Social media plan and Strategy: People Assisting The Homeless” (PATH)

Social media plan and Strategy: People Assisting The Homeless” (PATH)

Social media strategies to be instituted in People Assisting the homeless, a non-profit organization include:

Facebook posts, People Assisting the Homeless” (PATH) could routinely update posts of merchandise they mostly need to be donated. Instead of delaying until when the pantry is all out, they could innovate say a bimonthly challenge for donors to have donated a certain limit of donations, for instance, 300 winter overalls in December. The items should then be consolidated and estimated monthly for the worth value of items in a regular manner throughout the whole year.  PATHS can also adopt the strategy where they request items donations before the periods of dire need (Mansfield, 2012).  For instance, they can appeal for safe drinking water and bug repellant in April in preparation for the hot summer season. They can also request donations of carrier bags in July and August to raise capacities for donations in the course of the “back to school” period. Additionally, it can appeal for donations of cold and flu therapy in September, before the season of cold and flu. Post appeals for sugar, coffee, and cups in October in preparation for winter and preceding summer season.

The PATH non-profit organization could adopt a social media strategy where they remind their donors on the progression of a monthly donation challenge; they could provide routine weekly reminders via the social media platforms and the PATH website. The also could devise weekly posts aimed at mobilizing the monthly challenge, listing the current month’s challenge items, and the current quantity of donations (Williams, 2017).  PATH could say, for instance, display a thermometer scale to visually indicate how consistent and near they are to achieving their monthly objective

PATH could also make more lead-time, say, for instance, three weeks or a month, when relaying update information on occasions underway. In an instance where Walmart partnered with PATH to register a global scale record of the most socks given for one single day. However, the occasion was unsuccessfully advertised on Facebook until the occasional day. The untimely notification made it impossible to process the donations or even attract any volunteers for the event.

These social media strategies, including the application of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, lays direct link platforms that strategically aim at target populations alleviating any unnecessary mediums such as print media and radio. There are other avenues for social media strategical planning like the Hootsuite (Williams, 2017). This one permits one as the social media administrator to plan updates of posts, ensuring monitory and analysis of the updated social media content on how it is performing and trend rates. With this specific social media strategy, Hootsuite, PATH could routinely plan post updates for several consecutive months, especially during the campaign period, with real-time monitoring.

PATH could implement these strategies utilized in other thriving social media campaigns. For instance, Scotland’s Non-profit homeless assisting firm conducted a #SocialMediaSanta rally, where they afterward gathered over 1,000 donations in only four weeks. They implemented their strategy by approximating the number of homeless individuals who desired Christmas gifts, and requested from the social media community comments and feelings about its emotions, then devised various accessible donation drop off sites (Scottish Housing News, 2016). According to this strategy success, by estimating the number of homeless peoples within Arkansas, they had sourced information from regional schools for an approximate count. Then implemented the strategy and gathered as many donations as possible for homeless children from November 20, 2017, to December 20, 2017. In partnership with local Walmart and Toys “R” Us commerce stores, they were accessible enough drop off locations. This can be adopted by PATH, where it can essentially mobilize the strategy in not less than a month prior initiation by utilization of an emotional Facebook post to encourage the donors and inform on the drop off locations.

The kingdom is another firm that utilized the Tweeters mobilization strategy. The firm took a picture laying various houses structures, streets, posted it on social media platforms, then had various friends tagged, encouraging them to follow suit and indicated a donation of 10 Euros to help the homeless. The media strategy mobilized a total of 2,500 Euros (Williams, 2017).  PATH could utilize similar highlight and indicated tagline, implementing this with very little management can significantly raise the donations rate.  Use Facebook’s Donation Button to allow users to click a button to donate. Publicize the event one month in advance on other social media platforms to drive traffic to PATH’s existing online donation form (Facebook, 2017). Schedule bi-weekly social media posts that include the instructions, the hashtag, an example picture, and a link to the PATH social media page for donations.

Evaluating the effectiveness of advocacy efforts on social media builds an evidence base for successful social media strategies, thus helping organizations influence public policy-makers, increase efforts to support their constituents, and allocate more resources to social media advocacy work. Social media strategies in PATH have shown the ability to achieve major results that indicate a considerable degree of success whereby organizations can gain more support and resources for the advocacy assistance work. Intermediate ways that indicate the effectiveness of social media strategies involve established community networks and coalitions and raising public awareness. Social media strategies through digital platforms help people to directly have access to their messages; they can easily keep a track record of Twitter followers or Facebook friends, users who have voluntarily chosen to connect with the organization and see its social media messages. For instance, in the context of PATH, a non-profit firm, its Twitter followers retweet a mobilization donation advocacy message posted by the organization and sharing it on with their followers, spreading the word fast to attract multiple donations over a small period.

References.

Mansfield, H. (2012). Social media for social good: A how-to guide for non-profits. New York, N           NY: McGraw-Hill.

Scottish Housing News. (2016, November 17). Schelter Scotland launches campaign to provide gifts for homeless children at Christmas. Retrieved from Scottish Housing News:             http://www.scottishhousingnews.com/12440/shelter-scotland-launches-campaign-  to provide-gifts-for-homeless-children-at-christmas/#.

Williams, K. L. (2017). A Social Marketing Plan for 7hills Homeless Center.