TechSoup@PND — The Story of a Social Media Policy
The Michigan-based HIV/AIDS Resource Center (HARC) waded into the shallow end of social media a few years ago by experimenting with a Facebook group and Twitter account. Today, the organization thrives across multiple social media channels, with an organized team of staff members generating content under the guidance of a formalized written policy. The story behind that evolution provides a closer look at the issues small nonprofits face when establishing and maintaining a social media presence and serves as an example for all organizations who wish to create a strong, clear policy for social media use.
HARC's mission is to help residents of Ypsilanti and surrounding Michigan counties living with a positive diagnosis of the HIVS virus or AIDS by providing education and direct services, while working to prevent the virus from spreading. Executive director Jimena Loveluck has served as HARC's executive director for more than eleven years, overseeing a full-time staff of sixteen — mostly public health workers trained in HIV/AIDS education — but the impetus for a more aggressive approach to social media came in 2010, when Meico Whitlock, an M.S. in information candidate at the University of Michigan, began an internship at the organization.
Tasked with evaluating a social networking project to encourage people living in neighboring counties to be tested for HIV, Whitlock recognized that staff enthusiasm and subject-matter expertise could translate into compelling content — but someone would need to train the staff. HARC had a special events coordinator and an active marketing and development committee on its board, but no dedicated communications staffer to oversee the social media presence. Whitlock could provide the training, but Loveluck, knowing his internship at HARC was finite, wanted to develop a means of continuing the guidance after he left.
To that end, she created HARC's official social media guidebook, defined as "a resource for HARC staff, volunteers and interns that will assist with maintaining the organization's social media presence in an innovative, yet responsible, manner." The guidebook covers all aspects of social media usage that staff might need to know in order to ensure continued, productive success, remove some of the risk and uncertainty, and pave a clear path for employees to follow.
Who Talks and Who Listens: Author and Audience
Among the first concerns Loveluck addressed was to identify who would be responsible for generating content, and who the target audience was. So as not to overburden any individual, she formed a volunteer social media team and tapped five especially enthusiastic employees to serve on it. Each member generates content for Facebook and Twitter in two-week shifts, and the committee meets monthly to check in and share ideas about which content seemed to appeal to followers.
As for audience, Whitlock's project originally focused on the possibility of using social media for outreach to high-risk demographics unlikely to know their HIV status — specifically, young African-American and Latino men who have sex with other men — but he quickly discovered that most of the organization's followers were actually young women who supported its mission. HARC decided to refocus, as stated in the guidebook, on communicating "with current and potential volunteers, donors, clients and other community members."
Staff already had been practicing such outreach on their own social media accounts. The organization recognized the need to strengthen that effort and focus it through HARC-specific accounts and an internal social media team of staff members specifically trained to interact with audiences through a variety of social media tools.
Removing Technical and Content Barriers
Loveluck emphasized that the technical barrier should be set low. For those staffers not already using social media, the guidebook gives instructions for establishing Facebook and Twitter accounts, step-by-step explanations of how each site works, and describes the advantages and drawbacks of each. For instance, its Facebook section describes the differences between individual profiles, groups, and pages, and notes that "the Fan page is HARC's preferred format."
Team members use HootSuite, a tool that helps manage multiple logins. Recognizing that the HootSuite dashboard, or homepage, "can be a bit overwhelming for a new user," the guidebook offers a clear explanation of how the tool can be used to schedule and manage posts and tweets.
Once the basics were covered, Loveluck found herself facing many of the same challenges that leaders of other small nonprofits find in this arena — among them, how to ensure that HARC's posts are consistent, representative of its mission, and sufficiently frequent despite being coordinated by multiple staff members. She also wanted the policy to address what types of posts were appropriate, and define rules for dealing with negative or inaccurate comments from followers.
