Social
Media
PLAN
Kelsey Schriver
Bree Skipper
Jason Kraft
Vincent Cona
Chelsea Harden
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Social Media plan - Part 1
Background/History
Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit and non-governmental group formed in 1976. Their operational
headquarters is located in Americus, Georgia and their administrative headquarters is in Atlanta, Georgia.
They consider themselves a Christian group that builds homes for people who do not have a home or need
serious renovations to a current residence. As of 2014, they have helped more than four million people.
“A world where everyone has a decent place to live” is Habitat for Humanity’s world vision statement.
The Nodaway County Mission statement is “Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity
brings people together to build homes, communities and hope.”
Specifically, the Nodaway County Habitat for Humanity selects one family every two years to build a
house for; they will begin building a house this year. However, many people have a skewed perspective of
what their true purpose is. Board member Elizabeth Dimmit described their goal as offering underprivileged
families a hand up, not a hand out. They do not simply give away houses; the families who are selected are
required to pay for the house, but with a 0% interest rate.
They are also required to put forth 150 hours of work that display a commitment to their house and
helping their family. Those hours can be accumulated in a variety of ways including but not limited to:
money management classes, manual labor to help with the house construction, or writing thank you cards to
every outside of the organization that helps build or finance the house.
They have separated their organizational board into three categories; Executive Board members, Board
Members and Administrative Staff.
Executive Board Board Members
• President: Jonathan Mitchell • Keith Arnold
• Vice President: Joe Ford • Elizabeth Dimmitt
• Secretary: Margaret Pierson • Sue Noakes
• Temporary Treasurer: Rex Brod • Joan Schneider
• Travis Stokes
• Jim Wiederholt
Administrative Staff • Jeremy Wingler
• Construction Manager: Rick Wilson
• Administrative Assistant: Stacey Strokes
Habitat Humanity ultimately thrives with its volunteers. People volunteer to help build homes, sign up to
be on the committees, or donate. Habitat for Humanity has many options for the community to get involved.
Volunteers can help physically build the house, donate funds or supplies for the house, or join a committee.
Habitat for Humanity has many committees that volunteers can join. There are Family Selection and Family
Support Committees that handle choosing the family that receives the home. There’s also a Site Selection
Committee which decides where the home will be built. The Construction Committee handles all the
construction and building details and fund raising efforts to raise money for supplies. The Public Relations
Committee handles all the advertising and donation efforts.
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Social Media Footprint
The international Habitat for Humanity organization has a large social media footprint. They have
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts. The international Habitat for Humanity
group has 372 social mentions throughout the web, 312 are neutral, 56 positive, and 4 negative. The four
negative comments weren’t useful because they were irrelevant, or about something other than Habitat for
Humanity. It is noteworthy to mention that of all the mentions about the international group, 85% came from
Twitter.
The Nodaway County Habitat for Humanity has a significantly smaller social media footprint. They
have a Facebook and Twitter account. Their Facebook page has roughly 30 “likes”. Their Twitter has 6
followers(all from class). They have a handful of tweets and posts on their pages but haven’t posted anything
since November, which Dimmit explained is because they had just finished their most recent house.
Their previous posts have been about ways to get involved in Habitat for Humanity, how to apply to be the
next family, links to their web page and magazine, and photos about past houses that have been built. So far,
they have done a decent job with their posts; they just aren’t reaching many people at the moment. They only
have three social mentions, which were Facebook shares by the same person.
Dimmit shared that they have other advertising efforts, such as mailing out information brochures and
placing articles in the paper.
Target Audience/Demographics
Habitat for Humanity has a variety of target audiences for the social media outreach. Instead of narrowing
their focus onto one demographic, they have different aspects of their organization that they would like to
stress to specific target audiences.
For example, the Nodaway County Habitat for Humanity wants to have their organization name and cause
recognized by the college students at Northwest Missouri State University, but not for the same reasons
they desire for the middle-class families in the county to have knowledge of them. The board members
understand that students paying college tuition are not going to necessarily have the money to provide
donations for supplies to build a house, but they may be very excited about getting to help do some of the
manual labor required to construct a house. At the same time, it is likely a middle-aged father who works all
day might not have the time or energy to go hammer nails all day. However, they may really enjoy getting to
contribute to the cause financially.
