 We like to extend our sincerest gratitude, our deep appreciation for all of these amazing presenting sponsors that you see right in front of you on the screen. These are individuals, these are not just individuals, they are companies made up of very dedicated individuals that are here for you. And I mean that they're not really here for us in the show, they like us, but they love you and they are in your corner to lift you up, lean in and support your cause in your mission across the globe. So go check them out, give them a like and some love, follow them and make sure you stay tuned because every presenting sponsor is on our show on a monthly basis and so they share their tips and expertise of the sector and how it relates to you. So I'm thrilled to be here with you Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy and I am Jarrett Ransom, Julia's non-profit nerd, but also your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And today's guest, as I alluded to, I've been following Sarah on many social media platforms, but Sarah Willie joins us and I'm so excited to have you. So I know that I've seen you with like Stephen Shaddock Blumering, I think I've seen you with Heather Burright which has been a guest of us, there's some YNPN Phoenix friends that I know that you're also connected to Sarah, so we are so thrilled to have you today on the non-profit show, welcome. Thank you, I'm so excited to join you all today. Well we are really excited to have you, I have to say I'm personally excited to have you because this has been one of my big things is to really understand the impact of social media as it as it revolves around specifically not just my business, the American Nonprofit Academy, but the non-profit show. And so we wanted to invite you on today to talk about conducting a social media audit. I think too many of us are just trying to do whatever we can to get heard and to get stuff out there and then we don't really have an idea of what it's doing and what the impact is. And so we're really excited to hear you kind of give us some insider tips. So thank you for taking time today. Julia that was a deep sigh when you mentioned social media. There's a lot to take in so I know Sarah's going to help us with that, but I you know I feel that way too and I'm sure many of us have this sigh so maybe we should all just like really this big sigh. I know me too and that was awful. I think I just like revealed my sense of this by that. Okay so why audit ourselves? Sometimes we hear that word audit and it seems negative. I think audits are positive so I think this is like a mind shift. Why should we even do this and maybe talk to us about what it is we're looking for? Yeah I think that the term the word audit can be really scary right? We think about you know you don't want your taxes audited by the IRS. It could be terrible right? But in this sense I really think that what we're looking at is wanting to have data that we can use to inform our decisions. I am a big big believer in that in all aspects of my life so I work as a fundraising consultant and I'm very interested in having data that I can use to define whether or not what I'm doing is working for my clients and I'm also I'm studying business administration as a doctoral student and so I work with data in other ways frequently now conducting research into the nonprofit sector specifically. So I think when it comes to social media if we have data that can speak to whether or not what we're doing is accomplishing what we want it to do then we can have a much better level of success and we can narrow our focus to what works and not get pulled in so many directions that we end up in that sort of big-sized space where we feel overwhelmed. So that's why data audits are so exciting to me and I think you know they can be done independently within our organizations and it's also something that an expert can come in and help provide so we can talk a little bit more about the different ways to do that but audits are exciting. Yeah I do think they have that scary like word of an audit you know even like you know we're a financial audit for our nonprofits and and you know many organizations are like that's so expensive so you know kind of looking at the word and what it evokes by way of feeling. Exactly it's so interesting I also I have so many questions for you you know first of all yay team on being a doctoral candidate I'm so proud of you we need more people like you doing this type of work and then reflecting it back to the nonprofit sector and so I'm just giving you the yoke to mom's two thumbs up because that's just awesome yeah thank you that's four four thumbs up. So talk to us then a little bit more about this whole concept and what it means to actually conduct an audit I mean what is the process and and I'm assuming are we doing this all the same time for the social media outlets that we might be engaged with are we you know doing Instagram one month and then we're doing you know LinkedIn another month and Facebook or what are your what's your sense on that. Yeah I think that again audit sounds like a sort of one and done thing and I think it goes back to what Jared was saying about board retreats and kind of changing the language in the frame of thinking of that as a process that's ongoing and I think it's the same way with an audit it's not something you do once and put on a shelf and you're done it's something that has to be repeated so that you adjust as new data occurs as you get new trends you know if you change what you're doing based on what one audit says you're going to have to later do another audit to see if it's working how you thought it would so I typically do an audit of all channels whichever channels are relevant for the organization in question once a quarter I think is a good practice and you do all of them at once one big audit and then set new goals that drive you through the next three months and then recheck and do another audit that I think is the best best practice that works really well some do it maybe just twice a year even just once a year depends on how involved and detailed your plans are but I think quarterly is really awesome because it really keeps you on track and it's much easier to set a three month goal than a six or 12 month goal right you know I love what you just said and that's just so super powerful figuring out where you want to be and then going back in and reapprising or reassessing what has transpired with these tweaks or changes and then making adjustments amazing amazing I love it love it love it and again you're saying to do this quarterly I love it as a quarterly practice yes so that you can really