← Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Digital Threads: A New Approach to Digital Marketing with Neal Schaffer
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- [00:00]
Julia Campbell
Imagine nonprofit work transformed by purpose built tools. That would mean less guessing and more connecting, less admin and more impact, less stuck and more go. With the giving platform built for purpose, you don't have to imagine Bloomerang can help you raise more funds, retain more donors, save more time, and grow stronger relationships with your supporters so you can spend time on what matters most, your mission. Want to see how over 20,000 nonprofits are using Bloomerang to raise, retain and recruit more supporters? Well, take a free on demand tour of the giving platform today. Go to jcsocialmarketing.com forward/bloomerang. That's jcsocialmarketing.com Forward/Bl O O M E R A n G okay, onto the show. Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effect build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the podcast. This is Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell. Today we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics, digital marketing, but more specifically, a new approach to digital marketing. So nonprofits of all sizes, we know that digital engagement is pretty much essential, but too often our marketing efforts feel disconnected. So all of the social media, posting, emails, fundraising campaigns, website updates often can feel like separate pieces of a puzzle rather than a cohesive strategy. So enter my friend Neal Shaffer, a leading authority on digital transformation and sales and marketing, and the author of the new book Digital Threads. So Neil's going to show us how nonprofits and businesses can use this new and innovative marketing approach to create stronger relationships and to create more sustainable growth in the digital space. So, Neil, welcome. And I cannot believe I have not had you on Nonprofit Nation before.
- [02:53]
Neal Shaffer
Well, thank you so much, Julie. It's an honor to be here. And yes, it's been a while and I think we've literally known each other for more than a decade, I want to say.
- [03:00]
Julia Campbell
Yes, absolutely. When I was starting my business, I started my business. In what year did I start it? 2011, I think. It's been a long time. It's been about 15 years. And yeah, blogging. And I know you have that. You said we were talking before, this is your fifth or sixth book, Digital Threads. So what were your other books?
- [03:23]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah, so I started my business in 2010, so right around the emergence of social media and understanding its potential. So my first two books, because I have a B2B background, were actually on LinkedIn. And I became known, that was 2009, 2011. I became known as like this LinkedIn expert. But I realized like, you know, there's probably a non profit listening saying, well, we, we're already on Instagram, we're already on Facebook. Why do we need to be on TikTok? But you can't be a one trick pony when it comes to social because you don't get to decide where people go and, and participate and eng. So that's where I realized, you know, I didn't want to be a one trick LinkedIn pony and I wanted to be able to handle all the challenges that businesses, nonprofits face when it comes to social media. So that led to my third book, Maximize youe Social, which was how to build a social media marketing strategy, which it was several years later, but right when Covid hit at 2020. My fourth book was the Age of Influence, about influencer marketing. And believe it or not, when I spoke in front of one of the top five pharmaceutical companies, that was the one concept that they were most excited about because I told them, for influencer marketing, your influencers are nonprofit communities that already have the audience that you want to engage with. So work more with nonprofits. Right. They are the influencers and that mindset shift really helped them. And then this year, well, I should say 2024, I published two books, an updated LinkedIn book called Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth. And then this book, Digital first. Or I said Digital Threads, which is about this digital first approach to marketing. I've been a fractional CMO in the last several years. So it's really, you know, the framework that I use my clients and just my recommendations for, for small businesses, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, anybody who, who needs a little bit of strategy and a little bit of focus in what they're doing online.
- [05:01]
Julia Campbell
Oh my listeners definitely need that and want that. So you have said that digital marketing today is broken. So can we start there? What do you mean by that?
- [05:11]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah, I guess there's a lot of different ways to look at it. I think that first of all, I think that a lot of people are still in a traditional marketing first approach. So if you've been Doing marketing for the last 10 or 20 years. You know, social, I mean, digital obviously emerge, social emerge. But it's always been this like one new thing you add to the way you've been doing things.
- [05:32]
Julia Campbell
Right? It's like an add on. I agree.