Current Social Media Issues
Some standing issues we see with their Facebook and Twitter pages are that on their Facebook page there
is no contact phone number listed. Since they are a non-profit organization, it’s important to list as much
contact information as possible to allow more people to get a hold of you and learn more about getting
involved in your organization. Also, their Twitter handle, @nodawayhabitat, isn’t very easy to search and
isn’t very effective in describing their account. They also haven’t posted anything to Facebook or Twitter
since
3 November.
Competition
Nodaway County has many other non-profit organizations that are actively seeking volunteers and
donators. Some competitors to the Nodaway County Habitat for Humanity are the Nodaway County
Ministry Center, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and the New Nodaway Humane Society.
The Nodaway County Ministry Center has a Facebook page that has 85 likes and they currently only have
one social mention. Their Facebook page includes contact info, street address, and business hours.
Big Brothers Big Sisters has Facebook and Twitter accounts. On Twitter, they have 41 followers, and have
tweeted 17 times. Their Facebook page has 477 likes.
The New Nodaway Humane Society has a Facebook page. They have had 73 social mentions, 12
positive and 61 neutral. Most of their mentions came from Flickr and Facebook. They have a very thorough
Facebook page with 1,449 likes. The page includes all of their contact info and location info, mission
statement, description, links to other social media sites, etc.
Goal of Social Media Plan
The goal of this social media plan for the Habitat for Humanity of Nodaway County is to raise awareness.
The group has a couple of social media accounts but aren’t reaching many people through them. Since
the group is beginning a new project this year, it’s important to increase awareness to help get volunteer
involvement and donations.
Dimmit mentioned that the group has different goals for different demographics viewing their social
media. They would like to reach the younger community, especially Northwest students, to encourage them
to volunteer to build. They would like to reach older people and encourage them to donate. So the main
goal, after raising awareness would be to increase volunteer involvement and donations.
Habitat for Humanity already has a positive personality, because they are a non-profit organization. They
also don’t have any negative social mentions, so people generally have a positive outlook on the group. So,
once we increase awareness of the group and their social media sites, engaging users to get involved and
donate in this year’s new Habitat for Humanity project should be an easy goal.
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Social Media Plan - Part 2
Goals and strategies for improvement
Goal 1 - Getting more involvement in Habitat for Humanity of Nodaway County through donations.
Dimmitt said the organization wants to target their two main demographics in different ways. They wanted
to get donations by reaching the older communities through Facebook. Older communities are more likely
to donate to the organization, since they may not be in a physical condition to help with building. Also,
Facebook’s fastest growing user age-group is older generations, so Facebook would be the best way to reach
them.
Strategy - Increasing awareness of the organization and their social media sites.
At the moment, the organization’s social media sites have a little following. So to be able to reach an
audience through social media, we first have to focus our strategies offline to gain a larger following online.
Action Plan
Hosting events around the community to share with people what the organization is all about, how
they can get involved, and how they can make donations, etc.
This will increase awareness offline of the organization and help work out any sort of confusion about
how community members can get involved in the organization. Also, these events will incorporate posters,
flyers, gear(cups, magnets, pens) which has the social media sites for the organization posted on them. So
this action plan will implement awareness not only for the organization itself, but also for the social media
sites.
Posting links on Facebook to sign up sheets, involvement pages, contact info, etc.
This will increase awareness/communication online. It will help decrease any sort of hesitancy followers
of the page have about how to sign up and get involved. This is an important step in awareness because
having people follow your page isn’t enough to make them get involved. You have to actively post easy links
about how they can sign up and make donations, so that way it is even easier for them to become involved.
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Posting on Facebook about how donations are tax-deductible.
Since we are trying to get donations on Facebook, it would be appropriate to share posts and links about
how donations to the organization are tax-deductible. Tax-deductible donations are an advantage that most
people like, so posting about this could increase donations to the organization.
Emailing newsletters with social media addresses/links included.
At the awareness events mentioned above, we could have community members sign up for email
newsletters. Also the current members of the organization would be included in these newsletters. Not only
would these newsletters help inform people about the most recent news and happenings of the organization,
but it would include clickable links to the organization’s social media site, which would help traffic flow to
the sites.
A resource that would be applicable to this specific action is Constant Contact. They define themselves
as a corporation that specializes in engagement marketing, specifically for smaller market companies. They
provide a combination of marketing tools for the web and coaching for how to use these tools successfully.
