It goes without saying that everybody that is running a business online should be doing some sort of Social Media for their website and their reputation.  However a lot of companies shy away from the idea of doing a lot of Social Media because it seems like a waste of their time or too labor intensive.

However this is far from the case.  As time goes on it will become more and more important for companies to have a social media presence.  Here is how a Non-Profit should utilize social media.

First things first you need to have a couple different personalities or a main person that will be apart of what is going on in the web world.  So assigning that person would be the first best step.

You want to have a consistent message and if you have 10 people handing the Social Media things can get diluted and/or confusing.

Second off you will want to establish a consistent message on all of the social media platforms.  This would include Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin.  By consistent message I suggest you having backgrounds designed for your Twitter account and a Facebook fan page that is able to get around 100 fans pretty quickly.

The reason that 100 fans is important is because if you have 100 fans you can get a vanity URL.  Vanity URL’s are things like www.facebook.com/yourcharity.

Again now head over to Twitter.com and try to get your name right from the start.  If it is obscure there is a chance that you will be able to scoop it up.  Another thing that is going to work to your advantage is the fact that Twitter has just recently done a major purge of their inactive accounts and your charity might have been taken before, but might not be currently.

Once you have these main two sites setup and you have assigned your person at your organization to handling the issues, it would be wise to go ahead and make sure that you at least have your own name at a number of the other Social Networking sites.  You wouldn’t want any other persons prancing around online as you accepting money when they don’t deserve it.  To do this go to a website called namechk.com and see if your organizations name is available on all of the many other sites out there.

Part two coming soon….