Introduction
Within a modern nonprofit organization, digital strategy is of utmost importance. It should be at the foundation of any nonprofit organization, for without it the organization cannot hope to survive for very long. In its very nature, a nonprofit exists solely because of the public. Whether it be the public with which they hope to help or the public with which they hope gives, the people play an instrumental role. The people cannot be involved, however, if they are not aware of the existence of the organization. This is where digital media, and the strategy with which organizations utilize digital media, comes into play. Germany Kent, an American journalist once stated a truth about social media, which can easily be applied to all digital strategy. “If you are in a position where you can reach people,” she stated, “then use your platform to stand up for a cause. HINT: social media is a platform.”
Digital Strategy
It is important to start out by defining the terms which are regularly thrown around, as many may not be on the same page about them. Digital strategy will be defined here as the intentional and thought out process by which organizations reach their publics digitally. As previously discussed, the benefits of nonprofits specifically having a quality, well-working digital strategy are inumerable. Without it, different sectors of the public that would get involved and engaged in the mission of the organization would be left in the dark, never to come into contact with the nonprofit. It is important to note that digital strategy is not merely social media, although social media is a large component of a successful and thriving modern digital strategy. A digital strategy, in its most effective form, encompasses many different aspects, including paid advertising, social media, and SEO (search engine optimization). Having a digital strategy that encompasses all three of these aspects creates a diversified plan that is wide reaching. While one aspect of the strategy may reach one demographic well, it may not reach another with the same level of success. If all three different types of digital strategy are covered, the chances of all intended publics getting the message of the organization goes up. It is also important that all three of these aspects are connected. There needs to be a brand that runs consistently throughout all platforms and all aspects of the digital strategy. While different things can, and should, be highlighted and focused on based upon what aspect is being utilized and the type of demographic that is being targeted, the feel and the overarching mission-minded messaging should stay consistent.
Types of Content
In any high functioning digital strategy, content is always king. Having quality content that people connect with and want to consume is one of the most important factors in generating conversations around an organization. There are two main types of content. They are paid content and organic content. Both are extremely important and effective for accomplishing different purposes.
Paid content, is, as the name suggests, any sort of advertising or marketing tool that involves a direct payment to the platform on which it exists (IZEA, 2018). Within paid content, there are a multitude of different routes that organizations can take in order to advance their purposes. Two of the main types of paid content are paid social media content and paid search engine content. Paid social media content can be extremely effective, especially with a younger demographic. This includes things such as Instagram Ads. Instagram Ads are advertisements that organizations can pay for, and the content gets promoted onto the feed of people who may not be following the organization’s account. This can be extremely effective as Instagram Ads can have a direct link to websites with very specific action statements. Another type of paid content is paid search engine content. This can be very effective with a much larger demographic that already has a level interest in whatever the organization doing or selling. An example of this is a Google Ad. This can include the option to pay for a higher ranking in search results. For example, if a nonprofit soup kitchen wishes to pay for paid search engine content, they could pay Google so that whenever anyone searches “soup kitchen” in their area, their organization is one of the first results to appear.
Organic marketing, on the other hand, involves any sort of marketing that does not require a direct payment (IZEA, 2018). This content requires much more time and effort into the generation of content and the curation and analysis of how that content performs. The key to organic content is creating quality content that is valuable and interesting to the public that an organization wishes to reach. In the example of the soup kitchen, this could be a video of how to make the best soup or tips on how to grow organic vegetables. The possibilities of organic content are truly boundless. The most important thing is for an organization to create content that increases public trust and familiarity. Organic content is truly about breaking down the walls that have historically separated the public and the organization. It has the power to humanize organizations, creating trust and loyalty for the public.
It is important that each individual organization take stock of what their goals are, and then assess what type of content would be most effective to bring about those goals. For some organizations, it might be that paid content is the most effective. Others might find that organic content is more useful. Others still will strike a balance between the two. It is all based upon what the long term goals of the organization are what budget can be devoted to digital strategy.
Role of Social
Social media is a tool of the modern age. Just recently has it begun, and even more recently have organizations begun to utilize it to its truest potential. Social media contributes to organization’s digital strategies in very concrete ways that differ from other digital locations that organizations utilize, such as a website. The role of social media changes based upon the organization and their digital strategy goals. Oftentimes, an organization will want to keep their social media a little more informal than their website. Many have found this to be effective in creating a more personable side to an organization with which real people connect with. This is not to say that there is no connection between the brand on an organization’s website and the brand on their social media. It is very important that this stays consistent, however, showing different sides to the same brand can be very beneficial in creating a more three-dimensional view of the organization. Many wonder whether or not it is important for an organization to have both a website and social media. While everything is truly relative to the organization itself, having both a website and social media platforms is a necessity in almost every case. Websites should be seen as the “home base” of any organization’s online presence. This should be where social media accounts are linked back to, where emailed links take the consumer, and all other digital strategies go. The website itself should contain all information that the public needs to know, such as hours, location, and mission statements. It should truly be the one stop shop for the public when it comes to the organization. Social media works the best when it comes alongside the website. It is made for the public to get additional information and content regarding the organization. It is also where the public could go in order to get a more humanized view of the organization. Both digital locations are extremely important, and both have been proven to be very effective when used well.
