Any nonprofit engaging in social media should have a plan to keep their efforts focused.  Also, one needs to make sure that the social media plan is in line with the rest of the organization’s efforts.  Therefore, before defining the social plan make sure to review the other organizations relevant strategic documents.  If your organization does not have these documents they should be created before pursuing social media, because they drive the direction of the whole organization.

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1. Organizational Plan – The organizational plan is created to provide direction for the entire organization to adhere to its mission while reaching its vision. Make sure to review the organization’s values and brainstorm how to adhere to while acting through social media efforts. Finally, analyze how the organizational strategies can be applied to social media so you do not have to reinvent the wheel.
2. Marketing Plan – The two main components of a marketing plan are who the organization is trying to reach, how they are going to drive them to action.  The organization could be focusing one thing or a few, just make sure you know so you can align the social media efforts with the rest of the marketing efforts.
3. External Research – After understanding your organization’s strategies, it is important to do research on relevant externals.  This includes your competitors/similar organizations and what they are doing for marketing and social media.  Also, make sure you understand those who you are targeting in the marketing plan to know where they are, what their interests are so you can plan how to engage them when writing the social media plan.After taking these three steps and understand both where your nonprofit wants to go and how they plan to do it.  You will be ready to start planning the best way to utilize social media by first starting with writing a social media objective.