- [05:35]
Neal Shaffer
An add on. Right. Where what I'm saying is, and. And you know, I got really going with my fractional CMO work during COVID and I begin the book during COVID because that's when, I mean, think about it. How could you engage with people if you couldn't physically meet them? You had to engage in them digitally. And I think that, you know, people, consumers were already, you know, using these digital technologies more than anything else. They were consuming way more digital content than traditional content. So why not flip the script and say, hey, we need to be digital first with our marketing? And that's really the whole premise of the book. So as far as digital marketing being broken, I wouldn't say it's necessarily broken, but I think that sometimes we focus on the wrong things because we're still taking that traditional approach of promotion. And I have worked not nearly as many as you have, Julia, but I've worked with a few nonprofits locally here in Orange County, California. And it's always like, promote, promote, promote, right? It's we want to send an email blast and just that terminology, all the things that, the baggage that it carries with it. We might want to blog, but the blogging is just like self promotion and promoting, you know, fundraising activities that we're doing. And then the social becomes an extension of that as well. So that to me is not digital marketing. That to me is just promotion using digital channels. But still that old concept of the louder we get, the more people we reach, the greater benefits it'll have. But digital being broken is just, it's just changed, right? The search engines, algorithms have changed, you know, really significantly the last two years. We have the emergence of AI. Obviously, email has changed over time. There's a lot other technologies you can use to more personalize, to be able to send the right message to the right person at the right time. You know, marketing automation. And to me, the biggest change is social. So it's come out of nowhere. But yet for businesses and even nonprofits to really be heard, it's almost impossible. That's sort of the conclusion I've come to, is I really push not just influencer marketing, but there's a step before that, which is to really leverage and cultivate your fans and to leverage as much user generated as possible. Who Said that you as a nonprofit or business had to publish on social media. When it is for people, it is a people media. I know back in the day when Facebook pages were the rage ten years ago, and you would get this like viral word of mouth because at the time the algorithm, you know, there wasn't as much supply, there wasn't as much demand either. So business pages could send stuff out and nonprofits as well. And when someone liked it, it would go onto the feet of their friends, like you see on LinkedIn, which actually is the most viral network if you ask me today. So those days are long gone though. Like there's no viral word of mouth. I mean, maybe on TikTok for a chosen few and it's very random, but it's very, very hard to do that. So we need to get back to what social media was made for, which is for people. And we need to understand as, as a non person, we are participating on someone else's turf. So instead of looking at social media as a way to promote, let's look at it as a way to cultivate, develop relationships. And that's where really this concept of brand ambassadors, you know, your fans, user generated content, I believe all of that fits into that bucket. So, yeah, digital obviously is not completely broken, but when you look at it that way, I think, you know, the way that nonprofits should be using it and the current reality, and this reality has been going on for like a decade, I haven't seen. I'm sure there's some savvy nonprofits that listen to this podcast especially. But I think we can all agree and with businesses as well, there's still just this huge gap between what could and should be and where they are today. And I think it's, you know, it's as much that digital is broken as much as it is. They just don't have the education and understanding. They've never hired someone that had that understanding or they themselves are not consumers of that content. In social media. They don't utilize digital that much. So they don't see digital for what it is today.
- [09:15]
Julia Campbell
I agree. And we were sold a bill of goods when Facebook pages came out. We were all told we have to get a Facebook page. It's going to replace our website, it's going to replace email. We're going to be where people are, where they're having conversation with their friends and family. They're going to see, you know, we're going to fit in seamlessly. And then we didn't really know how to use it, we still don't really know how to use it. And it's a lot of just promoting events, promoting our agenda, promoting things that we want to see without fully stepping back and taking a bird's eye view of where and what social media was created for, which was to connect people with people and ideas and not as a promotional platform. And now, of course, it's kind of swung in the other direction where it's full of ads and full of promotion. So I think you're completely right that we were told way back when, oh, set up a Facebook page, set up, you know, when it was Twitter, set up even a company page on LinkedIn and people will find us and we don't have to actually go out to people and we'll be able to reach all of our fans and followers sort of for. For quote, unquote free. And we realized pretty quickly that was not the case. Right?
- [10:28]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah. I mean, you spend an hour or two on some canva graphic, you perfect it, you put it out there and you get like 20 impressions and one, like it's just, even a nonprofit, when I talk about roi, it's just using your time the right way so that it's an investment in your future, not a waste of time. Right. So. So yeah, there's, there's a new way of looking at it that hopefully by the end of this podcast, the listeners will understand and hopefully implement.
- [10:52]
Julia Campbell
Well, let's talk about the concept of the book Digital Threads. So really kind of what inspired you to write it and what, like, how is it different from traditional digital marketing strategies that we might have learned?
- [11:06]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah, great questions. And I wanted to write it because similar to my book Maximize youe Social In 2013, I work with a publisher called Wiley and they said, neil, just write, write a platform book based on the actual work that you do. So that really was based on my consulting and the framework and everything. So I wanted to get back to those roots and really publish the same type of book. Maximize your Social for me was also to say, hey, I'm not just this LinkedIn dude, right? Like, I get social across the platforms and the frameworks and everything. So for me, Digital Threads was sort of my coming out, out into digital marketing because I'm only known as a social media marketing person. And what I found was that I came out with the Age of Influence, this book on influencer marketing. Early 2020. I got loads of inquiries right around Covid. So people are more used to now working with people remotely. They could only work with people remotely and they all thought that influencer marketing was a solution to their problems.
- [12:00]
Julia Campbell
They always do. They're like, it's social media, it's LinkedIn.
- [12:04]
Neal Shaffer
Yes.
- [12:04]
Julia Campbell
Influencer marketing grasping. Yes.
- [12:07]
Neal Shaffer
And it's sort of like, you know, I don't know, I use a lot of different analogies, but it's sort of like going to an expert and telling the expert that you need help with this when you don't let the expert ask you questions to find out what the real issue is. And what I realized was what these companies wanted to achieve with influencer marketing, they could often better achieve through other digital marketing channels or digital marketing means. So for instance, you know the startup that says, we want to engage with influencers, they're on Instagram, they have a hundred followers, maybe they have five posts. So just think ahead. First of all, an influencer is not going to want to work with you. They would rather work with reputable brands. And if they are going to work with you, they're probably going to charge you a lot of money, number one. Number two, when the influencer talks about you and they tag you, what are their fans going to say when they go to a profile? That's like a ghost town. So.
- [12:57]
Julia Campbell
Right. They have to think about their reputation as well. I completely see that.
- [13:02]
Neal Shaffer
So really, it was just going to be a big waste of money like so many had done in influencer marketing in the early days when they were chasing vanity metrics like likes and what have you. And that's where I realized that there's a lot of other things out there. And I started, you know, speaking about this and I said, hey, when it comes to digital, right, social is only one part of it and there's all these other parts. So I used to have a slide that showed the six, the six fundamental, I call them containers of digital marketing in the book. But then I dumbed it down even further. I love to dumb things down. And so I came up with what I call the SES framework. So really, when we think of all the different things we can do in a digital marketing, let's dumb them down into three big silos.
- [13:38]
Julia Campbell
Distill them. We're going to say distill, distill.
- [13:40]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah. Better use of the English language. Thank you. And they're not even.
- [13:43]
Julia Campbell
It's not dumb. I know what you're saying, though.
- [13:45]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah, they're not even silos. But, you know, I basically call it the SES framework. S stands for search, E stands for email, and S stands for social. And it's pretty much when people are consuming content or when they're online. Pretty much these are the three main areas where we can influence them. Right? And search is not just search engines. We know, we now know it is also AI search engines or just AI chats. But it's also ask someone on Gen Z, you know, when they're going to buy something, where do they go to look, look for opinions on it. They're going to go to TikTok. Right? For many, YouTube is a search engine. Social media can be a search engine, right? And then we have email and email is this. You know, I cannot emphasize how valuable enough it is that every subscriber should be a valuable asset. Not to be spammed on a weekend, week, week out basis, but really to cultivate a relationship over time to feed them, you know, information and content they really want to consume that will make them a more loyal fan of your organization. And the social part is only one of these two parts. And I realized that, you know, over time people have like, oh, the old digital, we get that it's all about social media. When it's like, no, there's still so much you can do on the search side, on the email side that you haven't done. So let's take social for what it is. It's another place to get discovered. It's also a great place to cultivate relationships. When you cultivate those relationships, you want to bring them back to your email at the end of the day, right? Same with search. Search is all about discoverability. But at some point you need to develop that relationship and that's often done through email and hopefully after email, through in person events or fundraising or whatever you do. So in this way I sort of recalibrated hopefully what people think of digital marketing. But also anything you do should be fitting into one of these three channels or one of these three. Not silos, but containers, whatever we want to call them. So you know, you need to be discoverable. And if you're not doing anything to be discoverable, you need to start doing something that will help you get discoverable. You need to then have the email. You need to be able to keep in touch and find a way to do that. I call them communication pathways. There's many different ways in which we can keep in touch without it being spammy by, by, you know, providing value. And then we have the social side, which is really about relationships, right? Yes, there is a discoverability part to it as well. But think of it more for relationships. And that in essence is the way that I see and the way I talk about in digital threads, this framework that digital marketing, if you pick up a digital marketing textbook, social media is an afterthought. It probably don't even mention influencer marketing or user generated content. Right. So that's why I felt that I needed to write a book that would newly define digital in the age of social media that put everything in order. And there is an order of things as well, Julia, that I go through in the book. And I thought about like, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs and yes, Maslow's.
- [16:29]
Julia Campbell
Internet hierarchy of needs.
- [16:31]
Neal Shaffer
I thought about it and you know, my, my editor's like, well, there's some people that actually don't have a positive opinion of that online. I don't know. So I, I thought, you know, I, I'm not going to give it some framework and some name, but just knowing that you can't get to influencer marketing without actually having fans and followers and content. Right? You can't get brand ambassadors without first having user generated content. And you can't get user generated content without first timing fans. As an example, you can't get to marketing automation without an email list. You're probably not going to be able to build an email list without a lead magnet. So I realized that no one was talking about the order of things and that is another concept that I introduced in the book. So I'm hoping, I know this is a lot to consume, but I'm hoping all this in its weird way makes sense.
