The Real Value of a Facebook Friend

Using social media’s most popular site to engage your supporters, raise awareness and maybe, eventually, bring in some cash.

2

You can try calling a square a circle all you want, but ultimately it’s still a square. You can want Facebook and other social media to be what you want it to be so bad, but the fact of the matter is that it is what it is.

- Christina Johns, Director of New Media International Fellowship of Christians and Jews

That’s the sad news about Facebook, folks. It’s not an effective or efficient vehicle for fundraising — no matter how badly you want it to be. At least, not yet.

“You can’t directly just raise money online through Facebook. You have to do something outside of FB and tie it into a real-world thing,” said Charles Parsons, product manager for Salsa Labs. “If you’re used to more traditional methods where you can send out a letter with a return envelope and get back a check, there is very little direct correlation to that on FB.

“It’s more about building up presence by engaging the audience, then maybe turning around and asking for money,” he said.

So since everything is supposed to come down to the “bottom line,” — right? — it’s OK to ignore Facebook and other social-media sites that don’t directly rake in the cash. Right?

Nope!

According to the “2012 Benchmarks Extra: Facebook” report produced by M+R Strategic Services and the Nonprofit Technology Network, “Between 2010 and 2011, the median growth rate for nonprofit fan pages on Facebook was an astounding 70 percent! Imagine your email list growing at that rate!”

Other findings from the report:

• The average nonprofit in the study had 31,473 Facebook fan page users, representing 103 fan page users per 1,000 email subscribers.

• In 2011, monthly fan page churn – the rate at which followers become unreachable in a month – was low, at 0.5%.

• On a given day, nonprofits involved in this study reached an average of 197 unique users per 1,000 Facebook fan page users, meaning 197 people – fans or not – came across content associated with the nonprofit’s page.

• On average, viral activity accounted for 32% of a fan page’s overall daily total reach – that means nearly a third of people saw an organization’s content because a friend created a story about the fan page.

• For every 1,000 Facebook fan page users, the average nonprofit had 22 People Talking About This in a given week.

• Across all sectors, the typical study participant’s fan page had six Daily Page Engaged Users for every 1,000 fan page users.

What’s more, Kivi Leroux Miller’s 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report indicated that “80% of respondents identified Facebook as a very or somewhat important communications tool, trumping more traditional forms of nonprofit communication, such as print marketing (67%), in-person events (66%) and media relations/PR (57%).”

3

Kivi’s report also indicated that delving into social media is one of the things that at the same time excites and terrifies fundraisers!

Clearly, you have to have a Facebook presence. And you have to have a plan for making the best of your time there.

One organization that seems to have it all together online is the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, which was founded in 1983 to promote understanding and cooperation between Jews and Christians, and to build broad support for Israel and other shared concerns. Its Facebook page includes posts from its founder, daily inspiration quotes and photos, pictures of IFCJ-sponsored events, etc. it’s got tabs marked “Welcome” (that leads to a welcome page for newcomers); “Receive the Latest Updates” (a subscription form for the IFCJ newsletter); and a “Help Today” (an online-donation form that allows payment via PayPal or credit card), among others. While some (though not enough) organizations have mastered the art of engaging posts, few offer as many useful tabs.

IFCJ was one of the first nonprofits to have a dedicated director of new media. That person is Christina Johns, and she warns that being successful on Facebook and other social media means changing your metrics for and definition of success.

“The ROI for social media is completely relative based on what the organization’s specific goals are. At this point, we all need to be able to measure some return on social media, but what the return differs from organization to organization. It’s really relative.”

Johns also cautions about putting the cart before the horse, so to speak, by investing too much time and energy in Facebook at the expense of other things.

“The first step toward figuring out how much time and resources to spend on Facebook and other social media is to first look at your web presence.,” she said. “The first step is your website. Depending on how much traffic you have online, how much revenue you bring in, how well integrated your online campaigns are with direct mail and other channels, you can get a little bit of a picture of how much you can put into social media.

