Kari Rippetoe

4 Things You Should Do Before Hiring a Social Media Agency

August 23, 2012 by Kari Rippetoe

It seems like every marketing and PR shop out there is “doing” social media – everything from influencer outreach and managing your social media presence to “getting you (insert number here) more followers – guaranteed!”. And yes, Tuvel is also a digital communications shop that offers social media services (and we do some great work, too). But the task of choosing a social media agency to help you out should not be taken lightly.

Before even starting to look at potential social media agencies, there are 4 important steps you need to take (by the way, this will help you tremendously when it comes time to writing up that RFP for agencies to bid on):

Do your research. Just as you would research the online and offline publications your audience is reading, you should also do some preliminary research into their social media habits. Are your customers/members/attendees using social media? If so, where are they? What are they talking about? This is certainly something a social media agency can help you do, but this cursory research will help you gain valuable insights and establish goals. Which is the next thing you should do…

Establish goals. This is where you need to ask yourself WHY your brand should be using social media. Use the insights from your preliminary research, in conjunction with your high-level business goals, to determine specific, trackable and realistic goals for your social media marketing efforts. Examples might be:

Increase awareness of your brand or product.
Establish a customer service channel through social media.
Establish your brand as a thought-leader.
Increase new leads and sales.
Increase traffic.

Evaluate resources. You may have already determined that you need to hire a social media agency to provide your organization with the additional knowledge and people-power to run a successful social media program; however, you should still evaluate the resources you already have in-house who will be assisting with program implementation, or even carrying on the effort after the agency has laid the groundwork.

Set expectations. Make sure that your internal team and management are clear on what to expect from social media. Everyone needs to understand that it will take time to build traction. Social media is also so much more than a set of tools – a well-defined social media strategy will have content, email, PR, sales and customer service elements woven into it – and everyone will need to pitch in time and effort to make it work, in tandem with the agency.

What steps do you take before hiring an outside marketing or communications agency, social media or otherwise?

How Nonprofits can Raise More Money Without Asking for More Money

July 23, 2012 by Kari Rippetoe

What does a struggling economy do to struggling nonprofits? According to a new study from Giving USA, charitable giving only grew by 0.9% in 2011. And guess what? Little growth is expected in 2012.

Depressed yet? Never fear. In this excellent post on Frogloop, Allyson Kapin outlines some ways nonprofits can boost donations in 2012. One tip that stood out to me:

Don’t always ask for money. Many nonprofits are so focused on raising money and meeting their budgets, they often don’t treat their donors as important stakeholders in the organization. Your donors are a critical part of your community and want to be a part of your organization fighting for social change. Show them how they can help you meet your mission through actions, volunteer opportunities, social events, etc. Give them several paths to engage with your organization and make them feel like they are a valuable part of your mission. And of course you can ask them for money along the way.

To many nonprofits, this may seem counterintuitive; but Allyson makes an excellent point that ultimately comes down to your relationships with your donors.

If you take the time to identify your key advocates and build relationships with them, the return will be worth the time investment. Offer value and make them an important part of your efforts and organization, and you will see them giving more of their time and money in return.

Here are some ways nonprofits can build relationships with donors:

Identifying key advocates and influencers: Conduct research to compile a list of those who are your strongest advocates or can influence others to do so. Check out this handy infographic from SmallAct and BlackBaud on identifying your influencers and scoring them for fundraising efforts.
Developing opportunities of value: Think about all the different ways these key advocates can help your nonprofit – such as, like Allyson mentioned, volunteer opportunities and social events. Other ways might be through online word-of-mouth – spreading the word through their social networks through a blog post, tweet, donation widget, etc.
Reach out: This is where you engage your advocates without asking for money. Ask them where they want to be involved and develop those opportunities for them. Focus on those who respond to your outreach and concentrate your community-building efforts on them.
Keep building those relationships: Keep key advocates and influencers updated with new information and opportunities, ask for their input on a continual basis, and use their feedback. Through ongoing relationship and community-building, you can develop broader fundraising programs that engage not only them, but their communities.

INFOGRAPHIC: How to Identify and Empower Your Social Media Influencers

July 12, 2012 by Kari Rippetoe

Blackbaud, in partnership with Small Act and the National Wildlife Federation, recently published an interesting whitepaper on social media influencers and how to identify them for fundraising efforts. What I found most interesting about this whitepaper (which you can download here) is how influencers are scored based on how many networks on which they’re active, how large their networks are, and how engaged they are with those networks. The whitepaper breaks influencers down into 4 groups:

What’s even more interesting, is while Key Influencers and Engagers make up only 6% of total influencers, they have a total average estate value of over $700K. So, when it comes to engaging social media influencers for your next fundraising campaign, those two groups should be your biggest focus.

But, don’t discount Multichannel Consumers and Standard Consumers. While not as active on social media, they’re prolific (94% of total influencers) and still wield considerable donation power. They should be engaged in different ways, since they tend to be influenced more than influential – following the recommendations of their social media networks, friends and family.

Blackbaud produced this useful infographic, which defines each of the four groups and gives a good overview of the information contained in the whitepaper: