Social Media Improves Advocacy

by Juliette Rivers, Bandology staff

Nonprofits have beliefs that they aim to bring attention to and strive to offer solutions to these causes. Bandology believes in music education and works their hardest to bring more music to more kids. Social media is a great tool for raising the awareness of a specific issue. It is a platform designed specifically for getting noticed.

Social Media Makes the User More Identifiable

All social media is governed by followers, likes, and shares. The main factor in determining how many of each of those analytics a brand gains on a given platform is its brand voice. Brand voice is a kind of brand image that represents how that company is viewed when looking through the lens of the platform. Using social media to relay this image to the audiences over and over again makes it easier to identify the company. This makes the company’s mission, values, and beliefs more well known. The more well known the brand voice becomes, the more likely a nonprofit is automatically associated with the conversation they advocate for. To Bandology, this means using social media to perpetuate our brand voice, which makes it easier to have a say in the conversation of getting more music to more kids. The same is true for other nonprofits – social media delivers messages (through algorithms and hashtags) to the audiences who care about a cause. Repeated exposure to your brand’s messages will make you synonymous with the cause. This makes it easier for potential partners, parents, and more to discover and understand what a nonprofit represents and stands for.

Using social media to communicate brand voice does many things. It:

Helps develop customer relationships
Helps Bandology become more recognizable
Builds trust for future relationships
Creates a community that stands behind and with the company

Social Media Makes the Cause More Relevant

On social media, each conversation topic has a certain number of listeners. The more listeners a brand has the larger the piece of that conversation the company has. This is referred to as a company’s share of voice. It’s a measure of how many people know your brand, which helps us stand out. This also means that the number of followers you have on the platform is a tangible indicator of how many people care about the cause your nonprofit is fighting for. In short, the more people who know about you, the larger your stake in those conversations.

Methods for improving share of voice include:

Being active on social media channels.
Engaging your audience rather than just posting. This means building a community through your brand by: responding to comments, answering direct messages, and tagging/mentioning musicians/performers in posts. This also involves interacting with the posts of other organizations in the same conversations that your nonprofit is a part of.
Creating content that your followers will want to share so that they increase the size of the conversation.

Social Media Brings Credibility

Another main improvement social media makes for nonprofits, is that it brings credibility. Likes and comments show tangible proof that users approve/agree with what’s being said. This means that as a page grows and the posts gain more engagement, it can stand as tangible proof that parents/individuals care about the cause. Each like signifies that the conversation is relevant and important.

In short, social media makes a brand more identifiable and that gives them a larger say in the advocacy of a given topic. It also increases the awareness of an issue by sending the messages to users who are concerned with that topic. Social media makes it easier for a nonprofit to achieve its goals by generating awareness for both the company and its cause unlike any other available method.