HARC's guidebook suggests team members post a minimum of five times a week. At least one post should be a news story related to HIV/AIDS and MSM sexual health. One should be related either to HARC event promotion, HIV/AIDS awareness events in the community, or the organization's accomplishments and successes such as new grants, partnerships, and donations. And one post should be "interactive," sharing a little-known fact or asking a question to generate responses.
Encouraging them to "keep posts relevant and timely, pay attention to what other organizations are posting...and be sure to publicize upcoming events," the guidebook recommends places to find good fodder for social media posts, including the health sections of news organizations' Web sites and the social media channels of their peers. It also provides a virtual bibliography of sites that can help feed more frequent HARC postings.
Navigating the Rocky Areas: Legality and Confidentiality
The guidebook offers specific definitions about what content to post, and in what format. Cautioning against bad grammar, overuse of abbreviations, and overly opinionated content, Loveluck included real-world examples of "good" and "bad" posts from other organizations' social media platforms, with all identifying details removed. Confidentiality issues are also a concern, since HARC provides health services to people living with a serious diagnosis. In a section on confidentiality and consent, the guidebook prohibits posts that identify any clients without their written consent and provides the necessary consent form.
To help the social media team understand how best to leverage social media platforms, HARC adapted Vanderbilt University's comprehensive "Best Practices for a Successful Social Media Presence," one of which stresses the importance of monitoring comments. The guidebook encourages staff to "understand that not all comments will be positive, and to respond to negative comments professionally and by providing any additional information that may help resolve the issue," with the caveat that comments, including profanity, hate speech, or comments that are clearly spam, should be deleted outright.
Embellishing the best practices, Loveluck added a policy specific to HARC's audience and mission. If someone posts something personal or private to one of the organization's social media pages — for example, to ask whether there's a possibility that they contracted HIV/AIDS through their actions — she recommends that a staffer respond to try to take the exchange offline. "Facebook or Twitter is not the place for a confidential conversation about a health issue," she explains.
Loveluck consulted a lawyer for help with personnel and HR-related social media concerns. He helped her write a separate policy to be included in HARC's employee handbook — one that applies to all HARC staffers, not just the social media team. The two policies complement each other. The former serves to inform and educate, the latter to ensure legal compliance. Addressing staffers' personal social media use, the HR policy dictates that employees need to remain in compliance with all organization policies when using social media, cautioning them not to "claim or imply that they speak for HARC when posting a personal opinion about HARC's clients or services without prior approval."
The policy even prohibits employees from linking a personal blog or social media site to the nonprofit's Web site to help protect the confidentiality of the services provided, and explicitly states that employees' personal social media accounts may be monitored for violation — even outside work hours.
Results and Rewards
Whitlock moved on to become communications director for NASTAD (National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors), and Loveluck reports that the plan worked — by establishing a social media team and creating a policy to guide them, the organization's "social media machine" is self-sufficient and sustainable. All the work that went into strategizing a thoughtful approach to social media and creating a policy has led to positive results.
There has been minor turnover on HARC's social media team, and it has remained at full capacity; the organization has been able to stick to a regular posting schedule. The guidelines have enabled the team to avoid any major controversies over posted content. HARC is even beginning to expand its reach by experimenting with new channels like uStream for online video training sessions.
The organization's social media success has led to other successes, as well — recently, when a local bank ran a Facebook contest offering a hefty award to the nonprofit that could generate the most votes from its social media followers, HARC waged an enthusiastic campaign. Though it lost to a much larger organization by just nineteen votes, HARC's effort impressed the bank's president enough that he personally decided to award a second top prize to HARC. Not only did the organization attract hundreds of new followers in just two months, it also won a cash prize that it used to buy a new "outreach vehicle" — a conversion van that serves as a mobile unit to deliver services to rural communities.
HARC's efforts to formalize and improve its social media strategy has led directly to improved constituent interactions and more organizational confidence, and by creating such a loud and clear voice — and building an audience — the nonprofit has put itself into a position to not just participate in the conversation, but to lead it.
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