They use a combination of emailing, social media, event planning, digital storefronts, surveys and promotion
of local deals to drive a desire for customers to return as well as to cause them to refer the business to their
friends.
Strategy - Making people feel compelled to get involved by using empathy/emotion as a value exchange.
Since this is a non-profit organization, the value exchange you have to offer people is a “feel good/good
deed” feeling. Since you’re not a business, you can’t give away free meals or half priced shirts, etc. So to
compel people to take time out to their day to help your organization, we have to really utilize this value
exchange. This can be done by making people feel empathetic for the families who need the homes, and also
by
making people feel good and promoting an uplifting feeling about donating. 6
This is a photo of the family. Unfortunately
you can’t add photos in the Facebook
simulator. However, this is the photo that is
linked in the status.
Action Plan
Posting videos and pictures of testimonials from volunteers and families that have been helped. Creating a
video series-one short video weekly or bi-weekly leading up to this year’s build, which tells a little about the
family that is receiving the house this year.
By posting physical pictures and videos of the family that is chosen to receive the house and by creating
a video series about them, it will show people where their money would be going. It let’s them have a first
hand look at what family they would be helping. Also, it creates a feel of transparency by letting donators
get a look into the family’s life. Also by posting pictures and videos of the volunteers while they are building
and testimonials of why the volunteers like volunteering for this organization, it makes people get a sense of
that value exchange. It creates a positive, feel good vibe that compels people to get involved.
Goal - Getting more involvement in Habitat for Humanity of Nodaway County through volunteers.
Organization members wanted to reach the younger crowd, specifically students, who may not have
the funds to donate, but are physically able to volunteer. The suggested strategies apply mostly to Twitter
because that is the best social media outlet Habitat for Humanity of Nodaway County has that targets a
student-aged audience.
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The #FF means Follow Back Friday. This
is a popular hashtag among Twitter that
encourages users to follow your account and
signals that you will follow them back.
Strategy - Increasing awareness of the organization.
Like our first goal, this means not only increasing awareness about the organization itself, but also
increasing awareness about the social media sites Habitat for Humanity has.
Action Plan - Hosting events on campus to encourage students to volunteer.
This would increase awareness about the organization and clarify any sort of confusion and answer any
questions students have about volunteering. These events could also include gear, such as cups, magnets,
buttons, and flyers which has the social media sites for the organization printed on them. This would then
help promote social media awareness. Other offline ideas to promote awareness and encourage the student
population to volunteer could be Ice Cream Socials, where flyers are passed out before the event and then at
the event, information is given about how to sign up, get involved, and why the organization matters.
Another suggestion could be to host a “Get Jacked and Get Tan” informational meeting, which would run
with the idea that students like to be in shape and be tan, and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity can do
that. This meeting would give the attendees information about the organization and contact information.
Help students learn the process of volunteering by posting links and tweets on Twitter with contact
information and general information about the organization. Once students learn about the organization and
follow them on social media, this follow-up step of posting links with contact info for signing up would get
even more people to sign up. People who follow the organizations social media could share and retweet these
links to get others to sign up also.
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Strategy
Making people feel compelled to get involved by using empathy/emotion. This strategy is also similar to
Goal 1, except for this strategy would be aimed at promoting empathy and emotion through Twitter. This can
be done through pictures, videos, and hashtags.
Action Plan
Tweeting pictures and videos of volunteers and the chosen family. These would be the same type of
pictures and videos that were used in Goal 1. This would include the video series featuring the family being
helped and also pictures and videos of volunteers working.
Incorporating strong hashtags that encourage volunteer involvement. Some ideas for hashtags include
#HopeforHumanity, which would be linked with current building projects going on in the organization
and could be tied to emotional and positive posts about giving hope to a family in need. Other catchy
hashtags that could be included when volunteers tweet or post pictures relate to the organization could
be #HousetheHomeless, #HomesforHumanity, or #BuildforHumanity. These hashtags are meant to grab
attention and generate more traffic to the social media sites.
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Social Media Plan: Part 3
Measurement
Baseline of Habitat for Humanity of Nodaway County
After implementing a social media plan, the last step is measurement. This means measuring engagement
on social media sites, measuring any increases in volunteers and donations, measuring traffic to the website,
etc. Measurement begins with creating a baseline, which documents a normal year. This establishes the
normal amount of volunteers and donations in a year, then you can measure increases compared to the
current year after implementing a social media plan.
