Why should you care that your organization is being mentioned on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter? Here’s why you should care: because responding and listening to volunteers helps ensure that they’ll continue to volunteer.
Many of your volunteers are already sharing their experiences on social media.
But what happens when volunteers post pictures on Instagram or mention your page in a Facebook update?
Here are 4 tips and tools to track volunteer mentions on social media.
1. Research Your Social Referral Traffic
Even though Facebook is the largest social network on the planet, don’t make the mistake of assuming that most of your volunteers use Facebook.
Google Analytics has a report that lists your social referral statistics. This report will show you the social networks that send the most visitors. To view this report for your website, click on “Acquisition,” and then “Social.”
2. Setup Google Alerts for Volunteer Mentions
Create Google Alerts for your organization, key executives, and cause keywords.
Google Alerts is a free service, and it can be configured to send you an email each time that your organization appears in news articles, videos, or blog posts. You can also limit your preferences to focus on a specific geographic area.
3. Track Volunteer Mentions on Social Media
Mention is a tool that can track mentions of your organization on social media. Mention includes virtually every social network and forum that you would ever want to track. For example, Mention tracks Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, and many others.
You can receive notifications via email or through various third party apps.
4. Track Instagram and Twitter Hashtags
If you use Instagram, you’re probably familiar with the popular hashtag #volunteering. But did you know that #volunteering is used nine times per minute on Instagram?
Many nonprofits use Tagboard to track mentions of specific hashtags, related hashtags, and even whether the sentiment is negative or positive.
