Building a strong relationship with key stakeholders is the main task of any nonprofit since this is the process that contributes to the capacity of achieving the overall organizational mission and particular goals. In their article, Guo and Saxton (2014) explore how nonprofits organizations utilize social media platforms to pursue their goals, reach their stakeholders, and accomplish their mission. The authors state that social media has presented numerous “new possibilities for advocacy organizations to engage stakeholders and influence public policy” (Guo & Saxton, 2014, p. 57). Indeed, the viral nature of good content is capable of attracting the public’s attention in a concise period of time and motivates key decision-makers to engage in the advocacy of a certain issue or population. Such social media platforms as Facebook, Twitter, and others employ technologies “whose interactivity, decentralized structure, and formal networking ties boost nonprofits’ capacity for strategic stakeholder communications” (Guo & Saxton, 2014, p. 57). Thus, these characteristics of social media contribute to the opportunities of advocacy organizations to use such platforms as influential advertising and awareness-raising tools.
Given such a significant potential of the new technology to contribute to nonprofit organizations’ successful performance, the researchers aimed to explore how this potential was used by real organizations. To conduct their study, Guo and Saxton (2014) used organizational-level and message-level analyses to identify how nonprofit organizations use social media in general and Twitter, in particular, for their advocacy work. 188 nonprofits with the status of a 501(c)(3) charitable organizations were used as a sample for the research study. Their choice of social media platforms was analyzed to detect which ones they use; Twitter publications posted within one month were analyzed for content quality. These methodological choices were made on the basis of the previously conducted research available from the literature, where much work had been done to explore how and why nonprofits use social media, but no substantial message-level analysis had been introduced. Guo and Saxton (2014) aimed at filling that literature gap with their research.
The study results showed what advocacy practices the sampled organizations used and how they were reflected at the level of messages. Given the mechanics of Twitter, where users may establish connections with other users and send messages to them, these features were analyzed in-depth. Thus, Guo and Saxton (2014) found that ‘friending’ other users, and therefore establishing formal connections with them, was one of the most frequently applied techniques of building an online audience. Most importantly, among the types of messages, the most often used ones were hashtags, mentions, hyperlinks, and tweets with hyperlinks; retweets and direct messages were much less frequently used (Guo & Saxton, 2014). Using these types of messages, organizations “put the greatest effort into providing information to stakeholders, followed by building a community, and then calling to action” (Guo & Saxton, 2014, p. 67). Thus, the use of social media by nonprofit organizations allows them to pursue their goals by applying formal strategies in an online setting.
In my opinion, this reading provides an extensive and well-developed analysis of the tactics applied by nonprofit organizations to use social media for their advocacy purposes. The onset of research is well-supported by the literature review, and the findings significantly contribute to the scope of scholarly literature. In line with the previously explored readings of the course, Guo and Saxton’s (2014) article expanded my knowledge about the particularities of nonprofit organizations’ performance and the multiple tools available to them for effective work. Although it was not directly addressed in the article, I think that when building relationships, creating a community, and calling for action in their tweets, nonprofits contribute to volunteer recruiting strategies. Indeed, as Hager and Brudney (2011) state, the complexity of volunteer recruitment strategies for charitable entities imposes additional challenges that cannot be resolved by conventional means commonly applied in a for-profit business setting. Therefore, social media-mediated calling for action and reaching out to stakeholders allows for nonprofits to attract the target audience of volunteers to participate in the organizational events.
In addition, when expanding on the application of social media to nonprofit performance, the utilization of online platforms and the devices of influence on the stakeholders by message content creation provide an opportunity to increase the scope of fundraising campaigns. If organizations use any of the eight mechanisms to influence the public’s charitable giving motivation to inform their social media audience and call for action, they might increase the efficacy of fundraising (Bekkers & Wiepking, 2011). Finally, organizations that are managed within the perspective of economic theories, social media relationships, and tactics might be a valuable tool for influencing demand and supply conditions (Anheier, 2014). By distributing necessary information to key stakeholders and the general public, nonprofits explore the demand for their advocacy and disseminate the information of their supply.
Within the realm of my personal experience, social media utilization for advocacy goals is a significant contribution to a nonprofit’s favorable reputation and support by sponsors. As the examples provided in Guo and Saxton’s (2014) article demonstrate, viral content posted by charitable organizations is capable of reaching both governmental and private entities and individuals who might make radical decisions at the state or federal level. Thus, social media should be a crucial advocacy tool that must be aligned with the company’s strategies and mission to facilitate its charitable performance.
References
Anheier, H. K. (2014). Nonprofit organizations: Theory, management, policy (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Guo, C., & Saxton, G. D. (2014). Tweeting social change: How social media are changing nonprofit advocacy. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43(1), 57-79.
Hager, M. A., & Brudney, J. L. (2011). Problems recruiting volunteers: Nature versus nurture. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 22(2), 137-157.
Bekkers, R., & Wiepking, P. (2011). A literature review of empirical studies of philanthropy: Eight mechanisms that drive charitable giving. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 40(5), 924-973.