- [17:10]
Julia Campbell
So tell me more about the order. So I want to go through the framework. The first piece is search being discoverable. What are the platforms we're using? What are some of the strategies we're using for this piece of the framework?
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Neal Shaffer
So search becomes with being discoverable. And the only way to get discoverable is to be online and you need to have content. So I bring up this concept of library of content. You know, if you're a nonprofit for whatever cause that you're trying to draw attention to, if I was to ask you a question, you would probably be able to tell me a story of how you help someone or why you're doing this or. Well, this cause is more important than that cause or not to like compete, but people miss. These are the top 10 reasons why people misunderstand this cause. This is how government is helping this cause or maybe not helping this cause. So there's a lot of these topics that you can talk about that become part of what I call library content. And the way that it works is if you're a business, I think it's a lot easier, I think with, with some nonprofits, you know, I don't know where keyword research is going to take you in terms of search demand for your causes, although that there still might be a way to work that. But when I talk about people are.
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Julia Campbell
Looking for resources in their community, you know, like food bank in my area, something like that.
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Neal Shaffer
Got you. So those are the types of things where if you can try to figure out what are the things that people are searching for that you can help. That's really where I start and I talk about and I go through in the book of how to build. I call it a library of content. But it's really the concept is if you can blog about something once a week for a year, you have now shown the search engines you have authority in a subject.
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Julia Campbell
Yes.
- [18:47]
Neal Shaffer
So that the next time they want to display content about something, your content naturally should rank a little bit higher. Obviously, with the helpful content update, it's not just about authority in a topic. But even with the helpful content update, having a library of content is really critical because it gives you sort of this library to work with. It's important for generative AI, not generative AI, but you know, ChatGPT, the large language models. Also, we're finding that people and brands and companies and organizations with lots of mentions throughout the Internet tend to get indexed and tend to be mentioned when people ask for what are some nonprofits in my area or what have you. So it's also important for that. But then also with the help of AI and generative AI, we can now begin to repurpose these assets into email sequences. I have clients, they sell nutritional supplements. They'll have a blog post of 5 reasons why this nutritional supplement is, you know, good for you. And they'll create an Instagram reel out of it. They'll create a TikTok out of it. Right. So it's this ability now to be able to seamlessly publish content in our voice on these different platforms in these different formats, which I think is where we all want to get to in modern marketing. It really starts with having the content. And if you can have it in a way, I think a blog post gives you the chance to tell stories and it gives you enough to. To be able to establish your voice and to be able to give details. And if you can get some search engine traffic from that as well, great. But if not, it still becomes a utilitarian tool that helps you become discovered. Wherever people are, are going to discover you. And it's one of these things that weaves together these digital threads because the content can be used in email and social as well. So that's really step number one. You can't become discoverable without content.
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Julia Campbell
So you find that the best way for. For us to create content that is searchable is through a blog or something that lives on our website.
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Neal Shaffer
Absolutely.
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Julia Campbell
And then repurposing it to the other channels.
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Neal Shaffer
Okay, yeah.
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Julia Campbell
That's what I did for years and years and years. I don't. I do have a. The podcast now, so I don't write my blog as much, but I've done. I did that for years just trying to provide value and answer questions and be helpful so that people would find me and then trust me. And it's all part of that, building that trust.
- [20:55]
Neal Shaffer
A podcast is another way. You don't necessarily have to blog. You can podcast, you can do YouTube videos. Right. It's the same concept. But I'll tell you, Julia, what I do with my podcast is I have a subdomain on my website, so my podcasts live there and their transcripts get indexed. But getting to the social part and discoverability. LinkedIn loves newsletters. And I look at my analytics and, you know, video versus carousel versus photo versus text versus link. My newsletters get the most impressions and they get subscribers that then I can look at who's subscribing and reach out to them. So I will, through the help of, you know, ChatGPT, repurpose that blog post, that podcast. Sorry, in my own voice and tone, to be able to create a summary of it, to publish as a LinkedIn newsletter with a little Spotify embed that also promotes the podcast. And this is one way in which we can, you know, AI should ideally, and I know this, this episode's not just about AI, but it allows us to amplify everything, what we do in these different formats.
