Tuke, who is blind, long wanted to build a career in communications. And when she found that opportunity at RNIB, an organization she’d been involved with for years as a volunteer, she was excited to support her community in a new and impactful way. “I am proud to be a blind person, and I want to play a part in making the world more accessible for blind and partially sighted people,” she said. “That was a driving force for me to take on my role at RNIB.”

Despite her passion and commitment, Tuke said she started questioning her career choice because she found social media management—a core pillar of her job—so challenging. That’s because the technology tools she used for those tasks weren’t accessible enough for someone with sight loss. Tuke’s frustration inspired an extensive search by RNIB to find a platform that could be accessed by all users, leading to the adoption of Sprout Social, which Tuke calls “a game changer.”

Sprout Social is a social media management tool that is accessible—and it has quite literally transformed some of the key areas of my job.

Holly Tuke
Social Media Officer

Positive feedback about accessibility prompts RNIB to put Sprout to the test

RNIB’s social media team, which includes Head of Social Media Becky C. Brynolf, weren’t sure if the tool that Tuke needed even existed—but they were determined to try to find it. “We want Holly to be happy in her job and to feel motivated,” said Brynolf. “She has amazing skills and absolutely should have a career in communications. We just needed to find the right tool to make her work not feel like a slog.”

Tuke underscored the impact of accessible technology on her job satisfaction—and her ability to do her work effectively. “When a tool isn’t accessible, it means that blind and partially sighted people can’t do those tasks independently, or it completely takes away our chance to do them at all,” she explained. “In short, it diminishes our experiences.”

The search for an accessible social media management platform took many months. “We met with multiple providers,” she said. “We’d say, ‘We’re interested in your tool, but how accessible is it? We’d like to put it to the test.’”

That testing process was deflating at times, according to Tuke, but it was also educational. “We found social media management tools that aren’t accessible in the slightest, some that are somewhere in the middle, and some that tick all the boxes,” she said. “The range of accessibility we found made me reflect on my own experiences of working in communications as a blind person.”

Tuke said the arduous testing process is what confirmed that Sprout was the tool that could “change the game” for her as a blind social media professional. She first learned about Sprout through social media and noticed that many people were commenting positively about Sprout’s accessibility.

Tuke and Brynolf said that Sprout’s commitment to accessibility and the conversations they had with Sprout’s dedicated accessibility team further convinced them that they had found the right partner.

“Other providers didn’t offer all that Sprout did,” said Tuke. “That really stood out to us. It told us that Sprout’s beliefs about accessibility align with our own. They genuinely care. And we appreciated that the accessibility team at Sprout was very open to our candid feedback and suggestions.”

I want people to know that even if they don’t have a person with sight loss on their social media team right now, if they have Sprout, they will be ready for when that day comes. They will be set up to make people feel like they belong.

Becky C. Brynolf
Head of Social Media

Jumping on trends faster and exploring ways to expand RNIB’s reach—with help from Sprout

RNIB adopted Sprout in July 2023, it wasn’t long before their whole team started realizing benefits from using the platform—especially in terms of timesaving and productivity.

“I’m probably saving up to three hours of work per day because of Sprout,” said Tuke. “One reason is that I no longer have to navigate an inaccessible platform. But it’s also because Sprout makes things easier. In our previous platform, I couldn’t tag messages or hide or like comments. These are simple things, but being able to do them in one place saves loads of time.”

Brynolf noted that she’s a big fan of Sprout’s Reports, including profile, post and tag reporting. “So much of our work before Sprout was manual, and the tool we used for monthly reporting was nightmarish,” Brynolf explained. “Now, we can just nip into Sprout and ask things like, ‘Show me everything we’ve posted for the last two years arranged by highest engagement.’ It saves us time but also helps us spot themes and trends and be more proactive with our content.”

The competitor report that Brynolf pulls monthly from Sprout helps her team understand how their efforts on social media compare with those of other charities that focus on sight loss or eye health. She also uses that report to track organizations committed to social change that are “bold in their approach” with content. Brynolf said those insights from Sprout are helping her team to work with RNIB’s leadership on defining what “bold” means for the charity and the audiences it wants to reach.

Timesaving with Sprout allows RNIB’s social media team to focus more on work that can help support the charity’s core mission and raise its profile. That includes creating more engaging and proactive content for RNIB followers on Facebook, Instagram and other leading platforms, capturing more user-generated content and collaborating with influencers. They are also starting to experiment more with Listening in Sprout to identify opportunities to expand RNIB’s audience.

Both Brynolf and Tuke credit Sprout’s Smart Inbox and its filtering tools as a critical factor in their team’s ability to be more efficient and effective at community management. That is becoming even more important as they have seen RNIB’s inbound messaging volume grow in 2023 from about 1,000 to 2,000 messages per month to between 3,000 and 4,000. They attribute that rise partly to their team’s ability to react faster to emerging trends.

“Accessibility was obviously the top priority when we were evaluating Sprout and other platforms,” said Brynolf. “But when it comes to community management, we found that Sprout’s Smart Inbox was the best of the bunch.”

Now that we use Sprout, I can go to work every day and truly enjoy what I do because I have the accessibility, freedom and independence to perform my job in the same way as my sighted peers.

Holly Tuke
Social Media Officer

To learn how Sprout Social can help your organization with its community management while creating a more accessible workplace for your social media team, request your free demo today.

The post How the Royal National Institute of Blind People Found a Dedicated Accessibility Partner in Sprout appeared first on Sprout Social.

But if you work in a highly regulated, “serious”, or niche industry, it might seem like you don’t belong on the trend-setting platform. That’s an understandable feeling. When lists of brands to watch and the majority of viral posts feature B2C brands, it’s easy to feel like your brand has nothing to say—but that couldn’t be further from the truth. No matter your industry, you can make waves on TikTok.

Check out our panel discussion with brands from unexpected brands and industries that are leveraging creative tactics to make the most out of their TikTok presence.

We’ll discuss:

• Challenges that “serious” or regulated brands face on TikTok and how brands can overcome these obstacles 
• Examples of TikToks from the nonprofit, SaaS, and technology sectors that made waves on the platform and what you can learn from them
• Top tips for how unexpected industries can leverage TikTok to build their brand and community

Your Speakers:

The post TikTok for “Serious” Industries & Brands appeared first on Sprout Social.

But planning and executing a nonprofit social media strategy isn’t without a unique set of challenges. Understaffing. Limited bandwidth. Highly-scrutinized, tight budgets. Trying to understand and reach new generations of donors and volunteers.

By choosing the right social media management software for nonprofits, you can proactively engage donors, volunteers and staff members, while saving your team valuable time and resources. Use the questions in this article to help you evaluate nonprofit social media management tools, and, ultimately, deliver a social performance that fuels your mission.

