Presentation for IABC Southern Region Conference 2009: Social Media for Nonprofits by Sheena T Abraham, Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center

How Commit for Life Went Web 2.0

• Primary blood supplier to 170+ hospitals in 26 counties in Texas Gulf Coast, East Texas, Brazos Valley

• 2009: Will collect 330,000 units of blood • Commit for Life – 3 steps

What we’ll talk about• Why did The Blood

Center jump into social media?

• The strategy• The process• The results

Emma, blood recipient

• Listen to key audiences.• Thank donors & build

relationships.• Weave a multimedia

narrative.• Tap into the latent networks

of supporters to disseminate messages.

The Blood Center uses social media to:

Goal of CFL 2.0

Increase donor loyalty by interacting with and appreciating

donor outside of the blood donation

experience.

Objectives• Create opportunities to individually and

publicly thank donors.• Build spaces for donor dialogue and active

engagement.• Tell our community’s stories and make them

portable.

Credibility and trust.

What we saw happen

A sense of community.

Our online voice.

Approachability.Genuine support.

Appointments.

Listen & follow. Respond to existing conversations. Advocate for the community. Talk about donors.

Takeaway: “It’s not about us.”

To Build a Web 2.0 presence

Listen & FollowSearch terms on Twitter or search stream on Tweetdeck.

Google Alerts – Filtrbox - TweetbeepWho are your friends following?

by Flickr user Jason Nicholls

Advocate for the community

Talk about donors

Talk about donors

Educate & empower.Teach employees and donors how to effectively use the tools as advocates.

Time to swim deeper. Build familiarity and overcome fears.

by Flickr user Powerhouse Museum

Integrate.

Take advantage of opportunities to apply social media tools to existing

communication and donor cultivation strategies. Solve specific problems.

Through it all, measure.

Set a baseline early on.Measure results.

Adjust.

What is your nonprofit really talking about?

TweetStats.com

Wordle.com

Did we learn something about our stakeholders?Did our stakeholders learn something about us?

Did new conversations begin? How many donor and nondonor questions have we

answered?What are people saying about us?

What elicits the strongest response?How portable is our brand?

How has our digital footprint changed?

General questions to evaluate

Sources for evaluation advice: Beth Kanter (Beth’s Blog) and Avinash Kaushik (Occam’s Razor).

More Results

• Social media engagement led to more engagement on www.giveblood.org.

• Multimedia narrative is online. Brand is more portable.

• More touchpoints for storytelling and dialogue. Donors are talking and telling their friends.

No Time? No Excuse.Already part of a communicator’s job:

1. Monitor.

2. Create content with a human voice.

3. Connect with target audiences.

How to save time:

1. Employ others to write content.

2. Link to already existing content by others on Web.

3. Start with 30 minutes a day.

Photo by Flickr user ToniVC

“You could open a business and do everything right,

but if you’re unaware of these social media you will perish.

Social media can take a business and put a bullet in it.”

-Restaurateur Dan Simons to the New York Times 7/29/09

Thanks for participatingSheena Abraham – PR, Gulf Coast Regional Blood CenterE-mail: sabraham@giveblood.org Facebook: facebook.com/CommitforLifeTwitter: twitter.com/CommitforLifeBlog: giveblood.org/blog

Personal tweets: twitter.com/SheenaTAbrahamPersonal blog: SheenaTAbraham.wordpress.com

Find this presentation at slideshare.net/SheenaTAbraham.