180 Management Group<\/a><\/li><\/ul>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=\"1_2\" _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" custom_padding=\"|||25px|false|false\" custom_padding_tablet=\"|||0px|false|false\" custom_padding_phone=\"|||0px|false|false\" custom_padding_last_edited=\"on|tablet\" custom_css_main_element=\"display: flex;||flex-flow: wrap row;||justify-content: center;||align-content: center;||align-items: center;\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_code _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" width=\"100%\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_phone=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"on|tablet\" locked=\"on\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][divi_shortcode id=\"222934\"][\/et_pb_code][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=\"1\" custom_padding_last_edited=\"on|phone\" admin_label=\"Podcast Section3\" module_class=\"sectionpadding podcast-content-sec3\" _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" background_color=\"#ededed\" custom_padding=\"110px|30px|110px|30px|false|false\" custom_padding_tablet=\"50px||50px||false|false\" custom_padding_phone=\"40px||40px||false|false\" locked=\"off\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_row _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" positioning=\"absolute\" width=\"100%\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"off|tablet\" custom_margin=\"0px||0px||false|false\" custom_padding=\"0px||0px||false|false\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_column type=\"4_4\" _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_image src=\"https:\/\/wowdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/post-circleA-img.svg\" title_text=\"post-circleA-img\" _builder_version=\"4.17.4\" _module_preset=\"default\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_phone=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"on|tablet\" max_width_tablet=\"300px\" max_width_phone=\"200px\" max_width_last_edited=\"on|desktop\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" positioning=\"absolute\" position_origin_a=\"bottom_left\" position_origin_f=\"bottom_left\" width=\"100%\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"off|tablet\" custom_margin=\"0px||0px||false|false\" custom_padding=\"0px||0px||false|false\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_column type=\"4_4\" _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_image src=\"https:\/\/wowdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/post-circleB-img.svg\" title_text=\"post-circleB-img\" _builder_version=\"4.17.4\" _module_preset=\"default\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_phone=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"on|tablet\" max_width_tablet=\"200px\" max_width_phone=\"150px\" max_width_last_edited=\"on|desktop\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" positioning=\"absolute\" position_origin_a=\"center_right\" position_origin_f=\"center_right\" width=\"100%\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"off|tablet\" custom_margin=\"0px||0px||false|false\" custom_padding=\"0px||0px||false|false\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_column type=\"4_4\" _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_image src=\"https:\/\/wowdigital.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/post-circleC-img.svg\" title_text=\"post-circleC-img\" align=\"right\" _builder_version=\"4.17.4\" _module_preset=\"default\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_phone=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"on|tablet\" max_width_tablet=\"200px\" max_width_phone=\"150px\" max_width_last_edited=\"on|phone\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=\"3_4,1_4\" use_custom_gutter=\"on\" gutter_width=\"1\" make_equal=\"on\" _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" width=\"100%\" width_tablet=\"100%\" width_phone=\"100%\" width_last_edited=\"on|tablet\" custom_margin=\"0px||0px||false|false\" custom_padding=\"0px||0px||false|false\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_column type=\"3_4\" _builder_version=\"4.16\" _module_preset=\"default\" custom_padding=\"|60px|||false|false\" custom_padding_tablet=\"|0px|30px||false|false\" custom_padding_phone=\"|0px|||false|false\" custom_padding_last_edited=\"on|phone\" global_colors_info=\"{}\"][et_pb_text admin_label=\"Text\" module_class=\"post-content-text-module\" _builder_version=\"4.23.1\" _module_preset=\"default\" text_font=\"||||||||\" text_text_color=\"#555555\" text_font_size=\"16px\" header_2_font=\"|700|||||||\" header_2_text_color=\"#000000\" header_2_font_size=\"38px\" header_2_line_height=\"1.2em\" header_3_font=\"|600|||||||\" header_3_text_color=\"#555555\" header_3_font_size=\"22.1px\" header_3_line_height=\"1.4em\" custom_margin=\"0px||0px||false|false\" custom_margin_tablet=\"||||false|false\" custom_margin_phone=\"||||false|false\" custom_margin_last_edited=\"off|phone\" custom_padding=\"0px||0px||false|false\" custom_padding_last_edited=\"off|phone\" hover_enabled=\"0\" header_2_font_size_tablet=\"30px\" header_2_font_size_phone=\"26px\" header_2_font_size_last_edited=\"on|tablet\" header_3_font_size_tablet=\"19px\" header_3_font_size_phone=\"18px\" header_3_font_size_last_edited=\"on|phone\" custom_css_main_element=\"position: relative;\" locked=\"off\" global_colors_info=\"{}\" sticky_enabled=\"0\"]<\/p>
Episode Transcription<\/h1>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
This podcast episode is made possible by WowDigital.com, your trusted partner for non-profit and charity website and design. How are you using social media for your non-profit and charity? Hang out? Listen to this episode. I've got Sarah on the show, and we're going to talk all things social media, so pay attention. All right. We'll see if they can use that. I don't know.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
I thought it was great.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast. I'm your host, David. And in this episode, we're going to be talking all things social media with Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>. Sarah has nearly a decade of experience at small and large non-profits, including the Houston Humane Society Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She's the founder of the Social Puzzle, which is a boutique social media agency that builds and engages digital audiences for non-profits and small businesses so they can focus on increasing their impact. Sarah, thank you so much for joining on the episode today.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Fantastic. And just like off the bat, you mentioned that you are an introvert. So this is like something really different and neat, and you're working on expanding your personal growth, I guess. How does this feel for you?<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
