Post by Olivia Whitham on Oct 29, 2014 14:04:12 GMT -5
STUDENT
The course provided me with exposure to a wide variety different types of social media, and showed me how a number of different non-profit organizations in the Global Health field are using social media to communicate with stakeholders. While it is clear to me that social media provides an immediate mechanism to get participation or "engagement" by interested parties, it is not clear that social media outlets will be more successful, less successful, or about the same as traditional outlets (mass mailings, television and radio, etc.) in terms of dollars and cents fundraising for non-profit organizations. For example, if you are a non-profit and you have X dollars one year and you spend it on mass mailing and get back Y dollars in revenue that year, and then the next year you spend X dollars on radio messaging and get back Y-Z dollars in revenue, you could conclude the mass mailing approach was superior (albeit there are other variables such as the state of the economy, etc., that could have affected results). This same computation should work in an either/or scenario with "social media" versus mass mailing or radio. However, there would be a question about whether you could track the revenues to the various outlets when you organization is making spends on television, social media, radio, and mailings. It might be that you do not get a "bump" in revenues from the social media expenses, if your organization had not been previously making spends there, and often, with some people that do not look long term, the lack of a "bump" might be equated to poor performance. Nevertheless, as social media grows, for profits and not-for-profits risk getting left behind if they do not have an active social media presence. The most successful "communications"/"marketing"/"engagement" various for profit and not-for-profit programs appears to be unified whereby the social media campaigns support the traditional media campaigns and vice versa, with the traditional campaigns driving stakeholders to interact with the entity through one or more social media outlets.
The course provided me with exposure to a wide variety different types of social media, and showed me how a number of different non-profit organizations in the Global Health field are using social media to communicate with stakeholders. While it is clear to me that social media provides an immediate mechanism to get participation or "engagement" by interested parties, it is not clear that social media outlets will be more successful, less successful, or about the same as traditional outlets (mass mailings, television and radio, etc.) in terms of dollars and cents fundraising for non-profit organizations. For example, if you are a non-profit and you have X dollars one year and you spend it on mass mailing and get back Y dollars in revenue that year, and then the next year you spend X dollars on radio messaging and get back Y-Z dollars in revenue, you could conclude the mass mailing approach was superior (albeit there are other variables such as the state of the economy, etc., that could have affected results). This same computation should work in an either/or scenario with "social media" versus mass mailing or radio. However, there would be a question about whether you could track the revenues to the various outlets when you organization is making spends on television, social media, radio, and mailings. It might be that you do not get a "bump" in revenues from the social media expenses, if your organization had not been previously making spends there, and often, with some people that do not look long term, the lack of a "bump" might be equated to poor performance. Nevertheless, as social media grows, for profits and not-for-profits risk getting left behind if they do not have an active social media presence. The most successful "communications"/"marketing"/"engagement" various for profit and not-for-profit programs appears to be unified whereby the social media campaigns support the traditional media campaigns and vice versa, with the traditional campaigns driving stakeholders to interact with the entity through one or more social media outlets.