Why nonprofits need a comprehensive social media management tool

At their core, social media management tools allow you to manage your nonprofit’s social media presence in one centralized place rather than switching between native networks—which is key for boosting efficiency and reducing manual labor. As social has evolved, these tools have matured into sophisticated platforms that clarify the donor journey and enable you to lead your organization with a data-driven vision.

With a comprehensive social media management tool, your team can:

• Address workforce shortages and under-resourced teams by automating manual tasks, allowing your staff to prioritize their most important work and make time for innovation, while reducing burnout and turnover.
• Balance global and local strategies, while ensuring all content aligns with your overarching brand and mission.
• Tie your digital marketing efforts to key performance metrics like conversions and donor engagement/retention.
• Effectively reach new donors and volunteers from younger generations who want to engage and donate digitally.

But not all social media management platforms are created equal. The right tools should be powerful enough to handle your unique use cases and intuitive enough for your team to adopt and uncover insights.

For example, watch how Donors Choose uses Sprout Social to efficiently manage their complete social media presence—from publishing and engagement to analytics and reporting.

4 questions to ask when evaluating social media management tools for nonprofits

The right social media management tools streamline your workflows, make it easy to engage your community and provide access to key insights that your entire organization can use. Your platform of choice should prioritize innovation and adaptability—empowering you to maximize your mission. Here are the questions you need to ask before making an investment:

1. How will these tools alleviate my team’s workload so they can focus on mission-critical initiatives?

If your organization’s brand accounts and local affiliates are managed by one central team or even one person, this creates a massive administrative and operational burden when it comes to coordinating content across profiles. The right tools will ensure all posts are on-brand and major campaigns are cohesive, even if content comes from various staff members, locations and volunteers. Check out the Goodwill Industries International Twitter account and the Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona account for an example of how to maintain brand identity across nonprofit profiles.

By using a centralized platform like Sprout Social, you can manage all social media publishing, approving and scheduling in one place—keeping you organized so your team can focus more time on engaging donors and volunteers.

According to Navaris Hood, Senior Manager of Social Media at Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona, “Sprout is an invaluable tool for managing multi-platform social media efforts. It makes the process of scheduling content, engaging followers and creating customized reports simple and more efficient.”

A recently commissioned Total Economic Impact™ study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Sprout Social found that Sprout’s tools helped a composite organization representative of interviewed customers drive $973,000 in social media team productivity and efficiency savings over three years, and a 55% productivity increase in year three.

Here are a few Sprout highlights that help nonprofits collaborate more effectively:

• Shared calendar: Plan your strategy and maintain oversight from a central hub rather than disparate apps or spreadsheets. Organize posts across profiles, networks and campaigns using a visualized calendar to support your overall mission. For example, you can map out your posts for the upcoming week and month to assure your content lines up with seasonal holidays and online events, like #GivingTuesday.
• Publishing and scheduling: Boost collaboration between staff and increase productivity with campaign planning tools, automated workflows, and scheduling and monitoring tools. Automatically publish your content at the times most likely to reach donors and volunteers and receive real-time engagement updates.
• Asset manager: Simplify collaborative publishing and asset management by creating, organizing, editing and publishing assets from Sprout’s central Asset Library, delivering engaging posts while staying on-brand.
• Message approval workflows: With internal and external approver features, ensure content is always approved and compliant with your brand guidelines—all within the Sprout platform.

2. Will this tool help us maximize our mission and reach among key audiences?

Increasing awareness of your mission, fundraisers and initiatives is of the utmost importance at your organization. But with limited funds for paid efforts, you need creative, scalable ways to maximize your organic reach to get in front of new volunteers, donors and staff members.

Enter: turning your current staff members and volunteers into your greatest advocates.

With a solution like Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social, you can put all your shareable content in one place so your staff and volunteers can quickly and easily post approved content to their social networks—extending your reach far beyond your bandwidth and budget. According to the Forrester Total Economic Impact™ study, the composite organization representative of interviewed customers saved $233,000 in paid advertising costs over three years with the Advocacy platform.

Use Sprout’s ROI calculator to find out how much the Advocacy platform could impact awareness of your nonprofit’s mission.

Sprout’s Analytics tools can also help you better understand what content resonates with your audience so you can maximize your engagement. According to Kinzi Sparks, Director of Marketing at the Trevor Project, “Our engagement post to post and platform to platform fluctuates greatly depending on the wide variety of content that we put out. However, using Sprout’s reporting tools has helped us identify key content that performs best and alter our strategy accordingly.”

These Sprout tools are designed to help you fine-tune your content strategy:

• Tag Reports: Access an overview of your inbound and outbound tagged messages to easily analyze campaign effectiveness, volume and performance patterns.
• Post Performance Reports: Analyze cross-channel performance at the post level to understand what messaging and formats resonate with your community and why.
• Profile Performance Reports: Access a high-level overview of performance across all connected profiles to quickly evaluate social growth, and how that growth correlates with key initiatives.

3. How will this tool help us grow and engage our community more meaningfully?

You want to foster relationships on social media that turn followers into donors, volunteers and advocates. To do so, you need to understand your audience’s journey and be responsive and authentic when they reach out to you. Strengthen your community engagement by using social media tools that provide your team with valuable intelligence about your audience, and empower swift, proactive communication.

The Sprout platform empowers you engage your community on social media better by exceeding your audience’s communication expectations and tracking your donors’ journeys from beginning to end. Here’s how:

• Smart Inbox: Unify your social channels into a single view so you can quickly monitor incoming messages, cultivate conversations and respond to your audience. Tagging and filtering capabilities let you prioritize what’s most important and discover unique engagement opportunities.

• Salesforce integration: Gain a full 360-degree view of your donors—from their first interaction with your nonprofit to their latest donation. Sprout enriches your Salesforce CRM records with social data to provide a comprehensive view, allowing your team to understand your target audience better. Sprout’s Tableau Business Intelligence (BI) Connector takes it a step further by combining social data with other BI sources, giving you a complete perspective of your digital marketing efforts, without requiring time-consuming work.

4. Does it surface the insights we need to adjust our strategy and act on timely issues?

Agile social media analytics tools for nonprofits ensure you can make quick adjustments to your strategy and easily demonstrate social’s value for your organization. This is something many teams struggle with. According to the Salesforce Nonprofit Trends report, less than half of nonprofit professionals are satisfied with their tech stack. In fact, 40% are disappointed with their inability to access data quickly, while 34% wish data sources and systems could be more integrated.

While social data can reveal a lot about your performance, it can also mine audience insights around emerging issues like world events or proposed legislation that can help you craft an informed response. It can even help you get ahead of a crisis. As Sparks says, “One of our big focuses this year is improving how we approach community management and social listening, which Sprout has played a big part in. My team is able to quickly look across platforms and determine trending topics our brand is a part of and act accordingly.”