Role of Paid
Many organizations find paid placement to be beneficial in bringing about their individual goals. This is, as previously stated, any placement on a platform that an organization has to pay for. This could be on a social media platform or in search engine results. Much like social media can come alongside an organization’s other digital locations, such as their website, paid placement is also made to assist in whatever the organization wants to attain. Paid placement is by no means meant to overshadow or replace an organization’s website. Instead, it is meant to be a conductor that brings traffic to the main site. Paid content, on whatever platform it is on, is meant to reach a larger demographic of people. It is meant to capture the attention of a larger group of people, informing of the organization and what they do or sell. Paid placement is, compared to organic content, a time saver. While there is much to be done in order to create truly effective content, it does not require the same amount of creativity or time monitoring as does organic content. Organic content can be very effective for increasing awareness and a positive sentiment around the brand of an organization, but it does require exponentially more time than would its paid counterpart. A mixture of the two types of content could work together very effectively. Organic content could work to create positive sentiment about the organization while paid content can create a stronger call to action. As stated before, organizations need to assess what works best for them. It is advisable to try a variety of different methods with each, testing how the public responds to each type of content. After different types are tested, the organization can then go back and assess what works best. It is extremely important for each individual organization to do this, as what works for one organization may not work for another.
Role of SEO
Search engine optimization is a buzzword in the digital media industry. Bruce Clay, a leading SEO expert, describes SEO as “the science/art of increasing traffic to a website by helping it rank higher in organic, or non-paid, search results.” This definition is very effective to describe the different levels of SEO and why it is so necessary for the success of an organization. Many find themselves confused about and intimidated by SEO and wonder why it is necessary. Search engine optimization has become a necessity for organizations with a heavy digital media presence. It is at the very core of whether or not traffic will come to an organization’s website. As the definition says, it works to increase the number of people coming to an organization’s website without paying for a higher search engine placement. There are many things to consider when it comes to search engine optimization. The most important is the overall quality of an organization’s website. It needs to be polished, well put together, and relevant to the topic with which it tags itself. On the page level of a website, it must include keywords that are pertinent to the topic being discussed on the page itself. SEO truly is a key component to any successful digital media strategy. It is at the foundation of whether or not an organization’s website is found when people use a search engine. SEO influences many different components of an effective digital strategy. SEO can influence everything, from traffic to the website, to relevance on social media, to press releases for the media. The secret behind all of these is linking. While recently, Google has started cracking down and penalizing some of the linking that has become less relevant, it is still a great tool in boosting SEO (Halasz, 2017). While there are many other tips that boost a website’s SEO, it, again, is dependent on the organization and what works and does not work for them.
Tools
Many tools are available today for the betterment of organization’s digital strategies. It has gotten to the point in which there is a tool for almost anything relating to digital strategy. It is only a question of finding those tools and using them in an effective manner.
One tool that is perhaps the most easily utilized and the most diverse in the help that it can provide is Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a service that allows website monitors to track how the public finds and uses the website (Shivar, 2018). Google Analytics does this through the use of UTM codes. Launch Digital Marketing describes UTM codes as “a simple code that you can attach to a custom URL in order to track a source, medium, and campaign name. This enables Google Analytics to tell you where searchers came from as well as what campaign directed them to you. A common use of UTM code is to create a vanity URL for each offline campaign, and then redirect that URL to whatever forwarding address you assign to it — most likely your main domain. This will give you the ability to track how a weekly newspaper ad, coupon, radio ad, or TV commercial is working without having to create custom landing pages for each campaign” (Launch Digital Marketing, 2012). In addition to tracking the traffic that comes to an organization’s website, Google Analytics also assists website monitors through providing various reports in order to prove the return on investment, or ROI. There are a variety of reports that show a number of different statistics on the users of an organization’s website. The reports that prove ROI the best depends on each individual organization and the goals that that organization wishes to accomplish. Some of the most popular reports include Demographic Reports, which shows the type of people who are coming and using the website, Interest Reports, which show what the people who come to the website are interested in, Geo Reports, which shows the language and location of the people who use the website, and Behavior Reports, which show how people interact with the website. All of these reports together can prove a return on investment. It can show that paid and organic content, as well as social media and SEO efforts, are coming to fruition.
