How can a nonprofit use social media to get the community to refer more people to the organization?

Hi there, Facebook has recently released a new guide on how nonprofits and charity organizations can best use its pages to make an impact.  I've written a blog post on Wishpond about the thttp://wshe.es/X7QKvu that should give you a good idea of where to start. Hope that helps!

One of the best ways to leverage social media as a nonprofit is storytelling. Make your stories sharable on social media and people will most likely spread the word easily within their networks. Use your blog as a digital printing press that illustrates how your organization is making a difference (use photos, videos, podcasts, slideshares and infographics.) Also, make sure there's a "subscribe" button on your blog. Then, share those stories on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Now, your social media platforms shouldn't just be outlet to share your blog posts on. You can use them to post articles/news/videos/photos that you find relevant to your cause (this is called curated content.) In order to do that, you can type in your keywords in Google News, and see what pops up. But, that's a bit of a hassle to do everyday... Your best bet would be to have a platform that automatically discovers quality content for you and allows you to publish on multiple platforms at ounce. An affordable platform that I use daily is Opentopic (http://www.opentopic.com/) that supports discovery and distribution of curated content. Full disclosure, I've worked in social media for the past 3 years and ever since I started working with Opentopic (it's been 7 months,) it has saved me so much time and headache! Also, their Nonprofit twitter account also provides daily content marketing insights for nonprofits: https://twitter.com/otassociations Back to my main point: if you use social media to tell your stories and share quality content around your cause, your community will be more eager to want to connect with you and have their networks do the same. Hope this helps!

My guess? You're going to have to find people who are willing to help you out with your cause because they are passionate about it. Identify the communities that are relevant to your non-profit Identify the tribes and influencers in the community who are well connected and have a large following Develop a conversation with them and try to get them to mention you, they will likely drive their followers to pay attention to you and maybe even spread word about you themselves. Since I work at eCairn, if you have a particular community in mind I'd love to help you by listing the influencers to give you some leads to start with. For free of course.

Non Profit uses Social Media to create awareness, raise publicity, increase donation and enlarge volunteerism base. Creating good content : original, co-created and user-generated. Key stake holders include staff, volunteers and even the care receivers. Need to connect with the journalists of press and producers of media to create the hybrid communication strategy effect. Payment gateway can be integrated with microsite, use location base marketing to get more volunteers. Create more events and tag participants as much as possible. Encouraging more sharing through blogs and microblogging during major events.

Creating and implementing a marketing strategy is the best way to gain referrals to any organization. Along with social media, content marketing can help brands of all sizes attract large, dedicated followings, and it can also give nonprofits the opportunity to reach potential volunteers, donors, and supporters without drying up shallow marketing budgets. For example, the March of Dimes has been raising awareness and funding by sharing the stories of its national ambassadors online through a multidimensional content marketing strategy. Influence & Co. is a content marketing firm that has established a program to provide free help to nonprofits. For more information, check out: http://influ.co/1BGP0Mx Hope this helps!

As communities become more active on social media, it's essential to use the internet to reach out to people on these platforms. It's all about clarifying the mission of the community's needs.  The community and its social organizers work together, through social media, to have a dialogue about the needs of their neighbors. Some ways social media helps people get on board with the organization Increasing visibility with photos and videos of events Announcing and inviting people to events Inviting donors and community members to contribute to the nonprofit, through their own voices, on Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, etc.

At http://ProseMedia.com, we've found several strategies that help raise awareness for your non-profit. We suggest taking advantage of Facebook ads, replying to comments on your pages, specifically stating your non-profit's aims, and dedicating enough time and resources to keeping your pages updated. We encourage you to read more about thes useful strategies here: http://blog.prosemedia.com/social-media-for-nonprofits-increase-donations-and-raise-awareness/