Using a social media management platform makes it easy to create clear reports that demonstrate how your social strategy translates to your mission, stay on the pulse of social media topics trending with your community and monitor brand health vitals. With Sprout’s tools, you can eliminate the time-consuming manual data collection processes in favor of automated, presentation-ready reports. The Total Economic Impact™ study found that Sprout eliminated manual data aggregation to prepare monthly reports by 75%, resulting in $39,000 in savings over three years.

• Analytics: Maintain complete oversight of all connected social profiles from one location. Save time with a suite of user-friendly, customizable reporting options that scale with your business. For example, create and share custom tag reports mentioned in a previous section to share your best performing content with leadership.
• Social listening: Sprout’s artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technology can help you gain critical intel about emerging areas of need and topics your community cares about. The platform sifts through millions of social media data points in seconds, helping you access and share actionable findings with leadership. The tools gather honest feedback about your performance on social and beyond. Learn what motivates someone to donate or volunteer with your nonprofit. With these insights, you will be empowered to produce more meaningful content and ladder-up your learnings to decision makers.

• Message Spike Alerts: If your message volume spikes, that could be indicative of a looming crisis. These alerts automatically send email or mobile push notifications when incoming messages exceed your hourly average, so your team doesn’t have to manually monitor your inbox 24/7.

Find the right social media tools to connect with people who care about your cause

Compelling social content inspires people to take action, and connects you with the right audience. By using a sophisticated social media management platform like Sprout Social, you can harness social media to drive donations, capture and deepen donor loyalty, and amplify your mission—all while boosting your team’s efficiency.

For a more comprehensive look at the potential value Sprout Social provides, download The Total Economic Impact™ of Sprout Social study, and learn how Sprout delivered a 233% return on investment over three years.

The post Mission critical: How to find the right social media management tools for nonprofits appeared first on Sprout Social.

Social media in particular has played a significant role in getting this charitable movement to where it is today. Nonprofits can amplify their causes and mobilize donors to give back to their communities, often starting their awareness campaigns several months in advance. But with so much time and energy invested into Giving Tuesday, it’s easy to forget there are 364 other days that are just as important for nonprofits. Specifically, nonprofits struggle to maintain the momentum generated by Giving Tuesday to keep donors motivated throughout the entire year.

Some critics suggest nonprofits avoid campaigns like Giving Tuesday altogether to prevent putting all their eggs in one basket. I disagree. While it’s true one-off events encourage habits like spot giving, they also provide nonprofits a significant amount of data that contextualizes donor behaviors. As nonprofits look ahead to the new year—and start thinking about their next big campaign—marketers that leverage social data will find new avenues to maintain the excitement and donor enthusiasm usually reserved for Giving Tuesday.

It’s all about connection

Social media remains one of the best possible ways for organizations to reach across demographics, politics and opinions to deliver on its early promises of more principled ideals. And it’s those interactions across social media that enable brands to fuel long-term social strategies that ensure those connections last beyond a single interaction.

A closer look at the annual campaign Giving Tuesday (or #GivingTuesday, as it is popularly known) further exemplifies how nonprofits take advantage of social media’s reach and influence. Founded on themes of connection and bringing people together, Giving Tuesday is the perfect campaign for platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It quickly found footing in the tech space, with audiences first gaining wide exposure to the campaign thanks to promotions from founding partners Skype, Google, Cisco and Microsoft. The stylizing of the cause with a hashtag further built its growth and credibility on social media and today, it’s common to see social media giants match donations from ordinary people.

The cause, however, is not without its detractors. While most people agree Giving Tuesday’s mission comes from the right place, nonprofits often dislike the “spot giving” it encourages. With Giving Tuesday, donors only contribute once annually as opposed to more sustained and regular funding.

But with social listening, nonprofits can turn a one-off event like Giving Tuesday into a year-long campaign. With listening, nonprofits can dive deep into the social conversations around Giving Tuesday and come away with actionable insights to inform their long-term digital strategy. To that end, we used Sprout Social’s listening tool to evaluate social conversations leading up to, during and after Giving Tuesday 2019. While Facebook, Instagram and other platforms are just as important for nonprofits, for the purpose of this article, we’ll be focusing solely on historical data gathered from Twitter.

Reading between the lines

In 2019, Giving Tuesday campaigns generated 825,000 Twitter messages and garnered 1.7 million social engagements and 14.2 billion potential impressions. Trying to dig through that data manually for useful insights is pretty much impossible. But with social listening, nonprofits can easily visualize all their data including topic volume, impressions and engagements. And like a healthy looking EKG, all key social performance metrics experience a consistent and discernible wave pattern by spiking every Tuesday of every month leading up to the actual day.

A closer look at the aggregate topic volume on Twitter reveals a more distinguishable pattern of engagement. Contrary to what most people think, Giving Tuesday continues into January at a relatively healthy number, likely due to the halo effect of the holiday season before taking a dip due to the summer doldrums. With listening, however, nonprofits can uncover trends in the Giving Tuesday conversation like hashtags and other terms most commonly associated with their organization. Using this insight, nonprofits can identify opportunities to spark conversations with their donors year-round.

One method is by examining the underlying content found in spikes during the summer. By narrowing our focus to Tuesdays in July for example, we quickly learn that posting regularly on Tuesdays is still a tried and true method for attracting engagement. Also interesting is that many nonprofits with a moderate number of Twitter followers are out-performing some larger ones in terms of engagement in this time period. For lean social teams, it’s a reminder to stay present on every Tuesday regardless of the season.

Word clouds help marketers further peel back the Giving Tuesday onion. Most of us are familiar with this type of graphic representation of an aggregate of trending topics and hashtags arranged in a vaguely cloud shaped pattern. This easily digestible visual reveals the inclusion of complementary hashtags to #GivingTuesday like #CharityTuesday and #TuesdayMotivation results in millions of potential impressions and hundreds of more engagements. Finding these additional content ideas are key to keeping air in the Giving Tuesday balloon year round.

Fueling social strategies of tomorrow

Turning millions of raw data points into something usable starts with segmenting information by what’s most important to your organization. For nonprofits, breaking down data around Giving Tuesday further reveals insights about associated trending words, topics and other keywords related to donations and funding.

The data gets more interesting, though, when we switch to displaying only hashtags. Here we see broader, potential hashtags for organizations to draft off of that may have been previously unknown. Ironically, listening tells us that #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday in conjunction with #GivingTuesday trend well.

Listening can also provide much needed content inspiration for marketers looking to extend the lifespan of a campaign. Adding the word “hunger,” for example, alters the context of Giving Tuesday and we begin to see word associations include things like children, hungry and football. A further examination of these social conversations reveals a number of professional athletes using their platforms to lend support to end hunger-related issues, all insightful in preparing for nonprofit social strategies beyond the holiday season.

