I thought I would kick of 2021 with a reminder to everyone, or perhaps this is totally new to you; how to use your site effectively with social media.

Many of you already understand this and “get it” but as I work around the 130+ sites I am hosting I see examples where there is little activity on the site, but lots of activity in Social Media. So, social media has basically replaced your website as the means of conveying information and raising interest.  The reason why this is not a great approach is you are preaching to the converted.

The problem

Some people find adding things to social media really easy, and adding things to your website takes longer. While this is true, the benefits of adding things to your website in terms of news is of much greater importance than adding it to your social media feed. So it is worth taking the effort to do it. There is no excuse, because if you have forgotten how to edit your website there is a guy in Buckinghamshire who will be glad to run an online Zoom session, and show you how. From around June of 2020 I started to run online editing sessions over zoom and recording them and adding them to your site. I also now add Editor pages into sites with guidance built in. So all the help you need is there, just ask. 

Why posting only in Social Media is not a good idea

Many organisations have their own Facebook, Twitter, Instagram accounts. This is good. But think about your audience. Your audience (people that have signed up to join your feed) are already fans or interested in what you do. They have already bought in to your value proposition. So you are preaching to the converted. But are there any new people coming along. Probably not. 

There is so much social media around now, probably in excess of 100 outlets you are unlikely to stumble across a feed which will be of interest to you. It is more likely you will locate a feed through a website with a link to it. That is important, people find social media feeds largely through visiting websites. This is because search engines mainly refer to websites, and people are used to browsing websites. Think about those feeds you have signed up to, how did you get there in the first place?

Think Website First

This is the approach I recommend you take, and how to measure it. Firstly plan, what is it you want to say? How do you want people to respond? Hold those thought at the back of your mind when you create a post for your website. 

You have the benefit that you can say a lot in a blog (news page) on your website. So get those messages out crisp and clear. Add an image or two to keep it interesting. You have already exceeded what you can show easily on Facebook and Twitter. 

Avoid Text in Images

Some people go to great lengths producing graphically rich content. Which is fine for humans. But the internet infrastructure works on Text. Computers cannot read what is in an image. Also accessibility standards state you should not put text in images because people with visual impairments cannot read them. (Their computers read text, but cannot read images). By all means show an image, but make sure the key points are in text in the post. Then search engines will be able to pick it up. 

Assign any relevant categories to your post and publish it. 

Turing to Social Media

Now that you have your full message on your website, you can now turn to Social Media. Pull your website up in your browser, navigate to your news page and open the new item so it is full screen. Copy the URL (Web address) for the page. 

Now switch to Twitter, Facebook etc and paste that link into the feed. You do not need to write everything again. But you could put a short note there. Usually what happens is social media will pick up some of the text and images from your website. 

Check GA in a few days

All of my sites have Google Analytics added to them, so you can go to your GA account (contact me if you need access and have not been there before), and check what has happened on your website.  You should anticipate a big spike in visitors, because they have been referred from Facebook, Twitter, et al. 

But……

You are still only reaching the converted. So how do you spread the net wider?

This needs a little research, but is definitely worth the investment of time. You could start by looking on a map at the major regions around your location. Then look on Social Media to see if there are interest groups in those areas. For me, there is Your Prestwood and Great Missenden. It is generic, and designed to connect people together. Unfortunately many of these feeds are cluttered with adverts from businesses. However you are different. You are a charity in need of help and promotion. It is likely that the moderators and admins will look sympathetically at your case. 

Join some groups locally around your location and when you are looking for volunteers, or looking for donations, or simply wish to promote your work, you create a post on your site, publish it. Take the URL for the post and paste it in these newsfeeds. Now you are preaching to an audience that may not be aware of you. Not everyone will come, but you should get a significant blip in interest. 

 Spreading the net wider

So, start to think bigger, how can you reach out to a wider audience and bring people into an inner circle of “friends of your organisation”. You will find this approach can yield big dividends in establishing your presence, value and needs. 

Don’t forget the search engines

Another advantage with this approach is you have generated back links (links back to your website) which are vitally important in your ranking with Google and other search engines. The more you have, the more important your website is perceived to be. Also the content has been indexed, and may come up in searches. So you have increased the possibility of being found. 

