The top goals for nonprofits are to acquire new donors, engage their communities, raise brand awareness, and retain donors, according to the Nonprofit Marketing Guide Trend Report. Social media can help achieve all of those goals … if it’s truly social.

Nonprofit social media is like a child: It must be nurtured, clothed, fed, kept out of trouble, and then let go with a single unshed tear. However, before nonprofit social media can reach the “letting go” phase, they must graduate from the nurture process.

Listen up, social media managers and communications fellows, this is a call to action!

Conduct a Competitive Review

Using a spreadsheet, conduct a social media competitive review of your organization and about four others in your field. Compare and make notes about their social activity in the past month, what types of social media accounts they have, see if those accounts are connected to their main website, what types of content they post, look for a visible mission statement or about, and pay attention to the cohesion of their website. At the end of the review, you’ll notice some best practices and glaring mistakes that include:

The Neglect of About Sections and Page Information

Filling out your “About” section or page information may seem so obvious that your eyes are involuntarily rolling back in your head, but many organizations — that shall not be named — do not take advantage of this. Think of the “about” sections on social media accounts as prime real estate. A completed “about” section means that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and brand awareness can work. For Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Tumblr, include a link to your nonprofit’s main website. Other popular social media channels, such as Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube, have fields just for your main website link. Having links to your website in the “prime real estate” section on social media will make sure that your organization shows up in more search results.

When you conduct a Google search for your organization, do your social media pages show up as secondary results, does the sidebar show where your organization is located on the map, does it show contact information? A completed “about” section on Facebook can make a difference in Google search results for your organization. If done correctly, the search results will show when your nonprofit is open, contact information, where you are on the map, and improves your website’s SEO.

Lack of Content Curation

You cannot just post content and expect a favorable outcome, just as well-meaning parents don’t release their toddler out into the world and say “have a good day”. Content needs coddling; it needs hashtags, it needs to be posted at the right time, it needs variation, it needs consistency, and it needs to be interesting.

Let’s pretend that your nonprofit organization supports and serves people who are homebound. Your organization’s Facebook and Twitter pages are filled with event posts, flyers for the next donor gala, links from your blog posts, and programs. When organizations only post their own content, their social media success is limited. Nonprofit Tech For Good calls social media content curation a best practice. Curating content means that you are sharing and retweeting content from other nonprofits as well as sharing links that are related to your cause. This way, you create variety on your feed, engage with other nonprofits (and possibly create partnerships), and establish credibility in the nonprofit sector.

No Form of Engagement

Nonprofits often complain about a lack of engagement. These complaints range from “We are posting content, but with no results” to “what’s the point of posting when we don’t get a single like”. Social media engagement is a two-way street. If your followers are not engaging, engage them. Do this by asking questions, creating calls to action, starting a dialogue, saying “thank you” to people who follow you on Twitter, and writing people back to those who wrote to you. Do not wait for followers or subscribers to come to you. Going from no engagement to some engagement takes time, but reaching out is the first step.

Uniformity and Cohesion Need Work

It is quite sad when an organization does great work and has wonderful programs, but their social media pages are not uniform or cohesive. Let’s say your organization’s name is Sanford Coalition for Homebound Citizens, also known as SCHC. Your Facebook url ends with “sanfordchc”, your Twitter handle is “@sanfordcoalition”, and your other social media account names are just so all over the place that somewhere in the world a social media manager just got a headache.

Uniformity starts with the usernames. Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube allow for url changes for brand uniformity. While Twitter does not, it makes your handle your url. Sandford Coalition for Homebound Citizens is a long, fake nonprofit name, but it is a good example because many nonprofits have to deal with this on social media. Pick a nickname and stick with it across all channels.

Imagery on organization accounts can also be an issue. If the cover photos and profile pictures across channels are not uniform, you’ll make a bad impression. Websites, like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, have very specific parameters for cover photos and using the wrong one will make images blurry or stretched. You don’t want to be remembered as the organization with the horrifyingly stretched pictures on social media, do you?

Google+

Yes, Google+ gets its own heading because so many organizations do not realize that they have a Google+ page that they have left out in the cold. On Google+ some companies and organizations have a local page that shows their address and some have brand pages that are connected to their Google account. Once you go through the process of business verification and claim the page, you can merge these pages and upload organization information and content that then shows up when people do a Google search for your nonprofit.

Lack of Social Media Management

The communications director of our fake nonprofit, Sanford Coalition of Homebound Citizens, always posts content after her lunch break at 2 pm She finds this to be the most convenient posting time. Sure, she’s heard of post scheduling, but she came to the wild conclusion that she’s not into that. Because of her lackadaisical ways, her reach on Facebook was three and she didn’t get a single “like” for her infographic on Instagram.

It is a best practice to know your audience and what times you should be posting on social media. A Quick Sprout infographic stated that from 9 am to 7 pm is the best window to post on Facebook while best times on Twitter were 12 pm and then 5 pm to 6 pm. For Tumblr, everything happens after 7 pm. Many people aren’t in the office after 5 pm and this is where the post-scheduling programs come in.

The majority of communications professionals have heard about Hootsuite or Buffer for social media management, but often do not use them. Tumblr has post scheduling built in as does Facebook. Third-party social media scheduling apps like Tweetdeck for Twitter and Pingraphy for Pinterest are also options.

Managing your nonprofit organization’s social media is a lot of work; it puts you in those situations where you can sit down at 1 pm and then suddenly two hours have passed. Remember, a nonprofit’s social media presence is like a child, it is ever-changing, it needs to be cultivated, fed good content, and monitored like the grapes at wineries.

By Jade McCall,  Digital Strategist at Red Rooster Group.