🔥 Evacuated 🔥 from home & other advice on what NOT to do on social media and digital marketing

Here is a tip. Don't be my like me and launch a limited release of a brand new product for Black Friday, close it the day before you fly to Malaysia to run 4-days of training, and then get EVACUATED from your house because of a bushfire!! 🔥🔥🫣🫣 

From personal experience, I do not recommend. I'd give it a 0/5. 👎🏻

For those following along, thank you for all your lovely emails of support. The fires did get scarily close to our home yesterday and the fire department put us into recommended evacuation. So I packed up the child, the dog (and hubbie joined us later) and went to my parents, with whatever random things I deemed important shoved into my car.

That's why I am taking the inspiration today to make my tip at all the things NOT to do in the digital world right now. 

Miss community building opportunities. When I was working with a consulting client last week I pointed out just how often their Page gets tagged in positive content from BIG BRANDS. They didn't even realise so weren't engaging with the brands, sharing the content  - they were just there. 

This is definitely a missed opportunity to build community. If you're not sure if people are mentioning your brand, look for the Mention tag in your Page menu. You will see all the posts you've been tagged in. I advise, start conversations in the comments, share it, use it as UGC (user generated content) for future posts. 

Being too dang professional. Most of you are nonprofits. Those that aren't, tend to be smaller organisations. If you are constantly telling your audience the story of how professional and awesome you are, what motivation are you giving them to actually support you? 

Be human, be real, share the mistakes, be authentic and tell people when you need help and why. Don't hide your light behind professionalism. Make people connect with and actually be proud when they see you succeed. 

Do the same thing on every platform. There is a reason we have lots of different social media platforms. They do different things for different people. If you're always treating them the same, you're missing out on a lot of platform-specific strategies.

Like hashtags don't work on Facebook and they're annoying. Or not using hashtags on Instagram where they will get you found by new people. Same with using location tagging on Instagram. Or posting a short Facebook length post on LinkedIn when their algorithm prioritises Dwell Time, where you want people to stop scrolling and hover over your post for as long as possible.

You can absolutely tell the same stories on each platform, just do it in a way that taps into the strengths of that platform.

Failing to use video. Video reaches more people, full stop. If you never share videos, the algorithm will show your content to less people (because variety algorithms) and you're missing a key opportunity.

Not encouraging UGC (user generated content). When you can get your audience taking photos and writing about you, it saves you time and creates a whole new level of authenticity. Like one past client who sold inspirational bracelets. She added a handwritten note to each packet asking clients to share a picture of their purchase and share on Instagram. Suddenly, she had way more photos, better ones and much less work to do.

Not looking at the data. I get analytics can be confusing, but not looking at them means you really don't know what works and what doesn't. Each month, you need to look at what worked and what didn't. If you start doing this monthly and double down on the content your audience loved - your Page will grow. (updated analytics class coming to the vault soon!) 

The easiest thing to look at is the content tab. What content gets best reach and engagement. That's a great strategic start. 

Not having a clear voice. If you can't tell me what the voice of your brand is on social media, your website, your email marketing - it's probably just the one of the person writing. If you have more than one person creating content, it's even worse.  Your audience doesn't know who you are and you don't feel like real people anymore.

You need to give your brand a voice, tone and personality and stick to it. It actually makes it EASIER to create content too.

Trying to talk to everyone. We're not standing outside Woolworths shaking a tin for spare coins anymore. While we were happy to take support from anyone who walked past, when we try to do this in digital land your strategy will fail. You need to be crystal clear who you're talking to, what you want them to do and on which platforms.

Not keeping up to date. This world moves quickly. You need to have one eye on where the new opportunities are. It's like the old quote attributed to Einstein - the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. You need to be innovative, experiment and learn from what's new. You can also get my updated in the free Facebook group Change the World.

Lastly, don't expect yourself to know everything. It's simply not possible. You can't be working full time in your organisation (or even part time and juggling the rest of your life) and expect to an expert on all the things. It's just not real. 

It's cruel and unfair to yourself and will just lead you to stress and overwhelm. It's okay to be really good at some parts of nonprofit leadership, or marketing, or even digital marketing and not be as strong in others. 

You don't have to know everything and if you do need to know something - you can always learn.

Knowing what you don't know, is a super power.

I hope you've been really enjoying my tips and taking all this value and using it to make your marketing even better. If you want more from me, check out the opportunity on the right hand side of the page. 

xx Alecia

📸: Image courtesy of Department of Fire and Emergency Services social media.