In addition to content strategies gleaned from topic data, it can be equally important to understand the “who” behind the trends. With listening, brands can identify influential social users who they could partner with to amplify their message. For Giving Tuesday, celebrities like Lady Gaga and Lin Manuel Miranda generate thousands of impressions and engagements for causes they promote on their platforms. But nonprofits may be surprised to discover bands like Panic! At the Disco and Metallica also garnered high levels of engagement for causes they support. With listening, organizations can identify individuals they might not have thought of to help promote their cause and widen their sphere of influence.

Carrying the momentum forward

Giving Tuesday continues to be a powerful donation engine for nonprofits. It’s a day nonprofits spend months building up towards to get the most out of a 24-hour donation cycle, with much of the activity taking place on social media. Once the day is over, it’s typically back to business as usual, with many nonprofits struggling to extend the momentum of Giving Tuesday into the new year.

But with social media, and with social listening in particular, these transient moments don’t have to be fleeting. With listening, organizations like nonprofits can hone in on actions, content and individuals to identify key factors driving engagement to fuel their long-term social strategies.

The post Turning moments into momentum: How nonprofits can leverage #GivingTuesday year-round appeared first on Sprout Social.

Overview

We all know social is a powerful platform for great storytelling, but the real secret sauce is when that great storytelling is paired with the immediate connection social offers. This is especially true for nonprofits like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, or the ASPCA, which uses social to drive awareness of its causes, exposure for animals in need and fiscal support to operate its programs. Because it relies on donations from the public to fund much of its work, the ASPCA expends great effort to connect with animal lovers through the stories of the animals it helps (and the humans who love them). Social allows the organization to tie those stories directly to actions of support: donations, adoptions, lobbying and awareness.

Analysis

Founded in 1866, the ASPCA is the oldest humane society in the United States and supports the mission that “animals are entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans and must be protected under the law.” As one of the largest animal rights organizations in the world, the ASPCA uses its platform to support the work of shelters and animal rights organizations everywhere and social media has become one of its key channels for doing so. According to a report the ASPCA released in 2018, 86% of animal shelters and rescue groups surveyed say social has increased general awareness, while 66% say it has increased adoptions overall and 55% say it has made it easier to place hard-to-adopt animals like seniors and disabled pets. 

But identifying exactly why those numbers are so impressive, and how it relates to other nonprofits and their efforts, is where this Spotlight gets really interesting. Like many organizations dedicated to making the world a better place, the ASPCA has emotional stories to tell. But how it organizes those stories across social, executes against specific objectives for each type of story and grows and expands its relationships with different audiences is what makes the ASPCA’s social strategy especially strong.

For instance, adoptable pet stories are most relevant to those with the ability and means to adopt in this moment, but shelter success stories will appeal to just about any animal lover, and animal care tips will be relevant to all animal owners, regardless of how they came to own their pets. Creating multiple “ways in” emotionally expands the relevance of the ASPCA’s messages, which opens up new audiences and potential sources of support for the organization’s mission.

• Goals: The ASPCA’s goals for social are as multifaceted as its objectives as an organization. The most foundational is awareness for the plight of homeless and abused animals in America, which drives a significant percentage of the content across all social platforms. Video is the primary format for this type of storytelling, and the ASPCA does a great job of profiling how its efforts bring people and animals in need together. Video also enables the social team to use highly emotional levers like music, narration and graphics to create moods for the content, ranging from solemn to urgent, to celebratory.
• Engagement is another visible goal for the ASPCA’s social efforts, specifically driving donations. The organization takes full advantage of the social platform functionality that makes giving relatively simple, including Facebook fundraisers (which it also encourages individual followers to set up) and Instagram’s recently added Donation sticker, which allows users to add a direct donation option to their personal Stories. What I appreciate about the ASPCA’s donation calls to action is that they are interspersed with storytelling, so there is plenty to keep audiences engaged with the organization’s mission until they are ready to make a donation or adopt an animal. Finally, the ASPCA seeks to educate its audiences about a number of topics related to animal welfare. One of my favorites is Paws-On Projects, a Facebook video series about how to make homemade pet treats, because it’s relevant to any pet owner and provides viewers with low-lift inspiration to be more involved in the lives of the animals they love. The ASPCA also offers live Q&A opportunities on social for those interested in fostering or adopting a pet but looking for information on the process.
• Offline connection: Driving donations is the key offline connection social provides for the ASPCA, and as mentioned above, the org is taking full advantage of onboard donation tools on the various social platforms. My favorite move is that rather than limit the calls to donate to its own channels, the ASPCA makes it frictionless for individual supporters to solicit donations from their own family, friends and followers by creatively promoting the use of Facebook’s Fundraiser feature and Instagram’s Donation stickers. This not only helps widen the net of potential donors but also helps the ASPCA avoid “ask fatigue” by over-saturating its own audiences with requests.
• Key channels:
  • Instagram – I love how organized and easy to navigate the ASPCA’s Instagram profile is. Story Highlights are categorized by animal type (i.e. Puppies, Horses, Farm) and engagement (Donate, Take Action, Q&A). It’s easy to find exactly the information you’re looking for in an approachable, actionable way.
  • YouTube – The ASPCA’s YouTube page is a repository of great video storytelling, including adoption stories, profiles of donors and supporters, and documentary-style content about how the ASPCA staff cares for animals in recovery. The content is rich in educational information and emotional resonance, and gives a wide-range view into all that the organization does to support the whole lives of animals.
  • Facebook – Despite Facebook still being the world’s largest social platform, it feels rare today for brands to be creating content explicitly for that channel. But Facebook is still where users share the emotional stories that resonate with them, so it’s a must for nonprofits. The ASPCA does a nice job of playing to the strengths of Facebook, particularly sharing and driving donations through the Fundraiser feature.

Takeaways

No one would say that nonprofit marketing is easy, but social has certainly made it easier to spread awareness and galvanize support for worthy causes. One advantage nonprofits will always have is the altruistic nature of their promotional content – the goal is to help others, not to generate profit for a private company. It’s the responsibility of the organization to capitalize on this advantage and create content that connects emotionally and drives action. 

TL;DR:

1. Don’t leave us hanging! If you share a call to action for help with a specific situation, invest time and resources in creating follow-up content that shows your audience the impact their support had. Everyone loves a good success story, especially if they had a hand in the happy ending.
2. Be a community resource. Make your expert staffers available to all subsets of your audience, from those ready to open their wallets to those just trying to satisfy a curiosity or learn something new about your cause. Every piece of content is an opportunity to create a stronger bond, no matter where someone is in their journey with you.
3. Get organized on social. More and more people want to learn about causes on social media rather than your website, so make that as easy as possible for them by keeping your content organized. While the ASPCA has Instagram nailed, I’d love to see them create a more easily navigated experience for all the great content they’re publishing on YouTube. A couple of playlists can go a long way.
4. Activate your audience! Most social platforms have built donation capabilities into their experiences, so don’t just rely on your own followers for donations. Encourage them to engage their personal networks on your behalf by soliciting support from their family and friends for a cause they believe in.

