Nonprofit Social Media Marketing: Great Nuggets from the U.S. Humane Society

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of hearing Carrie Lewis, Deputy Director of Online Communications, The Humane Society of the United States, keynote a conference for direct marketers. Carrie was a dynamic, energetic, refreshingly honest presenter, and her entertaining and information presentation showed how and what nonprofits could learn from the social media efforts of food trucks. Yes, food trucks!

Here are some of the nuggets Carie shared that I thought our readers would like as well:

• The Humane Society found that when it comes to images on Facebook, photos rather than video worked far better for them, even though videos can deliver more content and be more emotionally moving. The problem is that Facebook algorithms favor photos and show them more frequently in feeds.

• Humane Society members use Twitter and Facebook very differently and therefore how The Humane Society uses these two platforms is decidedly different.
  • On Twitter, people just tend to need help or lodge a complaint so The Humane Society uses Twitter primarily for customer service. So their KPI (key performance indicator) on Twitter is the degree to which they turn negative sentiment into positive.
  • On Facebook, however, they can really dive into brand advocacy and fundraising (through an online donation form). So KPIs on Facebook are measured by things like user engagement and dollars raised.

• Though The Humane Society finds Facebook ads and Sponsored Posts (to Fans only) successful, particularly for generating new Fans (Likes), The Humane Society also strongly believes that they need to convert these Fans onto the email list They Humane Society owns. The rationale? “One day Facebook could go away and take all our Fans with them.” This is a very salient point to remember when it comes to any social media platform: you do not “own” your user base, and for all the time, effort and money you’re investing to acquire them, don’t you want to protect your investment?

• Re-targeting and Facebook re-marketing are not working for them in terms of direct response. The only value they’ve seen for these tactics is in branding, and they prefer to get their branding done in other ways.

• “In our opinion, Google+ is just for techie men, and that’s not really our audience,” says Lewis. So The Humane Society is only on Google+ for the SEO benefits, which Lewis feels makes Google+ therefore a must-do.

• Pinterest, which Lewis thought would be a perfect fit for the Humane Society audience, is surprisingly not working very well

• The Humane Association uses no social media management tools, primarily because they have found no tool that can truly “do it all.” So instead they manage Facebook from the Web interface and Twitter through HootSuite.

• Lewis sees the future as “MOBILE, big time!” but in her closing words, Lewis cautioned the audience that to succeed, “Do not to focus so much on the tools or platforms themselves but instead on where your audience is.” We at Web Ad.vantage couldn’t agree more!

 back to top