“If you don’t already have a strong online presence, it doesn’t make sense to dedicate time and staff to Facebook,” she said. “It would be backwards.”

Once you have your website up to snuff, Johns said, you can think about social media. Start small and “add” from there. An important next step is to make sure everyone in the organization is on board and knows what to expect.

“It’s very tempting to want to tie a success factor back to social media. But it’s not money. You have to really outline in the beginning what your goals are so that you can show that you have succeeded, then you can re-evaluate every six months,” she said.

“Have everyone on board going in so that when the time to evaluate, everyone knows exactly where you need to be,” she said, “and no one is expecting you to pull in $200,000 on Facebook.”

NOW WHAT?So you’ve got all your online ducks in a row, your website is strong and you’ve created a Facebook page for your organization. Everyone’s agreed on a new definition of socialmedia success and

4

knows what to expect. Now the fans are coming on board. What’s next?

If you’re smart, you won’t use Facebook as a place to make an ask. IFCJ does have a dedicated tab on its page that allows supporters to donate directly from Facebook, but it’s there just as a way of allowing donors to give however and wherever they want to give or wherever they happen to be when the mood strikes.

According to Johns, making direct asks on Facebook is counter-productive.

“The danger in looking at FB as a fundraising tool is that it’s going to take away the entire benefit of FB, which is creating community,” she said. “Whether people give through Facebook or direct mail or your newsletter, the job of a Facebook page is to make them feel good about the decision to give, to really strengthen your community.”

You’ll get no argument from Salsa’s Parsons. The main value he sees in Facebook for non-profits is to engage “influencers,” who will then spread the word about your work to their follow-ers. From there, donations will follow.

Influencers are those fans who have a large and dedicated following of their own, and who are passionate and eloquent enough to trumpet your cause. Some influencers are good at get-ting people to sign petitions, or participate in an event, give money, volunteer, etc. Chances are, no one influencer will be good at everything you would like to have people doing for you.

“If I can target the 12 or 25 or 400 top influencers, they can take my message much farther than I can on my own,” Parsons said. “When you push out to influencers, you’re not only pushing out to them but also to every single person they connect to and their influencers. You will never see this happening, but you’ll see results. It has a cascading and exponential result.”

But how do you know who to target as influencers? Parsons admits it’s not a quick or easy process. Though he suspects that a “whole cottage industry of third-party companies” will spring up in the near future to help organizations target their influencers, there’s not a lot available at the moment, aside from resources like Klout and Facebook’s own tracking tools. Much of it is a manual process right now.

CreATINg INFlueNCers

Salsa Labs’ Charles Parsons offers these tips for creating influencers on Facebook who will spread the word about your work. Key is building trust with your friends and followers.

1. “Organizations that are very successful with Twitter and FB have personality behind their accounts. There is not a whole lot of jargon. They talk frankly and openly.”

2. “They also open themselves up to a lot of criticism when something doesn’t go well. If something bad happens, take it with a little humor. That’s how people (rather than organizations) deal with it, maybe a little sarcasm when needed. That goes over well when you are posting as a person rather than an organization.”

3. “Make sure you are consistent with any kind of messaging. That goes a very long way to building trust.“

4. Treat followers like people. “shockingly few organizations are very good at it. We have decades and decades of companies being companies and not people. And they are having a hard time making the transition.”

5. Watch how your community communicates with you — or doesn’t. “If you get a handful of likes, that’s one thing. But it doesn’t let you know why they liked it or what triggered them to like it. When people comment, they are engaging with you, taking an affirmative action toward you. If you’re not getting comments, that’s a huge red flag. Whatever you’re doing may be interesting to them, but it’s not engaging them. If they won’t comment, they’re not connecting. especially when it comes to online fundraising, they are not feeling it strongly enough to open up their pocketbooks and help out.”

5

“You see a pattern and then use it more efficiently,” he explained. “Say there’s a person who is really good at getting people to sign petitions. So anytime you’re trying to do that, make sure to get him involved in that.

