Nonprofits, It’s Time to Own Your Social Media Audience

(Credit: unDraw)

Social media is both a necessary and perilous tool for the social sector, an engine of awareness, engagement, and fundraising that also perpetuates division and misinformation and faces a looming existential reckoning.

More than 50 percent of nonprofits have indicated that they will increase their social media budget this year—the most of any digital channel—while Giving Tuesday continues to experience steady social-fueled growth, by some projections due to eclipse $600M in 2020. Yet the current landscape of social media is alarming and ominous. Facebook is a known tool for election interference, and Tim Kendell, a former Facebook executive in charge of monetization, admits the company intentionally made the platform "as addictive as cigarettes." “Social media preys on the most primal parts of your brain,” he explained, in his prepared remarks to Congress; "The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions—it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage." Kendall outlined.

Nonprofits must get attention. But what must we do when that attention is being captured on our behalf by destructive, exploitive algorithms that manipulate our emotions and sow division?

The Looming Social Media Reckoning

Change is afoot in the social media landscape. Earlier this year, the FBI warned Americans of false election information shared on social media, and the Department of Justice sued Google for violating antitrust laws. And, in July, Stop Hate For Profit saw more than 1,200 businesses and nonprofits pause their digital ad spend for the month of July. The message was clear: "Social media must prioritize people over profit, and they must do it now."

Whether change will be a radical reimagining or a gradual shift is anyone's guess. But despite the continued growth of social, a study of the social media attitudes of Gen Z found that 34 percent say they're permanently quitting social media, and 64 percent are taking a break. Whether through substantial change in social media companies or voluntary user attrition, nonprofits must acknowledge the risk presented by social media volatility in the coming years.

What, Then, Are Nonprofits to Do?

For many organizations, permanently abandoning social channels is not an option. Yet how long must the social sector—the agents of change in our world—allow the ends to justify the means? There is no easy answer, but a risk management lens provides a helpful perspective.

Social media is not an owned audience. If social media is a crucial part of a nonprofit’s digital strategy, they are at the mercy of social media companies' decisions and algorithms. For example, in 2018, changes to Facebook's news feed algorithm caused organic reach to decline and pushed brands to pursue paid content to remain visible to their followers. When a social media company owns your audience, this is always a possibility.

The aim of today's nonprofit should therefore be to use its social channels to convert followers into an owned audience. By that, I principally mean email subscribers, although mobile apps, forums, and SMS are also options. Your digital strategy must be to push your social media audience to platforms you control— then capture them there.

Converting Followers to an Owned Audience

Let’s talk through a practical example of this process. The diaTribe Foundation (TdF) published Bright Spots & Landmines, a lifestyle guide for people with diabetes, as a free download in exchange for signing up to their email list. They leveraged their social accounts and paid advertising to drive visitors to the book site. As a result, they generated more than 26,000 email subscribers, a direct means of communicating with these audience members. If Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media company decides to change its algorithm, those individuals may not see TdF’s posts as often. But their emails will arrive with the same regularity.

You are not abandoning social media altogether by choosing to own your audience. Instead, you are making the strategic decision to diversify away from it, a focus which alters the goals of your social media strategy. Instead of concentrating exclusively on tactics that bolster engagement metrics on a specific social platform—such as followers, likes, comments, or shares—you must choose your tactics in terms of how effectively they will convert someone to an owned audience member. The difference is subtle, but significant: social engagement metrics only matter inasmuch as they help you capture someone outside social.

Owning Your Content

Like owning your audience, you can also own your content. Choosing to invest in content under your control via your website and other formats such as audio and video is a tangible step in the direction of owning your means of generating awareness. The ASPCA, for example, produces regular video content distributed via YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. While they still must distribute that content through tech platforms outside their control, if YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram make unfavorable changes or face new competition, they have more leverage to take their owned content elsewhere.

The challenge, of course, is creating this content. Surveys show that budget restraints consistently rank as one of the top challenges when planning digital strategies. And writing a social media post is undoubtedly more straightforward and less costly than producing a video or other digital asset. But who, precisely, owns the digital assets you are creating? If your organization predominantly spends its time and budget investing in content exclusive to a social platform, such as text-based posts, polls, or platform-specific groups, your investment produces assets owned by a social media company, not your organization.

While you still benefit from this arrangement, you miss out on the opportunity to create digital assets wholly owned by you. These can be distributed across multiple channels, amplifying your reach and reducing dependence on any single social platform. Consider reallocating staff time and budget to create a more significant share of owned content, distributed through social channels of your choice.

Own the Future

When you exist on social media but own a large percentage of your audience and content, you give yourself flexibility: On the one hand, you insulate your organization from the risk of changes in the social media landscape, and, on the other, you have the leverage to reduce or eliminate your use of social media if its failings become too much to bear.

Social media is a tool the social sector uses for good. Let's make sure that in doing good, we don't unwittingly contribute to forces that manipulate, divide, and undermine our progress. It's time for the social sector to own its audience and content so we can take the future into our own hands.

Read more stories by Spencer Brooks.