Maybe you can list a dozen reasons why your company should do more inbound marketing.  But even though you know you should take action, you may still be paralyzed by one big question:

“Where do we start?”

If your brand doesn’t already have a social media presence, you might wonder where to start. Facebook? YouTube? Somewhere else?

If you do have a digital presence, you might not be sure how best to grow it.

And even if you have a healthy online following, you may not know whether or not it’s actually helping you reach your long-term goals.

So relax.

Let’s get back to basics and make sure your inbound marketing base is a stable one.

For starters, Nonprofit Tech 2.0 offers 5 Ways to Grow Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Fan Base.  These range from the obvious (“Add social media icons to your website”) to the crafty (“Tag other nonprofits in your status updates,” which can increase awareness and initiate conversations with like-minded organizations).






While those tips are crafted with Facebook in mind, the methodology applies to any social media channel you start exploring:

• Establish a presence
• Engage your peers
• Make sure your pre-existing audience knows where they can find you

You wouldn’t start selling a new product and not tell your customers, would you?  This same logic applies to your digital presence: if they don’t know you have one, your audience can’t engage with you there.

In addition to those tips, we’d like to share five of our own:

• Find your brand’s voice.  Will you be friendly, casual and conversational?  Official, clear and concise?  Funny?  Helpful?  Educational?  Thought-provoking?  (Hint: regardless of your tone, you want to speak in the first person (“We’re so excited to…”), not the third (“Brand X is excited to announce…”).  Social media is about speaking with people, not at them.
• Start small.  You don’t need to tweet 100 times a week or post a new YouTube video every day.  Trying to be too active can overwhelm you, paralyze you, or burn you out on a tool before you’ve gotten the hang of it.
• Keep it simple.  The easier your message is to understand, the greater its chances of being liked, shared and acted upon.
• Think in pictures.  Photos are the most popular updates on Facebook.
• Be responsive.  Letting people know that your brand has a social profile is important, but if they engage you there and you don’t respond, you’ve missed an opportunity to make a meaningful connection with your customers.  Worse, they might think you’re not serious about this whole “personal” thing, and they’ll suspect you’re trying to infiltrate their private social channels with more marketing-speak — and that kind of activity is worse than not being active at all.

Sounds simple, right?  It is.  And from there, you can start building your inbound marketing strategy in a logical direction.

Want more help launching your inbound marketing?  That’s one of the things we do best.