Agros International & Social Media Engagement

A Nonprofit Example of Social Media Strategy

May 17, 2011Cathy Reilly

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Vision: To restore hope and opportunity to the world’s

poor

The Depth and Complexity of Poverty

Hunger & lack of clean water

Disease & malnutrition

IlliteracyLack of access

to capital & credit

Loss of dignity

Low personal income

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GenerationalPoverty

Alleviating Rural Poverty

“Agros sets the global standard for helping the rural poor through land ownership and focused on families, agriculturally based, holistic, sustainable development”

2015 Vision Statement, Agros International Board 2008

How Can We Leverage Social Media?

• Before you get started, decide what your organizational goals are:

• More followers/supporters?• Increasing advocacy/political action on your behalf?• Increasing donations?• Invigorate current supporters?• Make followers feel like insiders?

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How Can We Leverage Social Media?

• Also remember that you don’t need to be on every social media network– just choose a few initially and work regularly on them

• In our case it’s Facebook, Twitter, and our staff blog

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How Can We Leverage Social Media?

• Be intentional!

– Draw up a calendar of relevant holidays, commemorative days, and events that matter internally for your organization

– Create a calendar schedule of posts– Have one person monitor daily for timely follow up with

followers

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How Can We Leverage Social Media?

• Do take advantage of content you already have • Don’t reinvent the wheel to invent new content if you

don’t have to• Make it a priority, even if it’s delegated to another

person:

– In my case, I draft a calendar with our intern before proceeding and then approve any content before final posting

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Microcontent• Show up early and often!

– Take advantage of holidays like Mother’s Day as a reason to post, and do it early in the day

Agros InternationalAgros International would like to wish every mom out there a

very happy Mother’s Day! Your wonderful support over the years has helped rural women in Central America and Mexico as they break the cycle of generational poverty.

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Microcontent• Post photos and captions of villages often to drum up

excitement and connect to mission/drive back to website

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In the Agros village Xeucalvitz, Guatemala, a number of men have completed the construction of drying racks for coffee beans. These racks are used in place of drying the beans on the ground or on plastic, and are important because they improve the quality and yield of the beans, as well as expediting the drying process. The group of men predict that they will make more income in this year’s harvest due to this improvement. To read more about Xeucalvitz visit http://goo.gl/yh4VF

Microcontent• Post pictures and captions from events you hold for those

who aren’t geographically closeAgros International added 5 new photos to the album Agros

Open House.

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Joel Martinez, Agros’ Regional Director, presents on regionalization at our Open House last week, with colleague Nathan Hawkins translating.

Microcontent• Lead in to blog entries

Why I’ll celebrate Agros on World Fair Trade Day Today, Saturday, May 14, is World Fair Trade Day. In that spirit,

I recently dusted off a college paper I’d written on Fair Trade. Re-reading pages of charts and theories, I was struck by the number of similarities with Agros. ...

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Microcontent• Writing specific tweets rather than automatically linking to

blog/facebook

AgrosIntl Agros International In Xeucalvitz construction of drying racks for coffee beans are

completed, this will increase efficiency & future yield! http://ow.ly/i/brOe

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Microcontent• Retweeting when others mention you:

PlantWPurpose Plant With Purpose by AgrosIntlRT @ChivoHawkins: read & recommend @PlantWPurpose

Scott Sabin's http://ow.ly/4PXrg - excellent, much in common w @AgrosIntl // thank you!

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Microcontent• Follow influencers and tweet at them when relevant

AgrosIntl Agros International @USATODAY Great piece re: clean cooking! Agros recently

wrote about the importance of this issue: http://goo.gl/3o1pX

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Track Results/Analytics• Take Advantage of Analytical Tools:

– 981 people like us on Facebook (5% increase in 6 months)

– Track impressions on Facebook too – increase in number of “likes” on photo caption posts

– Use url shorteners like goog.gl to track click through rates

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Track Results/Analytics• Tracking tools also allow you to test

different types of content to see what’s getting a response and what isn’t

• Don’t be afraid to try new ideas. You can enforce a brand and still be a little more casual than usual communications

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Look to the Next Trend

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Since gifting and gaming are popular on social media sites, we’re working with a group of freelance web developers to explore possibilities and will launch a gift application that ties in to our alternative gift catalog, One Seed

Other future trends:• Mobile applications• Partnering with deal

sites like Ideal Network/Deals That Matter

Questions?

– Contact me if you’d like to talk further:

• Cathy Reilly, Donor Relations Managercathyr@agros.org

• Or better yet, follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

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