Last Thursday my social media class took a field trip to the Nebraska Humane Society to meet with Creighton journalism alum Elizabeth Hilpipre. Hilpipre is the digital marketing manager at NHS where she runs the social media strategy for the shelter. The work she is doing at NHS is both outstanding and inspiring. Social media is so important to nonprofits because, as she pointed out, they serve as free marketing tools. Hilpipre and her team create quirky content in order to do many essential things important to the shelter like raise awareness, build and online community of supporters, spread the word, and raise money. I really enjoyed her thoughts on two out of the four of the most popular forms of social media for the NHS. Hilpipre talked about Facebook first. She found that it was better to post videos on Facebook over YouTube because the interaction and engagement rate was much higher on Facebook. The more people the video reaches, the more NHS will be featured on newsfeeds and again the more exposure the shelter gets. She pointed out that people love puppies and cats so she uses those two animals to reach more people. This tactic could also be used for Completely KIDS because people love seeing cute and funny pictures of children. The NHS has two Twitter pages; one main page and then one page specifically featuring cats because for whatever reason the internet loves cats. For Hilpipre, Twitter is the biggest generator of news and this is due to some of the NHS’s Twitter followers. Many big news people follow their accounts, view stories that NHS has posted, and then sometimes ask to feature these stories on the news which reaches way more people than their Twitter followers. Hilpipre gave many pieces of advice that I can not only use on my social media strategy for Completely KIDS, but for any future I may have where I use social media as a tool. She talked about posting content and then asking followers to tag people in the comments or like the post. This increases engagement drastically and turns a post just filled with descriptive or informational copy into a call to action. Hilpipre talked a lot about being up with current events and pop culture to keep on top of social media and the next big thing. This can be seen in the Snapchat posts about Jake from State Farm or the Mean Girls graphic. Hilpipre and her team use Facebook insights, Twitter activity analytics, YouTube analytics and Instagram analytics to know what to post. She said it was important to be active on the social media accounts when people are on and engaging. For her accounts, this is mostly between 8:00 and 11:00 at night. You have to post when your audience is on their phones and social media. Hilpipre also said to rarely post copy alone without a photo or video because it decreases engagement and reach. She talked about the importance of creating event pages on Facebook rather than just posting about the event on your general Facebook page.
Hilpipre and her team have a very unique way of asking for donations that really resonated with me. One way they ask for donations is by hosting virtual events like the Kitten Shower. This is an engaging way to raise money by posting an Amazon wish list or savings account without being tacky. Another tip Hilpipre gave was to show rather than tell when it comes to asking for donations because this has a bigger impact. This is seen in the image of the cat on the pile of laundry when the dryer at NHS broke. These tips will be extremely helpful in nailing out a social media strategy for Completely KIDS.
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PaigeCreighton University Archives
December 2017
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