Working Smarter not Harder

I think if you adopted this approach, you will see results, and unlike just using your social media groups, you are exposing what you do to a larger audience. That will ultimately bring more people to your site, and that may increase your supporters.  In this process you only created the post/ news item in one location. So you did not have to do it multiple times. All you posted in social media was a link back to your news item. The only other thing you needed to do was check on the social feeds in your local communities. 

Capture and Retention Strategy

You could all take this a stage further. Many of you have a newsletter function built into your website using MailPoet. If you regularly publish news on your website, then this news can very quickly be built into a newsletter (it takes less than 5 minutes). You send the newsletter out to subscribers to your website.  Maybe once a month, or once a quarter. Here you are taking your website out to the subscribers rather than waiting for them to come back. This too will cause a huge peak in website visitors. 

Putting this all together, you have these classes or groups of people. 

• • Group A: Those that have never heard of you  (Millions)
  • Group B: Those that have heard of you and watch your social media feeds (50-100)
  • Group C: Those that visit your website (80-400 per month)
  • Group D: Those that are subscribers (50-100+)

Group D are the most loyal and most attentive group. Your goal is to grow this group by measuring the number of subscribers on your website. 

Group C will contain regular fans, and passers by. Prominently advertise on your site that you have a free subscription. Convert Group C members to Group D members. 

If you are treating Social Media (Group B) as a separate thread to your website, then the chances are those watching Social Media are not looking at your website. By posting links to your site from Social Media, you can change that. If you can drive Social Media watchers to your website, then you can get some of them to sign up to Group D (subscribers).  Remember you can measure that.

Group A is where the gold is. In B, C & D those people are already aware of you, you need to reach out to those that are not aware of you to grow your numbers and levels of interest. This is where you should be placing as much effort as you are on your own social media channels. In group A are donors, volunteers, prospective employees, trustees, subject matter experts, the list in endless. They just don’t know about you yet. 

Put a Marketing Plan together

A marketing plan can and should be larger than this activity, but just focusing here for a moment. Set your self some goals to get more hits on your website. Most local charities with a few exceptions get around 150 site visitors a month. Give yourself the goal of growing it by 50%. 

If you have a subscriber list and newsletter in your website aim to get that to 100 (which should be relatively easy to do). 

The point here being that these are things that the average person can do, and better still you can measure whether it is having an impact or not. So you are not working blind. Use the statistics on your site through Google Analytics, and the subscriber list to provide the assurance that you can make a difference, and drive it relentlessly throughout the year. 

It is not all theory

Here are three examples of why I believe this can work for you. 

1). Prestwood Village Association (https://prestwoodva.org.uk) this organisation is based in my village. I joined them in 2011 and built the original website. It is now on it’s third iteration. We added the newsletter to the website and used Social Media outlets to market the site. Using the same methods I have mentioned above. Prestwood in Buckinghamshire has around 2,500 homes.  The website has over 1000 subscribers. That means Prestwood Village Association at any time can reach out to 1000 people in a matter of a few hours. 

2). Horsewyse CIC  (https://horsewyse.org.uk) is an equine facilitated learning school for children with special needs. They raise additional revenue during school terms by holding day care/ supervision for children for one to five days a week. Coronavirus pandemic excepted; through out the year adverts are placed on the website to say when the next set of dates are coming up. I send out a newsletter to a growing number of subscribers, in the newsletter I ask people to share it with their friends, so more people sign up. That subscriber list has gone from nothing to over 140 people in a couple of years.  Here again the messages are taken out directly to people that interested to know what is happening. 

3). Home-Start Cotswolds (https://home-start-cotswolds.org.uk) I was working with one of the members of the Home-Start Cotswolds team in January answering some questions. I noted that there was an unusual peak of activity on their site over the Christmas period. Bringing around 60+ people to the site in 2 days. I commented that is looked like the site had some unwelcome attention from hackers probing the site. But happily it was not the case. The website editor had posted news on Facebook which directed people back to the website where they were seeking volunteers. You could track the number of accesses to the volunteering page as well. – Well Done Home-Start Cotswolds, that is the way to go!

Got some ideas, not sure what to do?

Drop me a line. Happy to help get you started.