- [21:50]
Julia Campbell
I completely agree. I teach Social Media for Social Good Academy, and I'm running it right now. And I have an entire module on content creation. And of course, I've been teaching it since 2020, so it's evolved over the years. But I see generative AI and these large language models as a really invaluable partner in repurposing content that you already have into these other formats, like you said, so you can do more with things that you already have. And we. My gosh, if your nonprofit has been around for 20, 25, 30, 35 years, think about the content on your website. Think about your stories and your annual reports and your newsletters and your just fantastic, you know, all of these resources on your website. So we don't want people to be thinking they have to reinvent the wheel and rewrite something completely brand new on every platform they can really use and leverage assets that they have, create this library and then just amplify them using these other platforms. I think that's, that's a really great.
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Neal Shaffer
Strategy and I'll take it one step further.
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Julia Campbell
Sure.
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Neal Shaffer
You know, the library of content, I, I thought of the concept really before the emergence of ChatGPT, or it really wasn't in mind. But with ChatGPT and having this library of content, I also teach a class on personal branding and I like to talk about a database of stories, a story database. So if you were to go in all those blog posts where you have all those stories and really cut and paste them and put them into a separate document. Right. And maybe you have 100 stories. And then tell ChatGPT with every newsletter, with every social media post, I want to tell one of these stories in order or whatever you think is most relevant. This is, I mean, large language models are great at like, piecing together seemingly irrelevant, different things into one. And the beautiful thing is it's all you. It's your voice, it's your tone, it's your story. Right. It's AI assisted, but everything is. Will become AI assisted, like everything is Internet assisted. Right. That's the direction we're all going over the next few years. So equivalent to digital threads in this Digital First Marketing actually just published a podcast today about AI First Marketing. So the digital is for the external engagement people. The AI first is really with the internal, your own operations of being able to do more with less, which I think every nonprofit would love to be able to do. So that's how you separate, like the AI and the digital first.
- [24:14]
Julia Campbell
The E part of the framework is around email, which I know I teach and talk about and stress and prioritize. And email is not going anywhere. So how does it fit into this framework?
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Neal Shaffer
So here's the thing. You have your library content, and the way that I wrote the book is you start to see some traffic from search engines. What happens to the 99.9% of people who come to your website yet don't donate, don't fill out a contact form, don't join an event that you're. You're hosting. You have no way of keeping in touch with them. So they found you and then they're gone. And the only way to keep in touch with them is to acquire their contact information. And this is mainly done through an email address, through something we call lead magnets. So that's really the first part of the framework of this. You know, the order of things for email is to figure out a way to be able to keep in touch with a website visitor and a lead magnet. And we talk a lot about it in marketing, obviously. But for nonprofit, it could be, I mean, it could be a variety of things and go to any e commerce shop and immediately you get this 10% off coupon if you join our email list. Right. So I think for nonprofits there's still a script to be written. And maybe, Julia, you might have had some ideas of working with nonprofits before. Maybe it is a handbook. Food banks near me. Well, maybe you already have a list and you've reviewed them and you have pictures and you have directions and you could create a little PDF out of that. Right. Hey, you know, download this for free. This will save you time or whatever it is. It could be a webinar, it could be an event, it could be so many things. But the idea is that you're trying to build this, I call it the funnel of digital relationships. You're trying to take them down to the next layer where you get to know each other because you can contact them directly.
- [25:49]
Julia Campbell
Oh, I love. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And we control our email list.
- [25:55]
Neal Shaffer
Yes.
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Julia Campbell
And we do not control the S, the final S in the framework, which is social. So when you're talking about social, what are you talking about? What constitutes the third part of the digital threads framework?
- [26:09]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah, so I begin with social. That. I'm really sorry, but as a nonprofit or as a business, you have to compete with content creators, with influencers.
- [26:20]
Julia Campbell
Uh huh. Yeah, like Mr. Beast and.
