Editor’s Note: We’re happy to have Harrison Kratz guest blogging for us today. Harrison is the Community Manager for MBA@UNC, a top online MBA program from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He sticks to his entrepreneurial roots as the founder of the global social good campaign, Tweet Drive. You can follow him on Twitter @KratzPR!
One of the most exciting times when involved in social good is seeing the execution and results of your first campaign. Whether you’re raising awareness, collecting funds, or hosting a fundraiser, seeing support for your idea of change is an unrivaled feeling. But in the crowded world of social good, momentum or continued support is not guaranteed.
To ensure that you don’t drop off when it comes time to rally for support or host another campaign, it is essential to put your community first. Your community will always be the driver behind the change you are trying to bring, and communicating with them is an easy, yet important step in building on your initial success.
Here are a few communication tips that will turn your community of supporters into a community of evangelists.
Build a Facebook Group
It’s not enough to just connect with your community if you want to keep the momentum going after your initial success. To build on excitement and progress, it is important that you allow your community members the opportunity to connect with one another.
Creating a regular Facebook group is a great way to build this line of connectivity. Not only are you able to start the conversation and update your community on your cause, your community members are able to converse with each other and build off of each other’s enthusiasm. Moving forward, this allows your community to be a more effective voice than your own marketing ever could be.
Build Your Community Into Your Story
Social media has always been a channel where brands and causes can communicate and connect with their community. With the rise of visual platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook Timeline, brands are now turning to telling their story.
As a cause looking to involve your community, you have a great opportunity to incorporate them into your storytelling. This can be done by posting content created by your community, profiling specific community members, or getting them involved in sharing your visual content. Ultimately, you should be taking a “your story is our story” approach to visual storytelling.
Keep Your Donors Updated on Your Progress
This sounds simple, but often overlooked. Rather than having your donors, volunteers, and supporters check-in to see how your cause is doing, make it a point to show them the progress that they are responsible for.
By sharing the work being done and framing it as progress that your community is responsible for, they will feel empowered and closer to your cause. People who want to make a difference have countless options of causes to contribute to, but they’ll turn to you because of the visible change they are affecting.
As soon as he used the phrase “moving forward,” I stopped reading.u00a0 Bull officeu00a0jargon that doesn’t really say anything other than, “going back in time is impossible.”
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