Is social media distracting you?
Ok. Be honest with yourself. Is social media distracting you???
I don’t mean feeling pulled to your phone and automatically opening Instagram every 20 minutes. I mean, is social media distracting your nonprofit?
I’m going to say something and you’re probably not going to like it. Social media isn’t as important as you think. I’m serious! It’s really not. We treat it like it’s the mother of all marketing, but we forget it’s a small part of the puzzle.
Here’s the deal. You don’t own your social media audience.
Think about it. Let’s say tomorrow, on your biggest giving day of the year, Instagram has a shutdown. You’d have no way to reach your followers, no matter how long they’ve been following and engaging with you. You have no control.
Another thing out of your control: account hacking. It happens no matter how careful we are; and when you least expect it. I’ve heard horror stories of accounts with 10K+ followers losing access entirely, and having to start from scratch. Can you imagine? No good!!!!
Then, there’s the fact that the social media space is always evolving. Within the year, the bulk of your audience could move to an entirely new platform. How will you reach them then?
In this post, we’ll cover why social media is a distraction and what to focus on instead. Prefer to listen? Listen to The Productive Executive Director podcast.
Why do we keep working so hard on social media?
Social media is distracting us from what matters.
And they’re set up that way. Some apps were intentionally designed to mimic addictive patterns—cool, cool. But, here’s the real reason we keep working so hard on social: your online presence looks super shiny to the people you want to impress.
➜ Social posts are more tangible than the work you do behind the scenes.
Board members and donors see when you post, they don’t see when you’re bookkeeping or working on admin. So you feel this added pressure to perform. Even if it takes you way too many hours and brings you barely any traction.
➜ It’s easy to feel productive (without actually being productive)
Yes, you need to make a few calls. But the last time you picked up the phone, no one got back to you. Writing social media captions for 3 hours feels way more fun and productive than sending another meeting invitation.
➜ We’re told it’ll bring in more money
There’s this idea that posting leads to more money. But it’s not so simple.
The reality is, the path is more like this: Social media ➜ signing up for an email list ➜ relationship-building ➜ more donations.
Why you need to build your OWN audience
Yes. An audience that YOU own. An audience that WANTS to hear from you. Instead of prioritizing social media as the end-all, be-all; here’s what I want you to do: prioritize your email list.
Use social media to build trust with your audience and lead them to join your email list.
Contrary to what marketing gurus might tell you, email is decidedly NOT DEAD. In fact, email is incredibly powerful for relationship-building and stewardship. But so many of us put WAY more time and energy into social media.
Spend less time on social media content
If we’re being honest about how much time you spend on social media a week, where would you land? Ten hours? Three?
Or, maybe you haven’t touched social media in two months, and you have this nagging sensation you aren’t doing enough. All the time. Either way, this is no way to live. Too much pressure, not enough pay off.
Let’s get a handle on this whole…social media thing.
Social media is a distraction from what REALLY matters. What really matters? Nurturing your donor relationships.
Did you know the cost of acquiring new donors can be 50-100% more than the dollars given by them? In other words: it can take years to break even on your donor outreach and marketing.
So why are we spending 15 hours a week on social media, when we need to be focusing on retention? We need to show our current donors a whole lot more love. Through phone calls, handwritten notes, and —my favorite —email communications.
So…how do you get more time to focus on emails?
By making social media easy. Yes, you still want to raise awareness and engage on social media, but it doesn’t need to be such a time suck.
Let’s say your goal is to share 3 posts a week. If you had 100 captions, that’s 8.5 months of content. Copy and paste all of your captions into one single document and start rotating them from there!
Or, if you’re not confident in the content you’re sharing, boy do I have a steal for you! My team and I put together over 100 captions made specifically for nonprofits. You don’t have to plan the content, you just have to fill in a few blanks to customize it for your organization.
We even highlighted the blanks in yellow so it’s super easy to know what you need to customize. Here’s a sneak peak:
Takeaways
➜ You don’t own your social media audience
➜ Social media is a way to grow your own community through an email list
➜ You need to spend less time on social media and more time on nurturing your email list.
➜ Don’t make social media your priority.
Yes, be consistent. But don’t overthink it.
STOP creating new content every time you post on social media. It’s a distraction.
Grab your 100+ nonprofit captions. They’re kinda like mad lib but way better, and it saves you tons of time. Meaning more room for email comms (aka solid donor relationships!).