Every Monday I will create a short video answering a question from a member of the Nonprofit Social Media Storytelling Group. We call it #MailbagMonday! Check back every Monday inside the Group to see if I answer your question!
#GivingTuesday is upon us, and the Nonprofit Social Media Storytelling Group has been filling up with questions and comments!
Everyone wants to reach the widest audience on this increasingly popular international day of giving, in the most effective fashion.
This week I give you some ideas around this very popular question in the Group (and in my email inbox):
“How can we cut through the clutter and reach more people on Giving Tuesday?”
(If you aren’t running a Giving Tuesday campaign you can substitute almost anything in it’s place.)
My answer is two-fold.
1) You can’t.
2) You shouldn’t.
Now before you click away and curse me through your screen, let me explain.
The reason that I say you can’t
In reality, you probably can’t cut through all of the noise and the clutter on Giving Tuesday – if you are trying to reach EVERYONE.
If you are a small nonprofit with limited resources and not even one full time staff person to dedicate to Giving Tuesday, then you can’t possibly compete against the big nonprofits with larger marketing budgets, more name recognition, and national or international scope.
This year more and more big businesses, brands, and corporations are are showing off how they are participating with flashy ad campaigns.
The reason that I say you shouldn’t
I don’t think small nonprofits should be spending time and resources to reach a cold audience that won’t care and won’t pay attention.
Spending tons of money on advertising to try to capture a morsel of attention from a complete stranger is next to impossible now.
Back when advertisers could play attention from a captivated radio audience and when there were only three TV channels, this type of paid advertising worked.
But now we have super computers at our fingertips.
We have access to thousands of channels and an infinite number of websites.
So the question shouldn’t be how do we spend more money and more time and more resources to capture the attention of strangers who most likely won’t care.
The question should be: How do we cultivate and nurture and inspire a dedicated group of supporters and the people that care about what we do?
The solution is to craft inspiring communications designed for the group of people that know you and love you, asking them for their attention and their participation.
Inspire them with stories of all the great work that you have been doing all year!
Then ask if they would be able to spread the word to 5 friends.
Some of them will, some of them won’t. That’s ok.
If you have been engaging with your supporters all year, demonstrating impact, creating connections, showing me helpful information, I am much more likely to look at your message and perhaps to make a donation.
Don’t worry about the masses. Focus your Giving Tuesday efforts on your tribe.
If your message is good enough, inspiring enough, and creative enough, they may share it with their networks.