The post Social Spotlight: How the ASPCA uses social to inspire action appeared first on Sprout Social.

The good news is, with the right strategy and tools, nonprofits can overcome those challenges and use social to create the kind of meaningful connections that drive people to donate.

In fact, 55% of people who engage with causes via social media are inspired to take further action (Source: Georgetown CSIC).

We interviewed five nonprofit social experts to help you create a nonprofit social media strategy that will bring you closer to your supporters and help you reach your goals.

This guide details actionable tips to create a successful social media plan for nonprofits, like how to:

• Set social media goals that support your organization’s objectives
• Identify your core audience and develop personas to help you better connect
• Determine which social platforms to focus on
• Create a content strategy
• Track, measure and share your results
• And more!

The post A Strategic Guide to Social Media for Nonprofits appeared first on Sprout Social.

While the nonprofit’s mission to nurture, educate and inspire children and families in need has never wavered, the way it reaches donors, volunteers, potential partners and the people it serves has changed drastically.

Social media is now a key component of Northwestern Settlement’s strategy, and Sprout Social is on hand to help the organization navigate a constantly shifting online landscape with limited budget, staff and time.

I was wearing many hats. So when the leader of a social media workshop for nonprofits showed us Sprout Social and what it could do, I was like, ‘Wow, this is so much easier.’

Katie Taylor
Director of Development, Northwestern Settlement

Multiple Audiences, One Mission

Northwestern Settlement’s programs run the gamut, from a Chicago-based food pantry that provides hundreds of thousands of pounds of food and clothing to families to a residential camp and outdoor education center located in Wisconsin.

“Programatically, we’re dispersed,” said Katie Taylor, Director of Development at Northwestern Settlement. “But at the end of the day, we serve low-income families. We’re in the business of disrupting generational poverty, and we provide opportunities to help people get back on their feet.”

Nearly all the organization’s programs have their own Facebook pages, and others are found on Twitter and Instagram as well. Strategically leveraging these pages was a priority for the organization, but doing so efficiently seemed impossible without the right social media management platform.

“I had to go out and fundraise,” Taylor said. “I had to go meet with people. Then I had to handle social media. I was wearing many hats. So when the leader of a social media workshop for nonprofits showed us Sprout Social and what it could do, I was like, ‘Wow, this is so much easier.’”

Each of Northwestern Settlement’s social pages serve a unique audience. For instance, the organization’s page for Rowe Elementary School, a college-prep charter school, is focused on recruiting students and sharing important news with parents. Yet each page is also intended to show current donors, volunteers and partners how their contributions are supporting the organization’s work.

“Current donors and volunteers are our connection to potential new donors and volunteers,” Taylor said. “They’re the people that tend to like most of our posts and share them. And just because of the way the algorithm on Facebook has changed, they’re the ones who are organically getting our content in front of others.”

Through Sprout, Northwestern Settlement can easily track who is sharing its content and when, as well as how that content performs. It also opens up the door to monitoring social media for new opportunities to engage online audiences.

The organization receives notifications through Sprout when people message it, mention it or share a post across all social channels, empowering Northwestern Settlement to quickly see who’s engaging with it online and respond.

Say we want parents to see one post and donors and board members to see another post—knowing when those two audiences are most likely to be active online is very important. Sprout helps us schedule things better and know when to post what.

Katie Taylor
Director of Development, Northwestern Settlement

Staying a Step Ahead

Social never stays still, and that can cause problems for organizations suddenly dealing with a new set of rules.

For instance, the new Facebook algorithm created a challenge for Northwestern Settlement, as the organization has a limited advertising budget and relies on organic marketing.

Fortunately, Sprout enables Northwestern Settlement to easily track performance at the post-level, providing insight into the best times to publish for maximum reach.

“Seeing how different posts perform at different times is a big help,” Taylor said. “Say we want parents to see one post and donors and board members to see another post—knowing when those two audiences are most likely to be active online is very important. Sprout helps us schedule things better and know when to post what.”

Sprout also helps save precious time, allowing Northwestern Settlement to schedule content and compare performance across all social channels at once.

Success at Speed

While social is vital to Northwestern Settlement’s operations, it’s far from staff members’ only responsibility. Sprout enables users to execute on strategy quickly so they can move on to the next task.

“Sprout is really helpful because we all have to do so many other things on any given day,” Taylor said. “If we go in and set things up for the next week, we can set it and forget it, then check back in and see who’s mentioning us and make sure everything’s working smoothly.”

The Sprout platform also makes measuring ROI a breeze. Instead of logging into each social network individually and collecting data, the team at Northwestern Settlement receives a comprehensive overview of all social channels in one place.

“Obviously how much money we’re bringing in and people volunteering to work are big for us, but it’s also about people clicking through the links we post,” Taylor said. “Are they coming to our website from social media and getting to know us? Are they signing up for our email list? Are they taking that next step and actually finding a way to get engaged?”

Over the course of its first three years using Sprout, Northwestern Settlement achieved a:

• 73% increase in social impressions
• 100% increase in social engagements
• 590.6% increase in social messages received

That includes:

• 2 million impressions
• 25,100 engagements
• 4,100 link clicks

This success continues today. Month over month, as of May 30, 2018, the organization captured nearly 26,000 impressions, resulting in a:

• 126.7% increase in social messages received
• 22.6% increase in social engagements

Social is an ideal way for nonprofits like Northwestern Settlement to tell their stories and get introduced to new people.

It’s also a great way to encourage people to get involved. Fifty-five percent of people who engage with nonprofits on social take action, be it donating money (59%) or volunteering (53%).

Through Sprout Social, Northwestern Settlement is better poised to inspire people online to help meet the complex needs of their fellow community members.

The post Northwestern Settlement Uses Sprout Social to Save Time, Engage Target Audiences appeared first on Sprout Social.

Make-A-Wish is one of the world’s leading children’s charities, serving children with life-threatening medical conditions in every community in the United States and its territories.

With generous donors and more than 33,000 volunteers, Make-A-Wish grants a wish somewhere in the country every 34 minutes; over 285,000 since its inception in 1980.

The Challenge

Gaining Insights Beyond Native Analytics

Social media platforms today provide businesses with a bevy of metrics through their native analytics. Unfortunately, those native analytics aren’t always obviously actionable—as Jennifer Parsons, Social Media Strategy Manager at Make-A-Wish, quickly realized.

For Jennifer, gaining insights from native analytics meant consolidating data from multiple platforms into a spreadsheet. Manual data entry and retrieval made measuring each campaign’s impact challenging, and left her with little time to act on insights or implement improvements.