- [26:22]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah, so you can do what, what some political parties might be doing, which is paying off influencers to talk a lot on certain social networks. Or you can hire someone. I mean, even Disney locally here in California has hired like TikTok influencers to become content creators. You can work with college interns, which you should be doing anyway, to find those that are really good at content creation. But really the conclusion I've come to, Julia and I, in the book, I show a graph of the percentage of traffic that I've generated from social media over the last decade. Every year it goes down and down and down. So we began a decade ago that, as you mentioned, the promise of social media, it's going to generate all this website traffic for us. But those days are long gone. So we have to think of social media differently. So actually I think the first step is understanding that every social media platform wants to keep users on the platform. They don't want them to go elsewhere. They also prioritize certain formats. It's not just a text, it's not just a link, it's not even just a simple photo anymore. Just when we get used to Instagram and we're able to create Instagramable images now it's short form video, which you know, for a lot of nonprofits and businesses is very challenging. So it's really understanding that the only way to be seen, the whole idea of social media is to be seen in the news feeds, to be able to cultivate relationships. And I believe with our own content, unless we're paying for the privilege, it's going to be very, very hard to do. And I'm not recommending you pay for it either because there are some that see a paid ad as a paid ad and they just skip right over it. So really the only authentic to get word of mouth happening in social media is not from your own content, but from those of your customers, your fans, your donors, your board, whoever it might be to encourage them to talk about you. And this is where really I go into the concept of user generated content, right? If you are like an E commerce brand, you could send out free gifts and if they like it, they might post about it on social media, right? But if you already have, you know, donors, a testimonial from a donor is a type of user generated content, right? Recording people's conversations at one of your events. It could be like a speech by your founder that you can repurpose into various short form videos which I think might be a little bit better than like a pre designed Canva template. So for nonprofits, I think getting that user generated content might be a little bit challenging as it is for for profits, but it just requires a little bit of creativity. You know, number one, are people already talking about us? And if they are, can we reach out to them and say, hey, we love, we'd love to share your content on our socials. You're okay with that? And if they're like a donor, they should say yes. And this is where, you know, you can go out to people that may not be affiliated with any nonprofit, but they're talking about things that are important to your cause, you can reach out to them as well. I had someone just a few days ago send me an Instagram DM where you know, we're a nonprofit. We are a nonprofit school. We're helping homeless children with education. Would you mind like collaborating with us and publishing content, you know, to promote awareness of our nonprofit. This is something where if someone is already talking about that issue, I'd reach out to them. I mean, I would first engage with them and follow them and comment and, you know, build some rapport. But you can say, hey, you know, would it be okay if we reshare your content on our post on our channel? Because it's so much aligned with what we're doing. They don't have to be a donor, right? There's still tremendous value from developing that relationship. You begin to see rather than spending an hour or two on the camera design, you could spend an hour or two on searching and building rapport and building relationships. And once you get enough people talking about you, then you go to the next stage, which is really building a brand ambassador program, which is being able to pull these people together once a month, have a campaign saying, hey, you know, this month is whatever month. Would you mind publishing? You know, do you have plans to publish content about this? Let us know, tag us, what have you, and you go from there. So that's really, you know, the way that I will would hope nonprofits will begin to look at social media more of in building that up from, from your own media. And your blog is your own media, your email is your own media. With social, it's challenging. So really looking at cultivating relationships, generating user generated content, using that user generated content and then building a team of brand ambassadors, social media brand ambassadors out of that, that you can really, you know, call into next time you have an event, right? Or whatever, Tuesday campaign, right, Whatever it might be. These are going to be your most loyal fans. You've already built the rapport with them. They're already talking about you. That becomes this, this great asset that over time others might want to join. They're like, oh my gosh, like you're publishing amazing content. How do I, how do I take part in this, in this program, Right? So at the end of the day, if you have enough funding, right, you can begin with so many people talking about you built up this reputation, you could begin. I mean, you hear stories of nonprofits that have collaborated with celebrities. Well, if there is a celebrity that is in favor of your cause, don't reach out to them right away. Reach out to them after you have all this word of mouth and you have followers and engagement, they might be a little bit more interested in working with you at that point. So that's really the final stage. I call them external influencers versus all these other internal influencers. And, and don't forget your board members, right? Don't forget your employees. Employee advocacy. This is all part of the internal influencers as well.
- [31:31]
Julia Campbell
So which social media platforms should we be focusing on? And I get this question all the time, and I know there's not really one size fits all, but in, in 2025, where we are right now, which social media platforms do you find most exciting and which ones should we maybe prioritize?
