Some Non Profit Collegues and their Visual Social Media -

Continuing with our discussion on visual social media marketing this week; our class is now analyzing some of the organizations that are similar to our own business, to see who has been using Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, or Instagram effectively.

Starting with Pinterest - I found several Non profits similar to The Sabrina Keller Foundation who are making strategic pages and targeted pin boards - to reach out to potential stakeholders with their visual social  media marketing efforts. Such as featuring their sponsors or creating topic boards, which are dedicated to engaging and highlighting their supporters and the community projects they are involved with.  

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a Pinterest Page with several Pin Boards related to worldwide topics, and are featuring videos highlighting Billionaire Philanthropist Bill Gates (and others) giving speeches about the philanthropy and other endeavors with the Foundation.  They have one pin board dedicated to the World Economic Forum (which is held annually); as well as pin boards dedicated to highlighting community and woman; with “Newborn Health”, a “Social Good Summit,” and one entitled “Faces of Humanity” to name a just few.   

Another Non profit on Pinterest is called “Operation Smile” which is a medical group dedicated to helping children worldwide who suffer from facial deformities.  Some of their Boards and Pins include highlights about the Charity and their volunteer doctors who work with the organizations founder Dr. Bill McGee. The boards include pictures and commentary about their twenty care centers located around the world including India, the Philippines, and Guatemala.    

Tumblr is said to be a good place to share your “story” as business or organization, where you can present information and content in short visual blogs, while using mostly visual media with short written captions.  According to Mashable.com the blog can get very viral, and is great place for tagging your content (for SEO optimization), displaying videos, and making creative image postings.  But they do recommend that you have used solid unified branding for you organization across all your social media marketing platforms when you decide to participate with the website.   

A nonprofit called “Meatless Mondays” strategizes for social media reach by using Tumblr content tags related to non meat recipes such as meatless pizza. They tag the visual blog with the words like  “pizza recipes” – which when people who find the recipe in a Google search and they click the link, it would bring them to the Meatless Monday Tumblr page, to learn not only about how to make a pizza but about the organization’s meatless  mission and other endeavors as well.   

While Mashable.com doesn’t recommend you use the Tumblr site to disseminate your annual report; it does recommend you use the visual blog to explain what your organization does, and to show off and highlight your successes.   Another nonprofit using Tumble effectively in this manner is called “Good Neighbors U.S.A.,”   who is using images as updates about their latest projects and partnerships with the United Nations. There visual blogs highlights their efforts to aid nations with improving educational standards  and life quality, as well as helping people who are affected by civil unrest or when  facing natural disasters.  

The ASPCA – American Society for The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals - has taken advantage of YouTube’s nonprofit channels program, where it provides qualified nonprofits the access to free tools to use on their Video Channel WebPages, including a Google Wallet donate button, call to action overlays, live video streaming, and video annotations.  With a YouTube video channel page your organization can highlight videos about your organization, show past events, and make advertisements, sales or donation pitches; like in this example case with the ASPCA using an MTV celebrity “DJ Pauly D” to solicit for donations from their page visitors.  

The last Nonprofit using a visual social media platform I will be highlighting today is called Robin Hood New York, who is using the mobile social platform tool (an app) called Instagram; which works much like Tumblr with a visual blog and the use of limited text for content captions.  

The digital company Instagram started off on just a mobile platform but has since expanded for some limited access for business and individuals to see, comment, or like a page/blogs online with a computer or tablet devices.   Robin Hood New York’s mission is to “fight poverty” in New York City. There visual blog is seen here through a third party webpage called Webstagram, designed to bring in the Instagram mobile blog-feed through a shared  RSS platform.  The blog highlights RHN’s fund raising events, partnerships, and the volunteers who make the organization successful.