Engaging on Twitter – Part 3

Posted by Gabe on April 8, 2011 under Social Media, Twitter | 8 Comments to Read

And now we come to the most difficult post of my four part series. I think if you have read Part 1 (“The Formula“) and Part 2 (“Furthering Your Cause“) you would concede that I have been very candid in these posts. I am going to maintain that tradition and I ask you to do the same in any comment you might make. I have thick skin and can take whatever you dish out, as long as the aim is constructive. So without further ado…

Part 3 – Getting People to Take Action

I recently discovered from my new friend @Nonprofit_Mo that we are a “tiny” non-profit. Tiny? I knew we were small but never thought of us as tiny. Her classification has small non-profits having a budget of up to $500K per year. Right now I’d be happy with $5K so I guess tiny we are. Regardless of our size, we need money to survive. We are now moving into our fourth year and have made great strides from where we started. Despite a few small corporate donations we have had to “foot the bill” ourselves. I am not complaining here, just trying to put things into perspective. So far I estimate that in the three years KAH has existed we have put anywhere from $12-15K of our own money into the organization. Part of it is my own fault. I am not good at, nor do I want, to ask for money. The recent struggling economy has hit us all. Now we don’t have the luxury of footing the bill ourselves. One of our ambassadors was shocked when I told him that if we didn’t get $5K this year we’d have to close our doors. (And don’t think this is a long-winded script to ask you for money. Believe me it’s not. My point will be made soon.) He replied by saying, “You do realize that $5K is nothing don’t you?” In terms of a non-profit budget I absolutely do realize that. The problem is that we are the people that must somehow go out and get it.

In the beginning of March I came across what I thought was a very cool idea, which are virtual donor walls. People buy “bricks” on them and get their pictures and links back to their web sites. They even have promotional text displayed when a user hovers their mouse over top of the image. We have tried so many things that haven’t worked. We tried charity gift cards, magazine subscription tie-ins, even a crazy Jib-Jab like concert that you could create as a benefit concert for Kids Are Heroes. In the beginning MaryMargaret and I would do Twitterthons on Friday nights between 8-10 where we would run trivia contests, send out fun facts and take song requests. Although we had so much fun together doing that and I’ll never forget them, the most we made was $25 one night. Usually it was nothing. So I was indeed excited to learn about these donor walls. After all, because we have so many followers we can offer true meaningful value back to our donors by inviting people  to view who is on them at any given time. I believe our Foundation Wall made $1000 in the first three weeks. Finally something that worked! And people have said that it is fun for those who participate.

The other half of the good news is that a local social media company has offered to put on an ambitious Tweetup in May with all the proceeds benefiting Kids Are Heroes. If it’s successful we should get a thousand or two from that. So it is very hopeful that we will survive after all.

When something works I will tweet about it. Why wouldn’t I? In the first part of this series I explained how all this social media blog posting came to be. A person sent me a DM complaining that we were campaigning too much. Indeed maybe I was. I am trying to get 100 registrants to the Tweetup by April 30. Not wanting to put all of our eggs in one basket I still promote the walls. Since I sent her the first post I wrote this morning, Susan (@morphing) says she loved what I wrote and didn’t need to be anonymous. We are certainly on good terms. As a matter of fact, although we were following each other, I knew nothing of her. Now I read as many of her tweets as I can. So I appreciated her pointing this out to me. This is where it gets difficult. Non-profits need money to survive. Businesses need to sell products. To think that if we just converse with people and not talk about our agenda at all they will just give us money or buy our products is naive at best. That certainly hasn’t happened to us. I admit the productivity of the donor walls has slowed down a bit as I expected but people won’t buy a square unless they know about it. Who better to tell them about it than us?

You might make the point this this is social media. You shouldn’t be “selling” or “promoting” anything. Commercials on TV are the venue for that. I would say you have a point. But since we have no budget for commercials, this is the only place we can do it.

So this is the very fine line that we must walk on. Until we get a staff that know what they are doing fund raising wise, I have to depend on myself to keep us going. Businesses have to sell their own products. Again these posts are about engaging and we are all about that but let’s be tolerant of just a little selling (and in our case, begging) sprinkled in.

This is where I’d love to hear from you. If you have been following me I would love an honest answer. Have we been pushing the “campaigns” too hard? My own sister told me “sometimes, yes”. So you are encouraged to give us your gut reaction. If my own sister, who is a huge fan of what we do, doesn’t offend me then you won’t either. Where is the balance? What are your suggestions?

Read Part 4: “Staying Connected“