- [31:51]
Neal Shaffer
Well, I don't want to say you need to be on all of them because you knew I'd say realistic. But it comes down to two things. Number one, it comes down to your demographic. You need to be where your audience is. And we know, although there's definite overlap, we know that Gen z lives on TikTok, we know millennials live on Instagram. Facebook is the old people's network it's become. And LinkedIn is so strong, we've seen an exodus of a lot of people from Twitter after they go to the Mastodon or Blue sky and they end up on LinkedIn. I've heard that anecdotally quite a bit recently. So I think the major networks are there. I did not mention Snapchat because the way that Snapchat works, it's more of direct messaging rather than discoverability. I did not mention Pinterest because, I mean, go for it. But if I was to pick a laundry list, it would not be top priority just based on users and the way it's used. Although some might find, you know, some might find success there. I would focus on the bigger networks that I just talked about and then YouTube, obviously. And the beautiful thing is, so that's number one is the demographics and YouTube obviously is everybody. Number two is really what content can you create, repurpose or leverage or source user generated content for? So if you can get short form video, you can literally post that exact short form video. I mean, for each platform, add a little bit of, you know, local native stickers and, you know, native music, what have you. But you could literally post that. And this is what I'm doing. You could post on all these networks and begin to see where your audience is based on where the algorithm delivers it because the algorithms have gotten so good, they will find you your audience. Right? So, you know, after publishing five to ten short form videos on YouTube versus Instagram versus TikTok, I think you're going to figure out by the number of impressions you get where your audience is, in all honesty and you're going to find that even on a platform like TikTok, you're going to be surprised. You're going to get some impressions. Right? You'll probably get the fewest impressions on Facebook, believe it or not. Well, actually we all know that's true, but, but anyway, so yeah, you know, if you have the right format, it really doesn't matter. Having short form video gives you the ability to publish it everywhere. So that's really where I would focus on. But, but obviously focusing just on those big networks and you don't have to do all of them. Pick two or three. Pick two. Pick one. But get started and really focus and try to build relationships. There would be. And you know, of all of these, when we think about board members and if it's professional related, we have LinkedIn. I think for everybody else, Instagram has almost become this global, very open, warm environment where I'm assuming you're publishing visual content that, that might be the one that I recommend over a Facebook. Just because you got political stuff going on there. It's. You got all sorts of stuff going on there that we don't see as much of on Instagram. So if I had to pick one, you know, Instagram or LinkedIn, those might be the ones I pick. But once again, it's going to come down to your specific cause and the specific demographics of, of the people that you're trying to get in front of.
- [34:34]
Julia Campbell
Exactly. I Check Instagram and LinkedIn most frequently if I think about, if I think about what I use. Personally, I do like TikTok. I don't post on it, but I check it. I've been liking Blue Sky a lot, but of course it always changes. And YouTube, of course, I'm on YouTube all the time, but I use that for a search engine. So I think the points you, the points you picked out using the platforms for what they're best used for, understanding your audience and understanding your goals and what you can really create content for. I have a question about like, how if we're managing all of this, we're managing search on a website, maybe a podcast or a blog, email and then a few social media platforms. How do we maintain like, brand cohesiveness and consistency? How do you recommend, like, what are your tips for maintaining our voice and for just being consistent?
- [35:24]
Neal Shaffer
It sounds robotic, but this is actually where AI can help you the most because you can, you can give it samples of your writing, you could give it your brand style guidelines, your voice guidelines. Past blog posts. In fact, I would recommend going into, you know, finding your. Your most popular, most clicked email newsletters, social media posts that perform the best, you know, blog posts that got the most search engine traffic, and create what we call custom GPTs, you know, and feed them like, hey, these are my top 10 blog. But this is the voice and tone. These are style guidelines. Everything that comes out of this conversation, this custom GPT must be aligned with that. And I would do the same for email and social because they're all a little bit different. With social, I pretty much create, you know, for LinkedIn, Facebook, I create something very similar. And then for threads, I didn't talk about threads, but it's also another network that's just easy to repost on for threads and Twitter, more short form, I might publish another version, but. But yeah, I think the AI will ensure more better than a human can ensure that everything is aligned. And to give you the confidence, even if you have an intern and you've given them access to your, you know, your account, that they'll be able to create content that is aligned 100% with your brand guidelines. And I know it's. It sounds contradictory, but I have found that to be the best solution there.
- [36:39]
Julia Campbell
Yeah, I totally agree. I have a custom GPT that I built on ChatGPT that I show my students, and I entered in my books, my blog posts, as many podcasts as I could, webinars that I've done, slide decks that I've done. And basically the custom GPT I can put, I can write something and then I can say, oh, it doesn't really sound like me, or I don't like it. And I can ask the custom GPT, say, make this sound more like Julia, or does this sound like me? Or, you know, is this consistent with my brand voice or consistent with other things that I've said? And it's really helpful. It's almost like having, you know, that second set of eyes on your content that knows you better than that, knows you better than pretty much anyone else.
- [37:26]
Neal Shaffer
So. And you try it, right? Every.
- [37:28]
Julia Campbell
You have to train it. It's like anything else, like an intern or an assistant.
- [37:31]
Neal Shaffer
I would never say this. So in the future, first of all, please revise and in the future, please never say this again, because.
- [37:37]
Julia Campbell
Yes. Oh, my gosh, I hate the word unlock and I hate the word impact. Maximize impact. Or, you know, there are certain phrases that I would never use in real life. And you can say that. Exactly. You can add those words or words that you would like to use. So I think that's really helpful.
- [37:55]
Neal Shaffer
Like distill.
- [37:57]
Julia Campbell
Distill. Exactly. Instead of dumb down. So for, for the nonprofits listening, they're executives, they're marketers, they're fundraisers. If they want to start implementing what you've learned or what you have explained about digital threads. First of all, I do recommend everyone get the book. But what is the very first step you think they could take today to improve their digital threads strategy?