It feels better than my first one. This is probably my third time sort of showing up in this capacity, and the first time I probably didn't sleep the whole week before, but this time I slept last night. So it's improvement.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Fantastic. And you're in a family of extroverts. So what's that like?<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Exhausting. They don't have a need for downtime or they recharge by constantly talking to me. And so as an introvert surrounded by extroverts, it's difficult to get that recharging time, but it's also helping me to sort of get out of my little introvert shell.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Yeah. Sometimes we need to do things that push our boundaries a little bit. And I find for myself, when you find that boundary, you're like, \"I feel a little uncomfortable.\" That's when you know you're growing. I think it's important for people to think about this idea of personal growth, but expand it to the organizations that they're working at. Right. If your manager, director, or executive director is like, \"I don't think we should be doing stuff on Twitter\", let's try it. Let's see what happens. Right. Let's experiment a little bit with that.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Yeah, I completely agree. And really, there's not so much risk if you're being careful, if you're doing it thoughtfully, there's more to gain, for sure.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Speaking of gaining, what do you see as the biggest opportunity that non-profits might be missing out on when thinking about social media marketing?<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Right. So for the organizations that either have not yet found their place on social media, not created a presence, or for the ones that maybe have pulled back, the biggest thing I think that they are missing out on is reach. So the potential to connect with either donors or even strategic partners that could help expand their mission and maybe outside of their physical location. I have a client that, through relationship building on social media, established a strategic partnership that has allowed them to expand their reach globally outside of the US. And that's really been a game changer to them. They wouldn't have had that opportunity if they hadn't been active on social media.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
I have a workshop webinar, that's all about how to get corporate sponsors for your non-profit or charity. And one of the things that I talk about is connecting with these potential strategic partners, potential corporate sponsors, and commenting on some of their posts, not necessarily just outreach. \"Hey, do you want to connect and donate and volunteer with us?\", but start creating some conversation with them in a space that isn't just about asking.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Yeah, for sure. And I think obviously that's all part of being social. On social media is like building these, as authentic as they can be relationships with, whether it's other organizations or if it is a potential corporate sponsor. I volunteer for an organization, and I am the co-sponsorship chair for their walk, their annual walk. And I can't tell you how many times they ask, \"What platforms are you on? What's your handle? How many followers?\" Because it also provides them an opportunity to get in front of your audience. And they want to quantify that by seeing how much of your audience there is.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Exactly. There's a reciprocal relationship that needs to happen there in order for it to be successful.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Right? Yeah.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Non-profits typically operate, I hate this saying, but on a shoestring budget, usually understaffed, usually well overworked people are doing the job of two, three, four people sometimes. What do you recommend for smaller non-profits who might not be able to afford an employee or even find a volunteer to kind of manage their social media? What do you recommend for them?<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Well, I think a few things. One, it's so important to show up, and really, if you have no social media presence, it doesn't, in my opinion, reflect well on your organization, saying that you're a modern non-profit. The other thing I would say is the person who is running your social media really needs to have an understanding of your organizational goals and use those goals to create and implement a strategy on social media. And so that may not always be possible when a volunteer or an intern is managing your presence. But I think what I would recommend in that situation is that the organization make a small investment, a one time investment with a social media professional that either provides an audit so you can see what's working, what's not, and get suggestions for improvement, or even better, a customized strategy which will serve as a roadmap for the volunteer or intern. And the best thing about that is in the case of turnover from volunteers or interns, there is going to still be a consistency in your presence. It won't be like the tone changes or the vision changes. It will always hopefully maintain the same feel because it's based off of this roadmap, this strategy.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
And that ties into something that I've spoken about on a number of other episodes, which is branding. When you think of your brand, you think of your logo, maybe you think of your colours. Quite often you don't really think about your font or your tone or style of messaging. And when I meet with our clients, I talk about maybe you should create a content style guide or an editorial style guide. Create a social media style guide, have things like what is okay, what isn't okay, right? I've seen in the past some flame wars where I think like Dairy Queen tries to go after Burger King across the street and they post signs up trying to challenge each other and stuff like that. If something like that is okay for your organization, that needs to be documented. So whoever is managing the social knows what those boundaries are that are maybe okay to push a little bit further.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Right? Yeah, I agree. And as an example, I have a client and their tone is just very upbeat, positive, encouraging. They would never experience sort of, I have never seen them experience trolls. And then I have another Organization that have experienced trolls. And so after talking and running the possibilities by everyone, what we come to the conclusion of is that we want our social media space to be a safe place. And so if there is any negativity towards other followers or audience members, we just basically delete it because it's not worth bringing that to the forefront. But that was an important decision to make at the beginning, so that there was an understanding of how it would be and an expectation of how it would be.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
And things like that would be covered under, let's say, an acceptable use policy or guideline document that you might have on your website saying that you reserve the right to remove X, Y and Z without notification, for example.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Right.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Okay. So potentially hiring somebody as like a one-time shot, get some clear strategy for your organization, and potentially doing some outreach, finding somebody that cares, that's passionate about your organization, maybe leverage them and see if they are comfortable helping you with your social media. I think those are some interesting opportunities, but being very clear on what's okay, what isn't, and the tone is super important.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Right.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
All right, so I've had conversations with guests before around this topic. I'm curious what your thoughts are. What is the best platform for a non-profit to focus on?<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
So that is tricky because I really think it depends on the organization and the audience they're trying to reach. And then once you understand your audience, you kind of know what platform they'll hang out on, and that's where you should focus. That being said, all of my clients are on Facebook and Instagram because the meta fundraising tools are just game changers. I have a small non-profit that it is not uncommon for them to bring in a month from birthday fundraisers. And so even though maybe the engagement isn't great there, it takes a lot more work to sort of get it up to the level of other platforms. The fact that their audience, that their supporters have the opportunity to fundraise for their mission without them having to do anything is just almost too good to pass up.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
I'm so happy that you said that there isn't a one size fits all for everybody. If your organization is targeting a younger audience, chances are you want to be on a platform like TikTok. Maybe you don't want to be on Facebook. Facebook is trending older age groups year over year. But one of the things you said is, what do they care about? And what I want to encourage everybody to do. Once you're done listening to this episode, go and listen to episode 16 of the podcast. I talk about specifically what are psychographics and why should you care about them for your non-profit? And so we know what demographics are. I think that's kind of obvious. We know what geographic is, psychographics is, what are the interests, what do they care about? What's happening inside their head? How can you connect with them emotionally? Where are they hanging out? What are they spending their time doing and leveraging that you'll be able to figure out? All right, in the business world, we talk about, like a client, a customer, right? So if you think about your audience in terms of customers, where are they spending their time, and how can you work your way in there to connect with them where they're already spending time.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Right. And kind of to touch back on what I already said about Facebook. Or it might be that you're on a couple of platforms in that both serve different purposes for your organization. So if you have a younger audience, you might get more engagement on TikTok, but you might have very low engagement on Facebook or Instagram and still be bringing in fundraising for birthday fundraisers or even if you set up a fundraiser. So it's kind of like knowing where they are and understanding the possibilities and expectations that should be set for that platform.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
Absolutely. And I guess this leads into the next question, which is, how often should you be posting to social?<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
Yeah. So that, in my opinion, is all about bandwidth. So I would say a minimum of two to three times a week, but it's really also not burning yourself out. So I know a lot of smaller organizations either don't have the staff in place or the budget to pay someone to be doing it every day. And I think it's more important that you show up consistently over time than to show up all at once and then burn yourself out and disappear. And that happens. I've seen it happen, and that really is not going to serve your mission.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>
One of the things that I wish, and I hope that people listening to this episode do, is look at the content they're already producing on their website. A blog post, you can easily turn that into four, five, six different social posts, and then you can spread that out over a two-month period. It's really easy. You're already producing great content. Maybe there's a news release, maybe there's a new program or a service that you're offering, or maybe you've expanded and you've opened up a new location somewhere. Or maybe there's an art Show. You can take pictures of the art, right? And you can turn all that into really amazing content.<\/p>Sarah Suarez:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong>
You know what my absolute favorite thing is? As a social media content creator? I do write blogs sometimes, and oh, my goodness, I love an annual report. It's just like endless content. So, yes, repurposing existing content is the way to go, for sure. And the way to avoid burnout.<\/p>