keep track of I mean things may be changing external to you so it's good to keep on top of noticing those things affecting you and hopefully you're changing things internally because you're adjusting to what the audit showed you to do and so you need to know whether or not that's taking you the direction you want or if it is having a consequence you didn't envision so what would those adjustments look like I mean are you talking about major changes or are you talking about super minor or just a combination it could be a combination so I think about if you are just getting started this is the first time you've done an audit you might have really big changes that you have to make but if you have been doing this regular process for multiple quarters already then you're probably making little tweaks each time based on what it shows so it can really vary depending on the organization and I think it also depends on like your size right if you are a small nonprofit with one staff person who is doing social media as an add-on to all of their other job duties that maybe have something to do with fundraising or some other aspect of the organization's work then you're probably not going to have a huge robust program maybe the audit is going to help you stop trying to be on every platform and narrow into the ones where your target audience is and if you are an organization with multiple social media strategists maybe you're going to have a much more robust audit and then you're going to have multiple staff members involved in executing various changes and maybe you're on more platforms so it's much more complicated and that's what I was going to ask Sarah is who does the audit so it can be someone within the organization I have done them for organizations where I was employed in the past and in that case it's it's usually been a fairly simple audit where I'm really just looking at for each platformer on I think it's it's helpful to know what are the top maybe three posts each month that really got engagement right because engagement is probably the most valuable thing we can get on social media because it shows that people are actually reading and responding to what we're doing and each time somebody engages in some way it's going to drive it out to more audience and boost you in the algorithm so aside from the things that are sort of harder to measure and have to go off platform for that's the most useful measurement you can look at within the platforms and so I like to see what those are and there's a mixture right of like qualitative and quantitative analysis here so you can look quantitatively right like how many people liked it how many people shared it there's these numbers you can put to it and play and excel with but there's also this qualitative thing where you have to kind of look at okay well what are those and why are they resonating and you have to be a little bit of a detective and say you know is it that people really respond best at a certain time of day is it that people respond best to video versus photo versus some other form of content that you're producing and those tell you a story that you can use to adjust what you post in the future it's interesting you say that I was um we're I'm working with an intern with one of my clients and I was talking to her about my own personal you know business um and engagements I'll say and I see the highest engagement when it's a photo of me which I typically don't like you know it's like I don't want to continuously post photos of me I want to post photos of you know my clients or other people working or something else and she was like well that's interesting because for the organization that she's an intern with it's it's the opposite it's not so much photos of people it is a testimonial or sorry it's more of an inspirational quote that is what's getting the highest engagement with that organization and so it's not I just want to you know kind of share this example because it's not a one-size-fits-all it's not oh you know everybody should put up a photo of someone that'll get the highest engagement well really you got to figure out what it is for your organization yeah that's exactly right I love that example um it really illustrates it well I think that you know in marketing we talk about there's you know if you're if you're trying to speak to everyone then you're not really speaking to anyone right and so this is where we have to be really clear on who is our audience and there's that piece of it that is who is our actual current audience right who's consuming our content in this moment and there's a piece of who do we want to be reaching and hopefully those are aligned if they're not an audit can be a really helpful way to figure out if they're aligned and how to start bringing that into alignment so true and and I have her again as our intern she's doing great work but you know she's narrowed it down to say this platform our message is speaking to our donors this platform we're speaking to our scholarship recipients right and so really knowing who is the audience for the message and what we're asking them to do and that's that's been a lot of fun to watch yeah that's exactly right so I think you know even before you talk about doing an audit those are things that an organization has to grapple with and it sometimes gets lost or forgotten so an audit is going to be most helpful if your organization already knows who your audience is and what you're hoping to have them do what is your goal what does it look like to be successful and I see a lot of organizations that kind of approach this and and go well social media our goal is to get a lot of followers and I think you have to stop and ask yourself well why right because just having followers unless you're really invested in a competition to have the most for some reason like there's there's not a value to your organization it's not going to further your mission just to have followers so you have to ask yourself is it because you want those followers to become donors is it because you want them to become clients and take advantage of whatever your services are is it because you want them to become students at your university because you want them to adopt the pets that you have is that you know thinking about what that mission is are you trying to educate right maybe you're an organization who advocates for some issue and you're hoping to get a lot of followers who want to learn more about an issue that maybe people are less informed about than your organization would like to see and that's part of your mission but if you haven't defined that an audit's not going to tell you if you're accomplishing it