- [38:21]
Neal Shaffer
Wow. I think it's really to take a step back and going through everything that, you know, you and I discussed is really in one piece of paper. Redefine why you are doing what you're doing in search, email, social. That is probably the first really important step because. And go through all the different things you're doing. Some of them you may not even need to do, in all honesty. So, you know, the search part is, well, are you, are you publishing content? Do you have a library of content? Have you done keyword research? Is, you know, there's still, I'm sure a lot of nonprofits, like a lot of small businesses don't have blogs. So that's number one on the email. Do you have an email list? Are you nurturing it? Have you emailed them in the last six months? Right. You know, at a minimum, like once a month. You want to keep in touch. And on the social side, what are you doing? What, what is your social strategy? Do you already have people talking about you? Can you build a fan base from that? That's really where I'd start. And you know, with digital threads, I actually published. Hold on one second, I'm gonna go and get it.
- [39:20]
Julia Campbell
Okay. I love the COVID of your book and people can't see it, but I'll put the link into the show notes. I love the COVID of digital threads. This is something that's pretty cool. It looks very organic.
- [39:32]
Neal Shaffer
People won't be able to see this as well, but in like the first few pages of the book, I created a companion workbook that's free to download. There's a QR code, so there's actually you could buy the physical version on Amazon. But Bean and Julia, I know that you teach as well. I teach. So I really utilized all of my experience teaching to create a workbook. So instead of like a companion course, if you go through the workbook, there's literally three or four different exercises per chapter. And it's a 20 chapter book. So you got like 60 exercises, 100 pages. And if you just go step by step, that will help you that will handhold you through this process that we're talking about.
- [40:06]
Julia Campbell
Oh, I love it. Where can people find the book and connect with you, Neil? Online. I know you're on LinkedIn.
- [40:12]
Neal Shaffer
Yes. Well, you can find the book wherever you buy books. So just search for digital threads. It's available in E book, audiobook, paperback, hardback, however you like to consume. My name is Neal Shaffer. I am the real Neil. So it's any al, S, C, H, A, F, F, E, r. So Neil Schaefer.com, neal Schaefer and all the socials, and I also have a podcast called your digital marketing coach. So wherever, however you like to consume, engage, hopefully go find me.
- [40:37]
Julia Campbell
I love that. And it was so wonderful to catch up and see everything that you're doing and learn about your book and your journey. And this has just been so helpful. So I really appreciate you taking the time, Neil.
- [40:49]
Neal Shaffer
Oh, well, thank you, Julie. And you know, I wanted to say because, you know, as I was talking about Pinterest, I remember that used to. You've. You've done a lot.
- [40:55]
Julia Campbell
I think I did a Taurus on Pinterest. I taught, I definitely taught about it years ago.
- [40:59]
Neal Shaffer
Yeah. I want to say that even today, for many years, Twitter drove the most traffic to my website. That ended around October because I recorded an episode. It's really become political media now, not social media. And that's the way to look at Twitter. But Pinterest was always my number two. Pinterest is my number one. So now I've been on Pinterest, like you, for more than a decade. So I'm not going to say that it doesn't work, but it can work. And so if anyone listening because you've been following Julia for years is on Pinterest, I wouldn't give up. The days of static posts are back and, you know, fresh pins are all the rage. And there's a way to use AI to be able to create a lot more fresh pins and tools, what have you. So, yeah, if you haven't started on Pinterest, I don't think you need to. I'd focus on the other networks, but if you're already on it, I wouldn't get rid of it. And I would look at your analytics and see if you're already getting some traffic from there. You might be able to 2x3x.
- [41:49]
Julia Campbell
That, that is so interesting. I do get a lot of blog post traffic from Pinterest as well. And like you said, I mean, I've left X when it was purchased by Elon Musk. So I've been gone for a while, but it drove a lot of traffic and that's unfortunate and it's hard to gain that again. But it just goes back to diversifying what we're doing on digital and not relying on one platform over another because there's just the changes keep coming.
- [42:17]
Neal Shaffer
It's like, yeah, you know, I'm still on X, but I just use it to amplify the voices of the good guys and block the bad guys. So.
- [42:24]
Julia Campbell
Oh good, I should be using it for that. I should. I love that. All right, well, I will put all of the links in the show notes and everyone I recommend the book, recommend following Neil on his podcast, his blog, and all of the content that he creates. So thank you again, Neil. Hopefully I'll be able to see you in person soon.
- [42:43]
Neal Shaffer
Hope so, Julia. Thank you.
- [42:51]
Julia Campbell
Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact.
- [43:19]
Neal Shaffer
Impact.
- [43:19]
Julia Campbell
So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram. Juliacampbell77 Keep changing the world, you nonprofit unic.