The San Francisco Online Community and San Francisco Tech 4 Good Meetups recently collaborated to host Sarah Potts, Communications Manager of Not for Sale (NFS). Potts spoke about the online tools and strategies NFS, an organization dedicated to ending human trafficking, uses to engage and grow its audience.
- Invest in social networks you can produce good content for: While it may seem that the right way to use social media is to be on every social network, it could in fact backfire. To truly engage your audience, make sure you have the capacity to create good content for the social networks you’re on. As an example, with it’s younger user base, Instagram could be a good tool for NFS since it’s online audience skews young. However, NFS has channeled its focus on Facebook and Twitter, where they have been able to amass audience numbers over 63,000 and 49,000 respectively.
Sarah Potts, Communications Manager, Not for Sale - Don’t worry about what the experts say, worry about what your community’s behavior says: There are many social media experts with many recommendations about what to post and when. While there is some guidance you can take from these recommendations the best source for what to post and when is your own audience. NFS regularly looks to their social media analytics to understand what their online audience best responds to and when they are most likely to respond.
- Grow your audience by piggybacking on related events: Don’t fall into the trap of focusing solely on your organization and its news. Stepping outside your role as the organizer to join other events is a smart way to connect with new audiences and bring them into your fold. Find the venues that might be most beneficial by understanding the issues that matter to your audience. NFS has successfully piggybacked on events and breaking news to reach out to wider audiences.
For more highlights from Sarah Potts’ talk, catch up on the meetup Storify.