Kelli S. Burns, Ph.D.

Rich Brooks wrote a helpful article on Social Media Examiner called “21 Ways Non-Profits Can Leverage Social Media”. Which of these ideas are most useful to my students for their social media cause campaigns?

#1: Use a blog to tell your story My students are required to blog about the School Supplies for Afghan Children project and use text, photos and videos to tell the story.

#2: Make sure your stories are shareable ShareThis is suggested as a good tool to use for this purpose.

#3: Make it easy to subscribe to your stories On WordPress, you can select RSS Links as one of the widgets for your blog.

#5: Create a Facebook page for your non-profit I’m not requiring that my students create a Facebook page for their campaign (only a blog and Twitter account), but #10: Use Facebook Events and LinkedIn Events to spread the word might be a good way for them to publicize their required event.

#13: Start conversations around hashtags What hashtag could my students use? Should all teams use the same hashtag? #afghanschoolsupplies maybe?

#15: Create a banner that stakeholders can add to their avatars I’ve always thought these banners were cool and never knew how to go about creating one. Brooks suggests Twibbon.

Many of his suggestions are only relevant if you are an actual non-profit, but the ones I’ve highlighted above are applicable to anyone trying to build awareness of a cause.