarek: Yeah. If you’ve published a news release or blog on your non-profit’s website, turn that into social content.

You don’t have to create new stuff, and it’s always video; like, you’re putting time and effort into getting search engine optimization work for you. Use that over here on social as well.

Garin Michelson: And if you have a blog or an email, you can create five, six, or seven pieces of content just from that. You know, obviously depending on how many words, but you should be able to get a lot of different types of content from it. You’re right, why reinvent the wheel when you already have something you put so much effort into? You might as well repurpose it for social.

David Pisarek: I mean, we didn’t talk about it, but I’d like to just kind of mention here is understanding your audience.

Who is it that you’re trying to connect with out there? But more than just that, when are they using this platform that you are posting on? Are they on their Monday afternoons, Friday mornings, or somewhere in between, random days of the week?

I think taking your content, posting it on different days of the week, figuring out, like, “All right, in the morning, late morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, evening”—really kind of understanding the psyche of your audience. Take two months to figure it out.

But once you’ve figured it out, keep posting at those times to try to help connect with the audience and the people that you want to connect with.

Garin Michelson: A couple of things to say about that.

First of all, you can find that information in the Instagram app and in a lot of the other apps as well. You can go into your Instagram insights, go to followers, and then you can scroll to the bottom, and it will tell you exactly the times that your followers are most active on the app.

So, I typically recommend posting 30 minutes or an hour before they’re the most active. And again, let’s come back to the engagement piece for a second.

I strongly recommend posting when you can be active on the account and engaging because what it does is if you start engaging with people, then they start seeing your content, and the more people that see it or interact with it or engage with it, the more it gets pushed out to multiple people. So, more important than the time of day that you post it, I think, is when you know you can be active on the app.

The second thing I will say is that the quality of the content is more important than the time you post.

Good high-quality content will perform well regardless of the time that you post it.

So yes, in a perfect world, you’d be looking at these insights, posting at certain times, and engaging over and over again. But more important than anything is making sure your content is super on target, in line with your target audience, clear messaging, all of those things.

David Pisarek: Love it. Some great tips there.

It’s always good to know this is where you’ve got to go to get your insights, your analytics, and your data, and keep track of it as your audience grows. Those are going to change as well.

So, stay tuned into that. Maybe check it once a month or so, depending on the growth vector that you’re on.

So, organizations—it’ll be ideal if they can hire somebody, a firm, a freelancer, or somebody like yourself, for example, to come in and help with the strategy, help with managing so that it alleviates that from their plate. But if they don’t have a budget for outsourcing that type of thing, what recommendations do you have for them?

Garin Michelson: So, the number one recommendation I have—and this is one of the most popular offers that I sell for those kinds of businesses who aren’t ready or don’t have the budget yet to invest in full-service management—is to invest in a social media strategy. That is because you really want to be very clear about all these things that we’re talking about today: What are your goals? Who is your ideal client? What are the content pillars you’re going to be talking about? What does a cadence of posts look like over time? How does a follower find you? What are their pain points and struggles that you should be paying attention to?

And there’s more—the engagement strategy, the hashtag strategy, geotexts—there’s more to it as well. But really, having that strategy to work from, I think, is important.

And if that is out of the budget, then there are other things you can do as well. A lot of social media managers will offer a social media audit, which is just looking into your account: Let’s look at your bio, let’s make sure it’s optimized. Let’s look at your posts.

Let’s look at your highlights, your pinned posts, your stories, and all of these things, and give you some suggestions for how to make it more cohesive, simpler, and more in line with those goals and that target audience, etc. So, those are the two options that I typically recommend.

David Pisarek: Love it. Garin, some amazing insights around social media strategies and some very specific tactics that people listening to this can employ. If anybody wants to get in touch with you, what do they need to do?

Garin Michelson: The best way to do it is to find me on Instagram. It’s @GetSocialWithGarin. I’m on there all day, every day. Or you can check out my website Get Social With Garin.

David Pisarek: Amazing. And before the show, we were talking about if you’ve got a little giveaway-type thing for anybody listening. So let’s plug that.

Garin Michelson: I am offering a free social media audit. It’s not my full-service audit that I would do, but it’s a snapshot of it where I will go into your account, and I will create a video for you walking through your account.

I’ll cover things that I love and things that I would suggest changing and just make some overall suggestions for your content, your bio, your highlights, your stories, and all of those things. So feel free to take me up on that, and I love doing them.

David Pisarek: We will have links to your social channels, the audit, your website, and all of that on our resources page.

Thank you so much for joining the show today, Garin. Having you on the Non-Profit Digital Success Podcast has been super awesome.

If you want any of the resources Garin mentioned, just head over to our podcast page at nonprofitdigitalsuccess.com and click on this episode for all the details. And until next time, keep on being successful!