Word of mouse: 10 ways to master nonprofit guerrilla social media

My guest blogger today is colleague Chris Forbes, co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits. Chris and I met in the virtual world several years ago when he reviewed my two publicity books on his blog. I'm now happy to reciprocate, putting a spotlight on his book (I like it so much that I provided a "blurb" that appears on the inside).

Chris writes here about social media for nonprofits, but his ideas can apply to small businesses, solo-preneurs, authors, and others. Here's what he has to say:

Guerrilla marketers know a good deal when they see one. And social media is a very good deal for guerrillas because they focus on reaching individuals instead merely selling their ideas to markets. With a little time, energy, and imagination, nonprofit guerrillas deepen their relationships with their clients and supporters and increase the frequency of exposure of their message to the people they want to reach by using social media. To get the most out of social media, it is important to make strategic use with a plan. Below are 10 ways your organization can master the use of social media.

1. Message: In order for your message to have any impact for your cause, it has to contain your message. A funny or interesting video, even if it becomes a very popular online phenomenon, is useless to your nonprofit if it doesn’t get people to take action.
2. Meme: The message of your viral outreach needs to be easy to grasp without explanation and easy to pass on to others.
3. Meeting: Find the media that your target audience likes to use and go where the people are. Media researchers estimate 60 percent of adults belong to a social network, but most only belong to one. Spread your virus in a variety of networks.
4. Manage: Funnel the contacts you make in social media toward your Web site or blog. Make your Web site the second tier of your social media strategy. The third tier is when people register with your site. Mobilize the people who sign up on your site to take action and help spread the message.
5. Material: Give people the content they need to pass along your viral marketing. Provide assets for your audience to make their own videos, allow them to put their picture in an e-card, do anything that helps to put themselves into the story line and send to their contacts.
6. Mobilize: Make it easy to pass your content through word-of-mouse. Choose the video tools that allow you to embed your videos directly into Facebook, blogs, etc. Social bookmark tabs need to post you link and teaser copy into other sites.
7. Medium: Make your content a good match for the medium. Long videos will not be watched as much as shorter ones. Break up paragraphs in articles and write lead sentences remembering they may also serve as the teaser copy for the links when they are visible on other sites.
8. Marketing: Your content needs to have links back to your sites and copy that promotes your organization. Don’t leave the “More Info” section blank; include good copy using your key words and links.
9. Metrics: Watch the statistics. Check not only how many people view, forward, or tweet your content, but track how many click through and take the next step with your message, too.
10. Momentum: Start the ball rolling by forwarding your content to the networks of your intended target. Leave room in tweets for people to “re-tweet” (RT). Prime the commenting by starting the first comment on links and posts you put in other networks. Push your virus into new networks until it takes off on its own.

What's the most effective social media tactic you've used? Why do you think it worked?

How do small businesses use e-mail and social media for marketing?

AWeber Communications just announced results of its e-mail and social marketing survey of more than 2,500 small businesses. The most popular tactics at the moment involve using e-mail and social media options to spread content to additional mediums. More than one-third (36 percent) shared information about their e-mail newsletters on Twitter, while 35 percent delivered blog posts via e-mail.

Here are the survey highlights:

• E-mail marketing continues to bring significant value to businesses with more than 82 percent of respondents planning to increase their e-mail marketing efforts over the next year.
• The more social media grows in popularity among consumers, the more attention it will receive from marketers. Almost 70 percent of small business marketers are employing some sort of social media tactics and a majority (77 percent) indicate that integrating e-mail marketing and social media is either “very important” or “moderately important.”
• The most popular tactics at the moment involve spreading content onto additional mediums such as sharing e-mail newsletters on Twitter (36 percent) and delivering blog posts via e-mail (35 percent).
• Nearly 50 percent of respondents indicated that behavioral targeting (sending specific e-mails to people according to previous messages they've opened or links they've clicked in the messages) increases their conversion rates either significantly or moderately.
• More than 66 percent of respondents indicate they intend to use behavioral targeting as well as sales tracking in their campaigns over the next 12 months.
• 54 percent of respondents indicate they intend to use Facebook as a tool to help build their e-mail lists.
• Nearly 20 percent of respondents indicate that integrating e-mail marketing and social media increased customer loyalty.
• Almost 12 times as many respondents said that e-mail marketing ROI is more easily measured than social media ROI (61 percent versus 5 percent).

How are you using e-mail and social media marketing to help get the word out about your business?

How to Promote an Event

The Journalistics blog ran a great piece today about how to use social media to market an event. Let's expand on that topic here and review how to use traditional media to market an event. Most situations benefit from a combination of both. Include as many of these elements or tasks into your planning as possible:

• Create a plan with a timetable. Events have lots of moving parts and if you don't have a large staff, you'll be distracted by the logistics and forget about publicity components if you don't have it all on paper with a calendar that reminds you when to do what.
• Incorporate newsworthy elements. Maybe it's the "first" or "world's largest" whatever, a local media personality as your emcee, or a celebrity speaker.
• Uncover and use all of your pre-event publicity angles. Those elements above are key here -- who cares if you've got newsworthy angles if you aren't using them to get media coverage? I was once responsible for planning and publicizing the first beach snowshoe race, a charity fundraiser sponsored by a beverage alchohol brand. It was covered by national TV media only because I alerted them.
• Make a pitch for on-site media coverage. It's too late to generate attendance at this point, but the exposure is good for your image, product, cause, or service.
• Look for ways to get publicity after the event, too. Hire a professional photographer to take candid photos you can send to weekly newspapers and add to your newsletter and Web site. Was it a fundraiser? Send a news release announcing how much money was raised and how it will be used. Did the event break records? Share that information with the press.

You can't afford to overlook either social or traditional media when promoting your event, so make sure your plan incorporates as many tools and tactics from both as possible.