“Native measurement was very hard. We had to create spreadsheets and manually type everything in. We’d lose out on data, because we didn’t anticipate needing it. Hashtag tracking was practically non-existent. It was frustrating, to say the least.”

— Jennifer Parsons, Social Media Strategy Manager at Make-A-Wish®

The Solution

Funnel-Wide Analytics

Make-A-Wish urgently needed a way to consolidate all of its key metrics into one place. Sprout Social solved this need by gathering analytics from all essential platforms and displaying them in one comprehensive report.

Jennifer uses these reports to showcase progress to her colleagues at Make-A-Wish and to share campaign impact with key sponsors.

Content Share Tracking & Conversion Tracking

Sprout Social makes it possible for Jennifer to track the traffic and conversion from all links shared on social, including her own posts, URLs shared on social networks and even URLs shared through dark social.

For example, if she creates a post intended to drive referrals, she can easily measure the potential referrals acquired from these efforts.

Using Conversion Tracking, Jennifer has also been able to determine that Make-A-Wish’s earned posts convert at higher levels than their owned posts, which has prompted her to try a different tack with her content strategy.

Competitive Tracking

With Sprout Social’s competitive tracking features, Jennifer can see when other non-profits are running campaigns and use that information to plan complementary or competing initiatives.

And with concrete data at her fingertips, she can better communicate the value and success of their social media efforts to internal stakeholders.

For example, Jennifer can demonstrate how, despite a competing company having three times as many followers, Make-A-Wish engages its follower base three times as effectively.

Content Labeling

Finally, Jennifer’s been using Sprout Social’s content labeling feature to easily gather and share data with her internal corporate sponsorship team.

While she used to have to export all of her post data into a spreadsheet and assign each one a category code, now she can simply apply a label to her content in her dashboard.

Now Jennifer can easily track shares and measure impact—and she can quickly share accurate campaign and partnership-specific reports whenever she needs to.

The Result

More Actionable Insights + Increased Engagement

All the solutions Sprout Social has delivered over the years have had a dramatic impact on Make-A-Wish’s social campaigns, and have contributed to a 41.5% increase in social engagement year-over-year.

Jennifer relies on Sprout Social daily to monitor brand health across all of their major platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. The intuitive reports are essential for discovering day-to-day performance indicators and for delivering actionable insights to her colleagues and Make-A-Wish’s sponsors.

The post How Sprout Social Helped the Make-A-Wish® Foundation Increase Social Engagement by over 41% appeared first on Sprout Social.

The Broad Museum often shares photos from their exhibits with the accompanying information. It gives followers insight on the exhibit, entices potential visitors and reengages those who have already seen it.

In addition to finding new members, there are many people who visit museums while on vacation. Targeting people who plan for their trips and are more likely to post about it is an excellent strategy.

The Q4 2017 Sprout Social Index found that consumers share and include brands in their shares most often during holidays and travel/vacation. On vacation, 60% would share about it while 43% would include the brand. That’s a large percentage of people who would mention your museum if they visit during a vacation.

In terms of planning, Pinterest’s own studies found that 40+ million people in the US are on Pinterest every month for travel ideas. Furthermore, 49% who spend $1000 or more on travel are on Pinterest. Even just optimizing your website for Pinterest can go a long way.

We’ve divided this guide up into three parts. You can skip ahead if you’re looking more for strategies and inspiration.

• Part One: The Basics
• Part Two: Strategy
• Part Three: Inspiration

Part One: The Basics

This wouldn’t be a worthwhile guide if we didn’t take you through the basics first. Whether you’re starting from scratch on a new social network or taking over from someone else, it never hurts to audit your pages.

Profile Details

All the details matter in social media, especially when people are quickly perusing instead of methodically reading. If you can make information like your hours easier to access, then you won’t risk losing potential visitors. Why make them click through your website when you could easily display it in your social media profile where they already are?

Facebook

Facebook allows a lot of room for customization on their Pages. We’re not going to go into every detail that the network allows you to do, so we encourage you to explore your Settings.

However, in your About section, you should list all the necessary information that a potential visitor would want to know:

• Relevant categories: there are several different types of museums that you can set as a category
• Address
• Price
• Phone number
• Other social accounts
• Mission statement
• Milestones

If you have a special exhibition that’s happening, pin a post about it to the top of your profile. Events are a common occurrence at museums. Create event pages for them and encourage your Fans to be notified when new ones pop up.

In addition, here are some features you may have missed:

• Add information about your Wi-Fi network
• Turn your response hours on. Do you use Messenger a lot? Put up an automated away message during your closed hours.
• Turn your reviews on or add a TripAdvisor tab
• Verify your Page so it shows up higher in search results
• Add a Shop so you can link your online gift store to Facebook

The New York Transit Museum added a lot of details to their profile. They’ve added a Donate call-to-action button, gave their hours and turned on reviews. If you click further into their About tab, they let you know they have street parking available and provide a few public transit options.

Instagram

On Instagram, you should switch your account to a business profile. This gives you access to features like buttons for directions. In your Instagram bio, where you can give a snippet about yourself, you’ll be able to link hashtags and any other accounts. This is especially helpful if you have a brand that has multiple Instagram accounts. The final advantage of switching to a business account is that you can access analytics and advertise within the network.

Museum of Fine Arts in Houston switched their Instagram account to a business profile. In doing so, they were able to add more details about their museum, like giving a phone number, email and directions. Additionally, they added their brand hashtags into their bio so all of their followers know which ones to use.

Twitter

On Twitter, your bio space is similarly condensed like on Instagram. It may take a while to get the right combination of words but you can fit hours into it. Alternatively, you can utilize your cover photo to include some necessary admission information.

Twitter offers a few more options in terms of branding. You can choose a brand color, change your cover photo and keep a Tweet pinned to the top. Keep in mind that Twitter offers a night mode, so your profile photo should look good against both white and a dark gray background.

The Reading Museum squeezes in information about both their admission prices and their opening hours in the biography section.

Pinterest

When starting out on Pinterest, you should switch your profile over to a business profile. This allows you to access analytics and set up advertising. Your profile gives you some space to enter a website, location, some text for your biography and how you want your profile cover to look.

For your Boards, you’ll want to make the names relevant to your brand and easy for search results. There’s additional space in the Boards’ description to add more keywords.

The Corning Museum of Glass linked their website to their Pinterest profile. On their profile, you see relevant glass Boards, and on the Activity tab, you see what people have Pinned from their website.

Audit Your Strategy

Set aside a few hours to focus on taking an unbiased look at how your networks have performed. A social media audit tool (template included in this post) gives you the opportunity to examine everything from your current demographics to your most-shared content.

If you’re reevaluating your strategy, an audit is where you should begin the process.

