Let's pin it!

By now you should have heard of Pinterest. If you are like me, and millions of other Pinterest users, you have been captivated for many hours by the different pictures on offer, browsing between clothes, recipes and clever DIY ideas.

But is this it? Certainly not! Online communicators and marketers are quickly taking possession of the visual platform, realising the potential for generating sales and increasing brand awareness.

In Australia, according to Alexa.com, Pinterest is ranked #23 of all sites visited. This makes it the fifth most visited social media site in the country.

So what's in it for not-for-profit organisations?

Being a major player, it makes sense that organisations start adding Pinterest to their social strategy. Visual content is a powerful way to engage with supporters as it gives them an insight into your organisation and what it does.

You are probably sitting on a gold mine of visual content you didn't even know existed. Below are some examples of non-profits that have truly embraced the platform. Hopefully this will give you ideas on how you could use Pinterest.

Organisations like Unicef and CARE, with a focus on fighting poverty, often use their pin boards to display photos of their work in impoverished countries.

Oxfam International offers inspiration boards for those wishing to change the way they live. They also feature boards with photos from events such as the Oxfam Trailwalker.

Amnesty Australia creates boards for a range of topics, but this one is an example of organisations promoting merchandise for sale.

Others like WWF for Earth Hour and more recently Unicef UK for the Ami Musa campaign created accounts for particular campaigns. In the case of Ami Musa, the pictures link to a donation page that was created just for this purpose.

Animal welfare and animal rescue organisations such as RSPCA Queensland or Animal Rescue of the Rockies increasingly use Pinterest to show pictures of pets available for adoption or needing fostering. Others, like RSPCA Australia, focus on showing images that relate to campaigns.

How do you or will you use Pinterest?

Message in an infographic

Lately I have noticed a trend emerging for non-profit organisations fighting for the attention of their supporters - infographics. While this isn’t exactly a new way to share messages, it certainly appears they are being used more frequently on social media networks to engage supporters.

Contrary to text, infographics can simplify complex issues without having to go into too much detail or help the community understand confronting issues without being faced with challenging images.

Infographics can take many forms. Some organisations prefer to showcase their work on websites, especially when they want the information to be interactive or depending on the technique used, be easily accessible on mobile devices.

Others create images that can simply be shared on social media platforms like Facebook and Pinterest in the hope of becoming viral.

In my opinion, once you have a fabulous infographic, you might consider using both ways described above to maximise your design investment and the diffusion of your message.

Below are some examples of interesting infographics created to support causes. Please feel free to suggest any other infographics that you think would be relevant here. 

Hens Deserve Better - RSPCA Australia

Never Be Silent - Peta

Blue Whales - IFAW

Pancreatic Cancer UK

3 useful online programs for non-profits

As budget constraints are a harsh reality for most non-profit organisations, programs especially built to help charities compete with companies are often a live-saver when campaigning.

Last week, I spoke at a conference in Sydney on how to drive social change through community engagement. While speaking with some attendees afterwards, I noticed that some online community managers did not know about some of the great, free tools for non-profits.

Here are my top three 3programs that I hope can help you maximise your campaign resources.

Google Grants

Google Grants is a program that helps non-profit organisations by providing in-kind advertising on Google. The program was launched in 2003 and is available in Australia, USA, Canada, the UK and many other countries (http://www.google.com/grants/domains.html).

After submitting a simple application, grantees are awarded advertising through Google Adwords to a value of almost $10,000 per month ($329/day). Grantees are then able to create ads that may appear in the Google search results of people searching for specific keywords.

Grantees must follow guidelines and are responsible for their advertising account, where they can manage ads, keywords and look at statistics.

Twitter Ads for Good

I became aware of this program after listening to a presentation from Clair Diaz Ortiz (@ClaireD), who leads social innovation at Twitter. Claire was talking about how you can change the world one tweet at the time and how Twitter can help charities do just that.

Since 2010, after launching their Promoted Tweets advertising platform, Twitter has been very active with their pro-bono programs that provide Promoted Tweets and accounts to various charities.

In December 2011, according to Twitter, “more than 50 organizations worldwide have received pro-bono ads amounting to over $300,000 worth of donated advertising on our platform".

Twitter Ads for Good can be particularly useful in times of crisis, helping raise critical crisis-relief funds.

To apply, charities need to contact Twitter and fill out a simple questionnaire. Australians can also apply for this program.

YouTube non-profit program

The YouTube non-profit program helps charities connect with their supporters via video. Through the program, non-profits can apply to have access to a channel at no cost where they can brand it, interact with people and showcase their videos.

One of my favourite features is the ability to use the call-for-action overlay at no cost, which means you can lead your supporters to your website where they can take action or donate.

This program is also available for Australian not-for-profit organisations.

These are just a few of many programs available to non-profit organisations and, as we go along, I intend to make you discover many more tools that will help your efforts online.

Do you have any suggestions of great programs for charities?

Non-profits timeline inspiration

While many non-profit organisations are still catching up on Facebook’s page redesign last year, others have already taken the lead and rolled out their new profile before the new layout is imposed on March 30^th.

When it first became available for pages, the timeline was quickly criticised for the loss of opportunities for companies, particularly for those that used tabs to engage supporters. But looking a little bit further, one can see that the new layout will enable organisations with small budgets to engage more easily without having to build sophisticated tabs.

Here are 10 examples of non-profits in Australia and around the world that have already published their timelines.

RSPCA Australia

Cancer Council Australia 

Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Doctors Without Borders

WWF Australia

Greenpeace International

Oxfam America

The Salvation Army USA

The Breast Cancer Site

Alzheimer's Association

Tips for non-profits switching to timeline:

• Find a great cover shot – a high-resolution image with a size of 851px x 315px
• Add your logo on either the cover shot or profile picture
• Edit your about section with a short but powerful description
• Use appealing graphics and strong headlines for your tabs
• Make use of the ‘Pin to Top’ and ‘Highlight’ button located on each post to feature more important content
• Consider turning on the personal message option that allows supporters to contact you directly instead of posting on your wall

Do you have any more tips you wish to share with us?

A new beginning

If you are reading this, chances are you are from a non-profit organisation and wish to learn more on how social media can help you engage with the community to achieve something good. Am I right?

The lack of tools for non-profits whishing to succeed online is exactly what drove me to write this blog.

With this blog I hope to inspire you and as online communications continue to evolve I hope I can give you the right tools to make your life easier so you can concentrate on what really matters to your organisation.