A Meet and Greet with Your Favorite Social Media Archetypes [Infographic]

The question today is not whether you should use social media (the 901 million Facebook users answered that for us), but how you should use social media to engage with your supporters, advance your mission and make your fundraising efforts more successful.

The answer to the question lies in understanding your  nonprofit social media supporters and identifying which ones are the most well-connected, influential, and, in a word, social.

It’s a tricky task, but someone has to do it!

Meet Your Favorite Social Archetypes

Understanding your supporters and key influencers can be a challenging task.

Like most things, it’s not a perfect science (as we all know). In order to make sense of things it can be helpful to group people into “buckets” – an activity nonprofits have been using for years (we call it segmenting) and give each bucket some definition by creating personas (aka archetypes).

Here are four nonprofit social media personas we’ve come up with to help you better engage with your social supporters.

• Key Influencers — These individuals have a powerful impact on not only the people they know but also social media members they don’t know. Their posts are widely read and shared by more people than posts generated by any other group. [Tweet It!]
• Engagers — The individuals in this group have well-established social networks and are strong influencers of people they know personally. [Tweet It!]
• Multichannel Consumers — This group enjoys keeping up with social media content and occasionally participates. They influence to some extent, but their sphere of influence is not a dominant part of their persona. [Tweet It!]
• Standard Consumers — These social media users read and watch updates more than they create new content or make comments, and they are influenced by their more socially active friends and family. [Tweet It!]

Check out the Infographic

Download the Nonprofit Social Media Influencer whitepaper for recommendations on spot your key influencers and how to best connect with, empower, and involve each of these social media groups in the delivery of your mission, plus examples of nonprofits who have successfully used social scores to increase event fundraising and leverage social supporters to spread their word.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Barry

Frank Barry, director of new growth ventures at Blackbaud and blogger at npENGAGE, helps nonprofits use the Internet for digital communication, social media, and fundraising so they can focus changing the world. He’s worked with a diverse group of organizations including LIVESTRONG, United Methodist Church, American Heart Association, Big Brothers Big Sisters, ChildFund Int’l, InTouch Ministries, Heifer Int’l, University of Notre Dame and University of Richmond. Along with writing for industry publications like Mashable and Social Media Today, Frank facilitates discussions, presents solo sessions and organizes panels for industry conferences such as NTC, SXSW, BBCon and numerous others. When he’s out and about he enjoys talking to interesting people about how they are changing the world – check out his interviews. Say Hi on Twitter – @franswaa or Google+