Part Two: Strategy

Your museum’s social media team is part of your marketing team. This means that your social media manager needs to be dialed into what’s happening in your events department, your research department and your special exhibitions. Depending on how your strategy is designed, you may find that your museum will use social media as a megaphone to all of the activities that are happening.

To have an idea on how to get started on designing a strategy, check out our handy post and checklist.

Set Up Your Goals

What are you hoping to accomplish with each network? If you’re using social media primarily as an educational tool, then your posts will be centered around your pieces with some sprinkling of promotions.

Every network can have its own goals. A media-heavy platform like Instagram may benefit from more educational posts whereas a quick platform like Twitter may be better for sassy meme references. Understand the limits of each network, too. Facebook and Twitter are great for links while in Instagram, you can only link in an Instagram Story.

To begin with, here are some common goals that museums may want from social media:

• Increase brand awareness: You want as many people to know about you as possible
• Increase admission and membership sales: More people need to know what membership benefits are and you also want to capture those who vacation in your city
• Educate: Museums are first and foremost places to learn. That means there’s an endless supply of content to post about.
• Promote other features: Do you offer event space? Will you be hosting an artist talk or collaborating with a community business? All the neat projects that your organization undertakes can be posted onto social media.

Create an Internal Communication Strategy

The bigger your museum is, the more you’ll need a robust internal communication strategy. How will your social media team receive information about what’s happening around the museum? Chances are that the team is small and it won’t do them any good if every employee suddenly sends them the coolest thing happening in their day.

Instead, create channels of communication. What are the top three things happening in every department each week and can these be delivered by one person? The communication method can be as simple as an email or in-person meeting or as robust as a form.

One way you can make it easy for employees to tell their own stories about the museum is through Sprout’s Employee Advocacy platform. Employee Advocacy surfaces pre-approved stories that employees can then share on their social accounts with their own unique spin. This means your content will reach more audiences through employees’ networks, and you’ll be empowering them to relate these stories to their own experiences working at the museum.

The side benefit of having a great internal communication program is that you’re able to share important social posts with the team. Employee advocacy will only amplify the content that you post. According to the 2022 Sprout Social Index™, the most important business outcome of an employee advocacy program is increasing brand awareness. Knowing what’s happening in the company can help your employees be better at their jobs, and helps them share good company news with their networks, which increases your brand’s reach.

Write Social Media Guidelines

Do you have a large, interactive audience online? It may be time for you to create and publish a set of community guidelines. Having this available will help guide how you moderate posts and comments. Community guidelines usually outline what you don’t tolerate and what can be grounds for being blocked or reported.

Take a page from the Guggenheim Museum. Their social media guidelines are linked to from all of their social pages.

Set Up or Link Related Brands

Your Events team may find it necessary and interesting to start their own social media accounts. Before this happens, ensure that everyone has an understanding of the museum’s brand guidelines and voice. Each department or account may take on a different tone but the overall feel of the accounts should remain similar.

If possible, utilize your bio’s space to link to other associated accounts. Or at the very least, include the parent account in the associated accounts’ bios. It ensures some continuity between accounts and lessens the confusion for followers.

Sue the T-Rex in the Field Museum operates their own account with 41.3k followers. They’re sarcastic, entertaining and interact often with their followers. Given that Sue is such a draw for Field Museum visitors, it makes sense for it to have a separate account and unique personality.

Find Your Voice

The way you write identifies you to your followers and fans. On social media, museums have a chance to be more entertaining than you may be allowed on an artist label. Creating and documenting your brand voice help you determine what you can and can’t post. Every organization has its own lexicon and writing it all down lets you stay consistent from print to web.

The Philbrook Museum uses Twitter to showcase their museum’s current highlights and also to breathe a little entertainment into their timeline. They’re not afraid to poke fun at themselves or participate whatever is ridiculous on Twitter that day.

Establish Photo Guidelines

Along with your brand voice, you’ll need to give thought to how you want to present your images. Will they be ultra-minimalistic or will they be more casual, behind-the-scenes shots? Are there images you don’t want to show?

To start you off, you can think about the below:

• What colors (if any) do you want to highlight?
• What will the image subjects be? Are they all paintings?
• What angles will be best? Will every pottery piece be taken with a white background and at eye level?
• For Instagram, will how your grid look matter to you?
• If people will be included, will they be cropped closely around the face? Do they need to look straight at the camera?
• What filters or tones do you want to use?

The Centre Pompidou uses the 3-column Instagram grid format in a distinctive way. Doing this helps them create a theme within three posts and encourages their followers to check their profile page on a consistent basis.

Unify Your Marketing

Your social media content doesn’t need to live in its own bubble. Where ever possible, make sure people know that you’re on social media. This can mean a variety of things. To start, your website should at the very least have your social media handles in the footer or header.

If you’d like to go a step further, you can embed your Instagram streams and optimize your website for Pinterest. When you have blog posts or news items on your site, ensure that your images are optimized for the networks that you’re on and have descriptive excerpts.

At exhibits, especially special showings, create and display branded hashtags. If you encourage use of these hashtags while visitors are walking around, track them to engage with them. Use hashtags to highlight special exhibits, events or your gift shop.

When Sue the T-Rex at the Field Museum was being moved, the display included the hashtag and encouraged visitors to watch the process. What could’ve been a boring exhibit relocation instead became an interactive and involved process.

Plan Your Content

Now that you have your internal communications ready and flowing with information, it’s time to plan your content. Based on the goals you’ve established earlier, decide on what types of content you want to publish and how often. How often will you talk about membership benefits and how often will you participate in fun holiday trends? Will you post any user-generated content?

To help manage what you’re pushing out across multiple networks, use a tool like Sprout Social to easily schedule and see what’s going out when. You can even have draft posts show up on your calendar.

You may also find it necessary to set aside time each week or month for photoshoots. Depending on detailed your image guidelines are, a smartphone photo might not cut it.

Monitor Your Efforts

With your new strategy and planned posts, the next item to focus on is engagement and analytics. You will find that the more your posts resonate with your followers, the more people will want to interact with you. This brings you to another issue: how will you monitor messages and hashtags?

Let’s say you decided to launch a campaign on Twitter. You’ve asked people to interact with the campaign by using a branded hashtag. They might reply to you and/or use the hashtag. Are you going to keep two Twitter windows open so you don’t miss a Tweet? What if someone misspells the hashtag – will you be able to find the Tweet?

Make it easier on yourself to invest in an all-in-one tool that helps you monitor and easily respond to messages across multiple networks. This management tool is especially handy if you have multiple accounts on the same network. Sprout’s Inbox feature puts search results and brand messages in one view so you’ll never have to click away to find a hashtag search result.

The final step in establishing a strategy is always to look at your analytics and reevaluate content or decisions. You can use analytics to see how well you’re reaching your brand awareness goals or if a campaign was successful.

