There are countless books and lectures on how to use social media to expand your digital reach, connect with target users, and build your brand.

Still, many small-to-medium sized organizations aren’t participating in social, or send out one or two obligatory messages a week without yielding any real results. Why?

The answer isn’t that they don’t have enough staff or are too busy to invest the time, although it’s true that resourcing is always a challenge for anyone wearing multiple hats in an organization. In fact, many organizations take too much of an “all-or-nothing” approach to social media. They see massive, multi-national brands executing global social media campaigns and feel that anything less isn’t worth the time or effort.

Start a Conversation

On the contrary, social media is the perfect platform to allow smaller organizations compete on the same playing field as the big boys, and you can scale your level of effort accordingly, ensuring you see results without the need for a large, full-time social media team.

The first trick is to stop using social media as a bullhorn, and start using it like a happy hour. The goal is engage your target users and start a conversation, not just broadcast your message and hope someone picks it up. One of the most powerful and neglected tools of a platform like Twitter is the ability to start or join a conversation with interested users in a desired geographic area.

In fact, I’d argue that smaller or more local organizations have an edge over those that are large and global. Whether your organization feeds the homeless or sells baked goods, people more than ever want to engage on a local level — i.e. buy their muffin from the corner bakery or help end homelessness through their local shelter.

Scale it Down

The great thing about this platform is that it allows you, the organization, to scale your social media strategy to your schedule and resources. Even if it’s only 5 minutes a day, that could be dozens of interactions with potential customers, supporters, donors, and clients. Scale down your focus, start small, then measure results and improve and expand your strategy from there.

If that still sounds like a tall order, or you don’t know where to start, give us a call and we’ll help you put together a plan that’s sustainable and yields measurable results. Whether it’s developing the strategy or running an entire campaign, we can take as much or as little off your plate as you need and help you implement a social media plan that works.