Habitat for Humanity of Nodaway County has several regular volunteers and work with local businesses
within the Maryville, Mo. community to gain more. With an average of 100 volunteers per year, Habitat has
room to grow. A good baseline could be a number of volunteers (we suggest a number like 50) and track
volunteer habits from there. Even though the number of volunteers changes depending on building plans, it
would be good to track the increase/decrease in volunteers based on your social media presence. To break
the measurement down even more, you can track which build days/times of the year bring more volunteers.
Activity Timeline
After establishing a baseline of records for a normal year, it’s important to also create an activity timeline
to accompany the baseline to document the activities that go on in the organization during a normal year.
What sort of PR events, build days, information events, or sign up days are going on in a normal year that
could increase volunteers and donations. This will separate normal marketing/PR events from social media
plans and campaigns to see what donations and volunteers are truly related to posts on social media. The
activity timeline and baseline establish what a “normal year” looks like, and after measuring the results
of the social media plan, we consider what could be attributed to other marketing tactics and what can be
attributed to social media.
Setting Up a Schedule to Monitor Posts and Measurement
Once establishing a baseline and distinguishing somebody to monitor your social media accounts, it’s
important to regularly check up and measure growth. Changes can happen overnight with social media,
and monitoring posts and pages daily is important. This is a time to answer any questions that have been
asked. If a problem is presented by a follower on social media, it is important to respond to the situation in
the same medium. For example, if a user complains about a messy job site through a tweet, then you should
respond through a tweet as well. The same rule applies to Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and everywhere
else.
Setting up a designated schedule on when to check social media will help growth and team morale.
After implementing a social media plan, growth will be slow at first but this shouldn’t discourage the team.
Checking weekly or monthly may be better for an organization like Habitat for Humanity. Looking at what
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people are saying about the organization is important to do on a daily basis, but monitoring growth is better
in longer intervals.
How To Measure Plan Goals
Measuring your current social media status is important, as it gives you the groundwork to measure
change during implementation of your plan.
Above is just a small example of a chart to maintain so that you can track trends in activity regarding
social media status. At the end of each month, you can update the information and look at what you have
done that month that may have contributed to the change. Conversely if it goes down, you can check to see
what might have happened. There are also several websites which can help track your social media standing,
such as DataSift, Sprout Social, and Klout. The most basic sites that you would definitely want to utilize are
Facebook Insights for Facebook or Twitalyzer for Twitter. Be sure to start using these tools before starting
any type of advertising or engagement campaign on a social media site.
If the changes you are seeing are not satisfactory, such as likes on Facebook going down, you can always
go back and change up your social media game plan. Once the changes have been made, wait, and re-
measure in regular intervals. This can help you get a grasp on what works and what does not work.
Crisis Management Plan
A crisis management plan is implemented in social media for the tricky times. This sort of plan works
through the nitty gritty details of how to handle certain situations and who has the responsibility of posting
in times of crises.
To begin a basic crisis management plan, it’s important to consider possible situations of crisis that could
happen that would cause the need for a certain response. These could be situations like someone getting
injured during a build, and you could provide updates to the organization members of how the person is
doing, ways to stay safe during builds, etc. Another situation could be if there was bad weather/natural
disaster on the day of a build. This could be handled by updating followers of how long the build will be
postponed, or what day and time the next build day will be.
These are just two examples of the many of situations that could happen that should be accompanied by
social media posts to update followers on anything and everything they need to know. However, keep in
mind that it doesn’t have to be situations that only pertain to the local Habitat for Humanity. Sometimes,
crises that happen in the national organization might need to be dealt with locally. So keep an eye out on any
situations that may arise nationally and decide if a response is needed.
To plan a crisis management plan, you use the possible crisis situations to come up with possible
responses and best practices of how to deal with these instances efficiently. This means designating certain
people with the responsibility of posting to social media during these times. You want these people to be
credible members of the organization who have correct and up-to-date information of the crisis, to ensure
your followers are getting the best information possible. Also, it’s helpful to keep contact information for
these
11 people who will be posting, to ensure they post quickly and are informed of the instance.