In addition to standard network reports, Sprout offers engagement reports, competitor analyses and campaign reports. Find a reporting solution that works for your organization’s needs.

Part Three: Inspiration

Your head is probably whirling with information now. To end this guide, we’d like to share some marketing tactics that we’ve seen in social media for museums. Some of these ideas might help inspire your next post.

Add Branded Instagram Highlights

The Palais de Tokyo Instagram profile page utilizes the Highlights feature to talk about what’s important to them.

You’ll notice that each Highlight has its own branded cover. You can use Highlights to answer commonly asked questions, share about special exhibits and give behind-the-scenes tours.

Highlight Your Employees & Volunteers

The Tate dedicated a whole week to their volunteers, sharing fun facts about them and a photo. Highlighting the people who make the museum special (besides the artists and creatives) makes them feel more empowered and invested in the organization. It’s employee recognition.

You can incorporate this as an ongoing series and highlight people in a variety of ways. Perhaps one week it’s a single department and another week it’s about the interns.

Engage on the Hashtag Holidays

There are many fun hashtag holidays that occur and it’s up to you to decide which ones to participate in. At first glance, World Emoji Day doesn’t seem like it would be relevant to a museum. However, the Royal Ontario Museum found a way to capitalize on the hashtag and create entertaining content for their followers. Followers responded with their favorite emoji and the museum answered with a corresponding art piece.

Plan ahead to find the most relevant hashtag holidays for you. It may take some creative thinking but you may find that your museums’ collections match up to even the most absurd of days.

Reply with Relevant Information

When people visit and mention your brand, use it as a way to educate them. This does take some finesse since not all posts are meant to be responded to with facts. The J. Paul Getty Museum found a way to interact with a fan’s Tweet and responded with pun and more information on the included painting.

Not every museum has digital archives readily available. However, search engines and your own exhibits are steps away and you can easily educate followers when it’s relevant do so.

Partner with Local Institutions

Forty-two museums in New York City partnered up for #MuseumInstaSwap. This opportunity gave museums a chance to interact with each other and expose their collections to an audience that is more likely to be interested in them.

You don’t need to coordinate with so many museums to make an impact. You can easily take this on with one other area museum, aquarium or park. The idea is to share content and spread brand awareness.

Create Educational Content for Advertising

If you’re dipping your toes into social media advertising, start with a piece of your educational content. After entertainment and discounts, education is the next biggest type of engaging social ads. Our Social Advertising Report found that education in a social ad appeals to one-third of people. Even better, 65% are interested in clicking to learn more.

This is especially relevant for museums because they’re filled with educational content ready to be shared with the world.

Conduct Live Interviews

The National Air and Space Museum conducted a live interview on Facebook about the women involved in the Voyager missions. They took questions live and the video stayed on to continue more engagement.

Conclusion

This guide walked you through managing social media for museums in three parts. We first examined the basic setup that any museum would want. Next, we examined how you wanted to present your museum to the world and what to pay attention to. And finally, we provided some real-life content from museums around the world to help inspire you.

There are huge opportunities for museums to engage audiences with their unique and educational content.  We’d love to hear your comments on which strategies you have used or have caught your eye.

The post The ultimate social media for museums guide appeared first on Sprout Social.

The Washington, D.C.-based organization produces original research—crunching numbers, sharing data with the public and providing recommendations to decision makers and influencers.

And it turns to social media to help spread the word.

Since signing on with Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social, the organization has experienced consistent boosts in messaging reach. Over the past year alone, it achieved a 12% increase in total social followers, resulting in more than:

• 13 million impressions
• 160,000 engagements
• 62,000 link clicks

Additionally, the nonprofit captured a total potential reach of over a million social users thanks to employee advocates.

Capturing attention

The organization works with hundreds of researchers covering a wide range of issues, from health care to taxes to housing finance.

The information it uncovers and shares is of great interest to lawmakers and other individuals shaping policy, and is delivered in a nonpartisan fashion.

“For example, if a new law is proposed at the federal level, we wouldn’t say this is bad or don’t vote for this,” said the organization’s Senior Digital Communications Manager. “But we might say, ‘Here’s what could happen if you enact this. We have research on this, and this is what the research says.’ We’re just trying to bring evidence to bear on policy conversations that are happening.”

Online fundraising is a secondary goal. The organization operates more as a publisher than fundraiser, and its audience is policymakers, major media outlets and the people who work in the spaces it researches.

However, staying above the political fray comes with drawbacks.

“We don’t do any advocating ourselves, which can actually make our social media work more challenging,” said the Senior Digital Communications Manager. “In essence, we’re saying, ‘Here are some interesting facts, do with them what you will.’ It can be harder for social, because you’re not making really strong statements, and you’re not telling people to do something, or to get angry, or explicitly telling them something is bad. And people tend to get more excited about that.”

Fortunately, through a combination of smart social strategy and employee advocacy supported by Sprout Social, the Urban Institute is able to amplify its message and reach its target audiences.

Expanding reach

The Senior Digital Communications Manager knew the Urban Institute needed social media management tools to succeed, but was less than impressed with what the organization was using.

“I did a month-long trial of Sprout and loved it. I was afraid the transition from an old platform to a new one would be really hard, but it was so easy. And once we learned about Sprout’s Employee Advocacy Platform, it seemed like an easy way to support our social efforts even more. It was easy to integrate it with our current strategies and better engage our staff.”

Publishing and social media monitoring are primary concerns for the team. With Sprout’s publishing features, the organization is able to automatically post content across all connected social profiles at optimal times to maximize reach, and can then monitor who is sharing and commenting on its content. Beyond generating awareness, the organization wants to be able to identify online influencers and key stakeholders.

“I couldn’t do my job without Sprout,” said the Senior Digital Communications Manager. “When I get in in the morning, I can schedule a handful of posts, set it and forget it. And throughout the day, I check back in and update and respond as necessary.”

While it’s active on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, Twitter is the organization’s social channel of choice. Year over year on Twitter, as of April 16, 2018, the organization saw a:

• 6.8% increase in organic impressions.
• 10.3% increase in total followers.
• 15.1% increase in messages received.

Sprout has also helped organize its employee advocacy efforts, opening the door to further increases in online reach. The communications team is able to curate content employees can quickly and easily share on their personal social profiles.

Year over year, thanks to Employee Advocacy, the organization achieved a total potential reach of 1,034,903 across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. This growth has continued month over month as well, with total employee story shares increasing 200% between March and April 2018.

Employee shares are especially effective at maximizing messaging reach, as data shows brand messages shared by employees reach 561% further than those shared by brand social channels, and are also re-shared 24 times more frequently.

A critical component of the nonprofit’s mission is to conduct research that elevates debate. With Sprout Social, it can do just that by ensuring its work is shared far and wide.

The post How this nonprofit institute boosts messaging reach with Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social appeared first on Sprout Social.