Social Media. The bane of many small nonprofits’ existence. We have all heard why social media is important, that we should have a presence on it – but finding the time to be on social media is the difficult part.
First, you need to figure out which social media channels you want to be active on. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, Google+, Tumblr, the list goes on and on and on. Pick which one(s) can help you best connect with your supporters.
Once you decide your channel(s), you have to figure out the best way to post and be active. You can use a third party app, like Hootsuite or TweetDeck, or you can post directly from the social media sites.
One of the biggest issues, though, is being led down the rabbit hole of awesome articles you find online. When browsing your RSS feed for great articles to share with your network, it’s easy to see a link that goes to an interesting article that is completely unrelated to work. So how do you keep yourself on track? Here are a few tips that I use:
- Put aside a certain amount of time for your social media activities. Schedule all your posts for the day at once, and only give yourself a certain amount of time to do it, so you don’t have time to be distracted by all those great articles.
- Email yourself the non-work related links for later. I have an email chain called Check Later. When I find a cool link, I just reply to that thread (which is sent to my personal email address, not work) and when I get home at night, all those fun interesting articles are waiting in my inbox.
- Have mention notifications sent to your email. When someone talks to you online, have your email notify you, so you don’t have to keep that distracting news feed open all the time.
What other tips would you suggest for not getting sucked into social media?
thedatabank, gbc is technology for change, and we walk the talk. 