Johns said her organization watches Facebook comments closely, not only to pinpoint influencers but also to keep an eye out for opportunities to deepen engagement with particularly vocal friends.

WHAT TO DO WITH speCIAl FrIeNDs

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews makes it a point to tap into the talents and energies of those friends on its Facebook page who show a special interest in the organization and its work. Two options suggested by Christina Johns, director of new media at the organization:

1. Ask them to guest-write a blog post. “We watch comments and keep an eye out for the strong, well-worded ones. Our mission isn’t as simple as that of many other organizations. It’s more complicated. so if we find someone who can articulate that well, we will reach out to them and ask if they would like to write a guest blog for us. every time we’ve asked, they have said yes.”

2. Highlight your most engaged commenters. “every month we find the person with most comments or the strongest contributor, then highlight them. We call it supporter spotlight, and we make a graphic for it, then put their name on it as a way of saying thank you. That person is now seen by the rest of our followers, and they know there is a potential for them to see their names there as well. You make them a powerhouse. Now you have [a group of] people who love your organization who now know each other and are talking to each other. If we want to see what people think about us or something we’re doing, we go [to the supporter spotlight community] first.”

The main goal for IFCJ’s Facebook or other social-media pages is to spread awareness of its mission and drive traffic to its website, where the organization can more easily track who is doing what. Analytics at that point, Johns said, is easier to do and more relevant.

“That is a tangible benchmark that people can measure. We look at it and see who they are, where they go and how long they stay,” she said. “We try to figure out ways to best cultivate them on Facebook so they stay longer and visit more pages on our website.”

This integrated approach was most recently apparent in IFCJ’s annual “Prayer at the Wall” campaign, through which donors are able to send prayer requests to the organization that are then brought to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. It was an already well-established fundraising, awareness and education campaign that IFCJ layered Facebook into by sending out an e-appeal that took donors to a Facebook page where they could submit their prayer requests. There was also a mobile option that allowed them to text in their requests.

“We took a campaign that was already very successful in traditional communications channels and amplified it in social media,” she said. “That is what social media does well … it amplifies.

“We try not to do things that are specific to Facebook because it doesn’t make good use of our re-sources or fit what our strategy and goals are,” Johns added. “We don’t create Facebook campaigns in a vacuum for the same reason you don’t want to have telemarketing or direct mail in a vacuum. We want to focus on having a cohesive plan for communicating with donors across various channels.”

6

IFCJ doesn’t differentiate where donations come from in regard to its follow-up communications, either. Regardless of how a person gave, follow-up is based on giving array. Once the relationship deepens, it gets more specifically tailored.

“We don’t really put a priority on tracking Facebook donations,” Johns said. “We look more to the lifetime value of the people on our file. It’s hard to classify what is coming in specifically through Facebook, and that would a very narrow way to look at things.”

Finally, there is no denying the power of Facebook in engaging Gen X and Y’ers. Recent studies have shown that the post-baby boom generations want to be involved beyond the dollar and are looking for ways to develop affinity with the organizations they support. Organizations that want that support are going to have to start thinking that way, as well.

Facebook and other social-media sites are going to become more and more important as tools for engagement and deepening relationships.

“There are so many aspects of an organization that are all about the dollar, where raising money is a primary focus,” Johns said. “There needs to be a balance. Otherwise people just feel like a checkbook. There are so many things you can explore accomplish within the Facebook community. You have to think of people, not potential dollars.”

There’s more to social media than just signing up for Facebook, Twitter and google+. Amplifying your cause online takes time, a little strategy and, of course, the right ingredients. salsa has blended the perfect set of social-media features to help take the hassle out of managing and growing your social connections and influence. Our tools for social-media success let you easily add social-sharing features to email and other content, make supporter and event sign-up a breeze, track results and more. each of these features is fully integrated with the salsa platform and enabled with simple controls. Adding social media to the mix couldn’t be easier!