You know social media has been fully adopted by the masses when Fox launches a TV series on Twitter. TV and print media strategies–virtually unchanged for decades–are increasingly being replaced by new approaches that integrate social media.
But the way most nonprofits think about and develop marketing strategies hasn’t changed. 50-slide strategic marketing plans still walk among us like zombies!
The Wisdom of the Common Housefly
The common house fly navigates by using thousands of tiny hairs all over it’s body that sense the slightest change in air pressure. And with a lighting-fast nervous system, it escapes even the quickest rolled up New Yorker.
So, too, should your approach to the social media sea change.
5 Ways to Make Your Social Media Strategy More Like a Housefly

1) Develop Highly Tuned Sensors–How does your organization listen to what’s be said about your org online? Is there a single person who is responsible, or do you have systemic way of listening? Do you have a compound eye like the housefly, or do you have a patch over a single eye?
2) Develop Lighting Fast Response Times–Can your organization respond quickly to what’s being said? Do you have a system, or a flow chart to prioritize how you respond? Instead of running everything by an executive board or legal council, how can decision-making be more decentralized?
3) Make Shorter Plans–Focus on plans for events or campaigns instead of quarters or years. Facebook Groups and Google Hangouts are great collaboration tools for such campaigns.
4) Gather Info By Moving–How willing is your organization to act with incomplete plans? Best practices should be mixed with higher levels of risk taking. This way, you get results sooner and fine-tune your strategy.
5) Grow Tiny Hairs–Using a social media playbook throughout your organization allows staff to be highly tuned to listen and act in response to mentions about your organization. Check out this post on creating a social media playbook.
How does your organization quickly adapt to change?