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If you follow Frank Kenny (which you should) or caught my interview back on his show in 2018 (notes here), then you know we both truly believe social media is an important tool for chambers of commerce.
Like any other business (side note: even though you’re a nonprofit, you should be running your organization like a business), you have a sales funnel & customer journey – whether you realize it or not.
And social media is one of many mediums you use to engage people at different parts of your funnel.
So instead of yelling advertisements down the hallway – which is how many treat social media – you should be using it to build relationships with your members & community.
Put into basic words, your marketing goals for social media include:
- Make people aware of your chamber & why you’re important to your community
- includes both businesses & locals
- improve how people view the chamber
- Entice people to join or renew membership
- includes lead generation
- Engage current members
- includes increasing event attendance & use of other benefits
- Reach representatives you may not otherwise engage with
Social media can also help you:
- Get real-time feedback from real people
- See what types of content or topics most interests your followers
- Talk to many people at once (yay staff time)
- Be seen as a thought leader & resource
Even when I’m talking to my small businesses, I like to remind them that have an active social media presence builds some amount of credibility. As an internet-addicted millennial, if I go to your Facebook page and there hasn’t been a post in a month, I just assume you’re closed and I go look for your competitor.
So no matter which social media platforms you decide to be on, you want to make sure you have an active & consistent presence. Currently this can involve posting several times a day, but you should start with a posting schedule that is manageable for you.
Just don’t forget that you’re actually interacting with a real person that happens to represent a business.
Try not to be too formal on social media, and you don’t want all of your posts to be ads. As I mention in 53 Social Media Posts for Chambers, you don’t want more than 20% of your posts to be self-serving. That doesn’t mean you can’t promote your benefits, though. Just make sure you’re also providing value in your posts and not only ever posting about event registrations.
Of course, social media also a great place to promote members & allows you more additional opportunities to benefit your sponsors & members (like getting a Facebook Live Sponsor). You just want to balance what you’re posting about – which is why I recommend having a content calendar.
In short, if you’re using social media right it will help you engage your members & community.
Like this post? I’d love for you to suggest to your state/region chamber association to have me speak on the topic!
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