because you have to define what that goal is before the audit can help you assess your success that is such strong wisdom and I think a lot of us in the nonprofit sector we don't take the time to do that and I'm wondering to your point Sarah will an audit help us determine what it is we should be tracking or is it it really is are you advocating that we need to kind of come up with these you know silos or buckets of information engagement profiles if you will before we move in that direction I don't think you have to have a big detailed plan before engaging in an audit but I think that you have to at the very base be able to say our primary goal is to attract donors our primary goal is to attract program recipients our primary goal is to educate whatever that is there's not a right or wrong answer but you need to at least have that piece and then the audit could help you start to refine exactly who is that audience then when you say you want a donor right now who's donating based on your social media or who is there that could become a donor that's engaging with your social media so that you can start to plan your fundraising tactics to reach those people that you've identified or following you you know is it predominantly people of a certain gender in a certain location or who have certain other there's all kinds of interesting things that exist in the data that you can research and find out you know who's following you what age are they do they have children do that you know what are these different pieces of their life that knowing will help you better target your messaging if you're trying to convert them into donors so yeah social media is such a conundrum like it is one of the things that I say probably already today there's been changes in the algorithm changes in the way it looks like it is a constant change you know it's just platforms of change and you know there's there's TikTok they were snapped still just Snapchat right but there's so many different platforms and I'm going to ask you and this is probably a golden ticket question right how many platforms should we be on thank you Jared thank you that was in my head to ask it's the elephant in the room like how many should we really be on because if we're auditing and we're seeing that there's some really rising to the top and some that are just dead in the water like how much energy and effort should we put into these platforms yeah so I'm going to give my favorite answer and I think it plays to today's theme it depends right I know that's the answer we don't want we want to clear yes no give me this number but it does depend when I was a director of development in a small shop and I was overseeing communications and basically anything that wasn't program work I couldn't have been on every single platform because I had other work I also had to do and so for that organization I think I was on three technically we had four but really one of them I didn't do much with so we had three that we were actually active with and that was because I kept conducting an audit and assessing okay well where do people actually interact with us we think we want to be on Twitter because that's where a lot of people are and then we get there and we realize that maybe our audience isn't there so maybe we step back and stop spending capacity there because there's lots of other things your staff person can spend time doing that aren't social media that are going to have value on the other hand I think that there are some organizations that probably can play with things like TikTok that are newer because they have the staff capacity they have that built in and because they actually have an audience there and a reason to be there so it really I mean an audit can help a lot and I think that's one of the reasons it can be helpful to have an external person help you with an audit because somebody who's not as close to it can really look at is the ROI there because I think when we're close to it and it's our own organization well maybe I really enjoy doing that part of my job and I don't really want to give it up or vice versa maybe I kind of hate that part of my job and I would rather be doing something else and it kind of colors how we look at that data and effects the decisions we want to make so having that external person come in can help with really saying well what actually makes the most sense if we take those emotions out of it because that external person is not invested in the same way. Sarah let me ask you this and this is like a two-part question one is how quickly should we be in the nonprofit sector early adopters you know is that something that we should think about and then the other thing is it seems to me that we are seeing more and more of our work with what we perceive as our corporate partners from vendors to board members all of that moving towards LinkedIn and really using that to help broaden that exposure and so I'm kind of curious as to what your comments are about those two things and they're somewhat related in terms of being an early adopter but I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that. So I think in terms of early adoption what I noticed with the nonprofit sector is that many times we struggle to get the tried and true things right we struggle to maintain the basics right and so I would say for an organization that has not yet perfected the basics it's probably not a good idea to try to early adopt new things for an organization that's already doing really well with those basic things and has the extra capacity it can be really fun to go out and try early adoption and see if it's there I think that that has to be explored again with a clear goal and intention in mind and a way to measure whether or not it's successful because it can be hard to let go once you started to dive into something and you have to know when to pull back and say okay that was a shiny new object I don't need to keep following versus okay this is actually really working and building to whatever your next step is using that new tool or adopting that new opportunity. So let's see you had a second part to that question. Well LinkedIn I'm kind of curious I mean LinkedIn is certainly not I mean it's a going Jesse it's nothing that is you know an early adoption of any capacity but what I see it changing it seems like that our nonprofits are really using that to embolden their relationships with corporate sponsors with with numbers yeah board members and so you know kind of changing how that platform is working and I'm wondering if you're seeing that as well. Yeah so I think you know LinkedIn is a really interesting platform because there's more of a culture