Stop Giving Your Nonprofit’s Social Media to Interns

Imagine your nonprofit’s interns having full control of your finances, with permission to spend however they want. Your interns might be good at budgeting, sure, but that’s not to say they have extensive experience managing a whole organization’s budget. Besides pure chaos, what would you expect to happen when you let people who are not well-versed in financial strategy take the lead? We’re guessing you wouldn’t find yourself in this position. Realistically, you don’t give interns full control of managing a budget.

It’s time to start treating your nonprofit’s social media efforts with the same degree of structure you would treat your budget.

Prioritize Social Media Efforts

Social media is an important cornerstone of digital marketing strategy. With that said, handing it over to interns who love Instagram is not how you will see any effective change within your organization. This doesn’t mean that interns cannot be a huge contributor to your nonprofit’s social media platforms. However, it’s not logical to assume they will get good results with almost zero guidance.

Though millennials today have nailed the art of social media, most don’t build out a social strategy for their personal pages. This is where most people misunderstand how to utilize social media for their organizations. It is integral to create a strategy based on your nonprofit’s goals. Create one that is unequivocally aimed at getting your audience to engage with your organization. You have to have a clear idea of where you want your organization to go based on the objectives and key goals that you, as your nonprofit’s leaders, have previously set. It is likely that the people who have the most fundamental understanding of your organization are not your temporary interns. Somebody who is going to have a lasting impression within your organization has to own social and own it well.

Social is Growing

Social media is only going to get bigger with growing platforms that allow you to build a community and brand your nonprofit. Social platforms can yield strong leads when they are utilized efficiently. Having an understanding of where social can take your organization is just as important as knowing the budget you have to work with.

Nonprofit leaders are not prioritizing the use of social media within their marketing efforts, which ends up being a huge loss of potential. Your organization’s growth and outreach capability can be seriously suffering because of this.

Become a Practitioner

Mastering social media for your nonprofit’s digital marketing efforts is something that will take time and require persistence. However, becoming a practitioner is what will set your organization apart from the rest. Understanding your audience and how they use each social ecosystem is important for your growth. Recognize how your audience uses Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and use that knowledge to your advantage. This is how you become the best at what you are doing.

Social Media as a Community

Social media at its root is designed for creating conversations and fostering a sense of community. Along the lines, people have misinterpreted the need for social platforms to simply be a distribution channel. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. They were created to get people involved and part of the dialogue. Building a digital community is what social media, most notably Facebook, was created for. Undermining the power and potential it can bring your organization is something you will want to avoid at all costs.

Subscribe… And Don’t Let Interns Run Social

We hope that by now you truly understand how important it is to treat social media with just as much urgency as you treat the other crucial structures within your organization. It’s time to stop handing over your social accounts to your interns to run without guidance. Take the time to build out a strategy based on your goals.

Cameron Ripley