It is halftime for our “Social Media Bible” blog series

By Rose Reinert
Guest blogger
Just over three months ago, I was excited to join the DonorDreams community as a guest blogger. For those that have seen the movie Julia & Julia, Julie Powell takes on the challenge of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s first cookbook and blogs about it. In the spirit of that movie, I agreed to take on the challenge of reading “The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools & Strategies for Business Success,” by Lon Safko and blog about the things that I find.
As we hit the half way point of the book, I thought I would take this time to revisit our journey.
Non-profit social media strategy? Quality not quantity!
In the first chapter, we began with very fundamental questions about how often an organization should post to social media and proposed a paradigm shift in regards to how we think about marketing through social media.
Are your non-profit agency’s social media posts relevant?
It was in the second chapter that I uncovered focuses on the bittersweet fact that social media is a two-way street of communication. Despite how terrifying that is, there are opportunities to learn more about how to better engage donors, volunteers and supporters.
Does your agency use email effectively as a marketing tool?
The third chapter tackles utilizing e-news, and proposed the biggest question of how to avoid the trash can before even getting your message across. Ultimately, the message focuses on ensuring that your content grabs and engages your reader.
Is your non-profit’s website changing with the times?
Chapter four dives into websites, and how they can either draw people in or turn them off. Taking a look at how user-friendly, and mobile friendly, your website is can greatly impact how you share your mission and message.
Pre-blog technology might be helpful to your agency’s fundraising program
Internet forums are highlighted in Chapter 5, and we looked at how to engage donors through these forums. Also, we discovered that there are several forums currently that could offer benefit.
Why your non-profit agency should be blogging
This next chapter looked at blogging, and we considered the potential benefits of writing a blog. We also looked at the potential for reading various blogs that could build professional development.
Non-profits are engaging and collaborating using wiki
Here we unwrapped the tool — Wiki. This was a difficult read for me as I tried to wrap my head around what Wiki was and how it could benefit non-profits. I did find some great ways, however to utilize wiki!
Your non-profit needs to learn how to say “Cheese!”
Chapter eight highlighted the impact of utilizing pictures! There is no doubt that pictures can share so much more than words many times, and beyond this, we highlighted statistics that indeed supported utilizing pictures in posts to catch your donor, volunteer or prospects’ eye.
Coming next week we will continue to explore diverse ways to engage donors, volunteers and potential supporters. Here are a few additional articles from previous weeks that I didn’t summarize in today’s post. Enjoy!

• Is your non-profit using podcasts to engage others?
• Online videos offer endless opportunities to non-profits
• Your agency can use Twitter to engage donors and supporters
• Engaging others with webinars and online radio
• Social media sometimes means engaging in difficult discussions
• What is your non-profit agency doing in virtual environments like Second Life?