Another tool that many have found to be helpful for digital media strategy is Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a digital media tool that allows the user to manage different social media platforms from one place. On it, users can monitor the buzz around a certain campaign or see what their public is talking about in general. It is an excellent way for social media managers to stay relevant to their public and curate content that is innovative and new quickly. It is also very helpful in engaging with the public. From Hootsuite, it is very easy to respond to different things on social media, such as a mention, comment, or retweet. It can all be done from the dashboard of Hootsuite, allowing for ease and speed in managing multiple social media accounts.
Meltwater is another tool that many desiring to increase the effectiveness of their digital strategy have used. Much like Google Analytics, it is a useful platform to monitor various aspects of an organization’s online presence. It can show the statistics for anything ranging from a topic, a hashtag, or an organization. It shows different pieces of information including media exposure, sentiment, trending themes, top sources, top social posts, and a share of voice. All of these things can contribute to creating more successful content that is more relevant to the public that is viewing it.
Lastly, another tool that can be useful for organizations is the Instagram Analytics feature that comes with an Instagram Business account. While this tool is obviously geared only towards giving information about an organization’s Instagram profile, this can be a very helpful tool in discovering what kinds of content should be shared to the public that uses Instagram. It contains features such as demographics, which, similarly to Google Analytics, shows various pieces of information about the public that views the organization’s Instagram profile. Another feature is focused on content. This allows the user to sort the posts made on the organization’s profile based on various fields, such as engagement, likes, comments, shares, and follows. It also shows other helpful information, such as the time of day that most of the people who follow the organization’s profile are on Instagram most regularly.
Nonprofit Sector Specific
In the nonprofit sector, there is a wide variance on the quality of digital strategies. Many find digital strategies that work very well for them, while others have not yet found this. One example of a nonprofit that has a clearly defined and successful digital strategy is the anti-human trafficking nonprofit The A21 Campaign. While it stands to reason that a nonprofit dedicated to the awareness of an issue has a strong online presence, A21 accomplishes this to a very high caliber of excellence. They excel at having a consistent brand and voice throughout all of their online presence, including their website, their social media profiles, and their email subscriptions. One campaign that A21 did especially well was the campaign “Can You See Me?”. This campaign was dedicated to bringing awareness to the common, everyday people that are victims of human trafficking that the public comes into contact with regularly. They ran this campaign with a series of short videos, each showing a different type of human trafficking and the events leading up to that individual being trafficked. They are all extremely powerful and caused the public to genuinely open their eyes to the people in the world who could be in the clutches of human trafficking. What made this campaign so powerful is the quality that went into it. They were high quality videos with high quality stories. A21 took seriously the work that they do, and wanted the world to see this in a way that shows excellence,
There are many obstacles and opportunities for nonprofits in the digital realm. One obstacle for nonprofits especially when developing a quality digital media strategy is funding. Nonprofits often receive a small budget with which they must keep all operations running. This can often lead to many “luxuries”, such as a strong online presence, getting put on the back burner. It can be a very intimidating thing to try and compete to get one’s voice heard as a nonprofit on the open market of the internet. Many large corporations with large budgets seem to dominate the digital realm. However, this does not need to be true. With quality, a small nonprofit can hold its own against a large corporation’s quantity.
This leads into the vast amount of opportunities that nonprofits have to make a difference in the digital realm. One of the main opportunities that come so much easier to nonprofits than their for-profit counterparts is the story. A21 was right on the money with this. They told the stories of the people that they help all the time. They have realized that the story is one of their most powerful tools. While for-profit entities can tell stories well, it is much harder for them to do so in an effective way than it is for a nonprofit. Humans are shown to love stories. This has been shown to be true cross-culturally and cross-generationally. The story is a powerful thing, and nonprofits generally have an abundance of them. When nonprofits learn to utilize these stories and integrate them into their digital strategy, the opportunities for connecting with their public on a deep level become boundless.
Conclusion
Digital strategy is not a one size fits all kind of method. It is dynamic and changes based upon each individual organization and their goals. However, having a strong and successful digital strategy has become a necessity in the modern age. For nonprofits, the benefits are inumerable. Having a strong digital media strategy helps drive awareness up, as well as engagement for donors and volunteers. All of this culminating in the betterment of the organization as a whole.
References
Halasz, J. (2017, August 15). Are Press Releases Still Good for SEO?. In Search Engine Journal. Retrieved from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/press-releases-seo/210048/
IZEA, . (2018, April). Organic Content Marketing. In IZEA. Retrieved from https://izea.com/2018/04/13/organic-content-marketing/
Launch Digital Marketing, . (2012, September 26). UTM Codes to Track all of Your Marketing Campaigns. In Launch Digital Marketing. Retrieved from https://www.launchdigitalmarketing.com/what-are-utm-codes/
Shivar, N. (2018, September 28). What Does Google Analytics Do? And What Can I Do With Google Analytics?. In ShivarWeb. Retrieved from https://www.shivarweb.com/2977/what-does-google-analytics-do/
BRIDGET GILLESPIE 