to it I think than other platforms you know I think when you go to a Facebook or a Twitter there's subcultures right and you choose sort of which parties you're part of and which rooms you're entering but with LinkedIn it's already sort of this business space it has more of a defined focus for the whole platform and so I think you know it depends on your organization right there are some organizations that need to just completely ignore LinkedIn because it's not their space but if you have an organization where you have board members or professional volunteers or a lot of corporate relations this is a place where people are kind of wearing that professional hat and hanging out and having conversations and if you're engaging with them in a way that speaks to that professional part of their lives then that could be a really great place to be and I actually think you can get the best value there through your employees personal LinkedIn accounts then through your organization's brand account so an audit can help tease that out and different organizations have a different comfort level with that but we know that fundraising is about relationships and we know that whoever our staff members are are serving in those roles are the ones that are stewarding and building those relationships and so I think it makes sense sometimes to do that on social media and I think LinkedIn is a comfortable place to approach that because LinkedIn is so sort of professionally based it doesn't and you don't enter into the same sorts of conflicts there that you might if you were having a conversation about whether or not your personal profile should be associated with your organization on Facebook or Twitter where you have to think about privacy for your family because you're sharing that platform with those relationships and you have to think about political views that you know maybe you want to express personally on those platforms that maybe you don't want to as a representative of your organization but LinkedIn's great because we tend not to do those things on that platform anyway so it tends to be a place where it can be comfortable for everybody involved to do that and so I think really building those relationships one-on-one as yourself as a representative of your organization can be really fruitful. Yeah in the board members you know that's a great space for the board members to be actively engaged as an advocate of the organization. Yeah you mentioned about you know not so personal on LinkedIn and I love it when someone does dive into that personal side on LinkedIn and inevitably someone will say not for this platform share it share it elsewhere and it's like oh people are just so quick to to jump in. Yeah I'm a big fan of bringing our whole selves to whatever we do and I think there's a way to do that that keeps it professional right. We don't only talk business we share we show pictures of our kids you know it used to be in the wallet now it's on the cell phone but you know we we talk about things that are personal to us sometimes we even talk about politics and stuff like that and yet the way we talk about it might be different than how we might type it on Twitter right we can do that in a way that is respectful and you know keeps a professional spin to it and some boundaries that we're comfortable with around it and yet I don't think that we have to be so buttoned up that we pretend we don't have a life outside of what we do for a living. I'm a big advocate for a blend like if you've watched any of our you know heard me talk about like I don't believe in a work-life balance I believe for me what resonates is a work-life blend but I'm not going to post photos of my you know wonderful mimosa brunch on LinkedIn you can follow me on Insta for that you know but I might share something about you know my son and I where we're traveling because that's a big piece of why I do what I do to provide the life and you know the experiences for my family so as an entrepreneur you might see a little bit of snippets of my personal life on LinkedIn but yeah I agree with you Sarah that blend is nice. Absolutely well it's hard to believe our time is drawing you know to a close and this was a great way to start the Monday I think of this week because you know so many of us when we look I mean maybe I'm speaking for myself but we look at social media we're always like okay Monday we're gonna you know do this or we're gonna recommit or whatever and so it was really good to hear about this so I'm super appreciative Sarah to have you and Julia this is the end I just realized during the very March end of Q1 so looking at that next audit you know if you're doing this quarterly per Sarah then you know you're looking at doing this soon. Yeah I loved it and I would have never guessed that that was you know the cadence with which we should be doing this but I think it's brilliant again I'm Julia Patrick CEO of the American Non-profit Academy I've been joined by the non-profit nerd herself Jarrett Ransom and Jarrett we missed you on Friday but we are glad that you are back here today. Happy to be here. Sarah you are a rock star and I love all the things that you've had to say I think we need to touch base with you again and and keep getting your feedback because it's really helped so many of us today super exciting hey everybody we're really excited we have launched something that I've wanted to do oh my goodness forever in a day. The number was for you to do that yeah say that again. It's the day you said forever in a day and so today is the day. Well I'm a nerd so I love books I'm not like a nerd like Jarrett but I'm kind of I should say I'm more of a geek I love books and I I'm always thinking about them and going back to them and so we now have a page on the American Non-profit Academy website that's just a resource page for books a lot of these books you will recognize we've had these authors on the non-profit show to talk about their books but it's just a one-stop kind of opportunity to figure out what the thought leaders are saying about our sector so check that out again we want to thank our wonderful wonderful sponsors without you we would not be here okay this has been just a great great thing we're so appreciative Sarah that you would come on and talk to us and like I said this is where we need to be we need to be listening and engaging with our donors and our partners and our clients and so I just loved what you had to say and and I can tell you it's impacted me in the way we're going to be looking at some of the things that we're doing so thank you so much as we end every show we like to remind everyone to stay well so you can do well