Trunk and Branches - Social Media Strategy for Rookies

Starting a social media campaign is a lot like planting a tree. You have to start somewhere, and it's best to start with your roots. Your mission statement, your current audience, your beliefs - no matter what you do in a non-profit, it should always come back to these fundamentals. Let's take a look at what I call the "trunk and branches" approach to social media:

This is an example of a social media tree that I've been working on for The Women's Museum. When you're just starting off on a social media campaign, it's important to have a hub that you focus on. For us, it's been Twitter, where we've built our audience and found brand evangelists that will share our message as well as our other social media initiatives. From there, we drive traffic to our other initiatives in a useful way. We don't just say "Become a fan on Facebook!" but instead say "We have this program coming up, click here for more information". This also allows us to use Facebook's RSVP tool to keep track of attendees. As another example, the response rate for the message "Check out photos from this recent event" gets a much higher click-through rate than "Here's our Flickr page". When trying to drive traffic to your other sites, always remain conversational and specific.

If you're just starting a social media campaign, take some time to strategize. Think of where your target audience is and what tools you think you can use most effectively. If you have a ton of b-roll footage, maybe your best bet is using YouTube. If you have a more long-form story to tell, try a blog.

Growth & Expansion
With a good strategy, growth via social media is all but guaranteed. After you've dedicated sufficient time to building this tree and its branches, you may be able to create another tree with your strongest components. For example, if you've been using Twitter, but you now have a completely separate audience that's going straight to your blog, that's your second tree. Speak to both of those audiences with your message, but deliver it in a way that's suitable to them. Twitter users may want brief snapshots, but blog readers want more of a story, with photos, videos, quotes, etc.

What do you think of the social media tree? What's your trunk? Have you started "branching out"?