Wednesday, September 4, 2019

Essay --

Introduction Social media is a very prominent and growing online trend that is being utilized for professional career profiles (LinkedIn), as a personal site to â€Å"pin† favorite links (Pinterest), and to watch streams of home videos of funny dogs (YouTube). Because of this hot craze, organizations are implementing these tools into their marketing strategy to assimilate and engage with their constituents. The main reason why social media is an effective tool for nonprofit marketing is because of its mobility and virtual way of creating a community of supporters. Additionally, nonprofits often face financial restrictions or lack of funding and require creative mechanisms to fulfill their mission. Consequently, social media has greatly impacted the development of spreading awareness by providing an online â€Å"word-of-mouth† channel that for the most part is free. While there are numerous outlets online (websites, blogs, forums), the purpose of this paper will explore an article by Chao Guo and Gregory Saxton, Tweeting Social Change: How Social Media Are Changing Nonprofit Advocacy. The goal is to examine specifically how Twitter is utilized for the initiatives and mission of advocacy-based nonprofits (2013). Additionally, this paper will cover related nonprofit marketing course content, how social media is useful and how it will impact the future for nonprofit marketing. Article Research Summary & Analysis Guo & Saxton’s (2013) main focus addressed â€Å"how nonprofit organizations are using social media to engage in advocacy work.† About 93% of the 188 investigated organizations adopted some kind of social media platform (Guo & Saxton, 2013). Following, 87% use Facebook, 80% mobilize through Twitter, 42% of users leverage on YouTube, and last... ...followers, maintaining up-to-date information, incorporating continuous dialogue, and managing to get others to share the message. Guo & Saxton addressed a number of communication messages that nonprofits use specifically through Twitter to target and attract different audiences; from â€Å"information†, â€Å"community-building† and â€Å"action† based messages, each of these contributed towards the marketing strategy (2013). Throughout the article, the authors identified that Twitter was used mainly as an information distributor and a space prominently filled with messages to educate others about the nonprofit. Nonetheless, regardless of which social media platform an organization chooses to use, Twitter or not, social media has the potential to educate many, recruit new members, get others to take action and ultimately advance the organization mission, with just a simple click.

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