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Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Harnessing Influencer Power: Transforming Nonprofit Marketing for Social Change
How can nonprofits leverage influencer marketing to create meaningful social change? Join us as Meghan Speer chats with Deanna Tomaselli from "The Motherhood". Deanna Tomaselli will share her expert insights on how influencers are transforming their roles from product promoters to advocates for important social causes. Discover how events of 2020, like the pandemic and social justice movements, have reshaped the influencer landscape, providing unique opportunities for nonprofits to raise awareness and support their missions.
Deanna Tomaselli is a results-driven, award winning communications professional with experience in consumer and B2B PR, marketing and social media in both agency and corporate settings, including Red Havas and rue21.
At The Motherhood, Deanna brings her vast skill set of social media, influencer marketing and traditional PR to flawlessly execute winning campaigns for clients.
Deanna was named one of Pittsburgh Magazine’s 40 Under 40 honorees, as well as Member of the Year by PRSA. She serves on the Slippery Rock University Communication Department Advisory Board and is past president of the Pittsburgh chapter of Ellevate, a global community of women, and was a board member of PRSA Pittsburgh.
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
If you're looking to maximize your fundraising efforts, donorbox's online donation platform is designed to help you reach your fundraising goals with ease. Discover the world of simplified, seamless fundraising at DonorBoxorg DonorBox helping you help others.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to another episode of the Nonprofit Hub podcast. My name is Megan Spear and I am your host today, and joining me is Deanna Tomaselli, who's the Vice President of Client Services at the Motherhood. Very excited to have Deanna on today to talk about the growing rise of influencer marketing for nonprofits, so I'm really excited to dig into that. Deanna, welcome to the show. Thanks, megan. I'm so excited to be here. Tell us a little bit about yourself and the motherhood as an introduction and then dig into what you all are doing with nonprofits right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. For myself, yeah, I've been with the motherhood about four years and my career started in agencies. I've really been in agencies the majority of my career PR and then moving over to more of like a hybrid PR marketing kind of role. I was also in corporate retail for four years. I worked for Rue 21 here in Pittsburgh. So I've had a wide variety of experience over the years, whether it be with nonprofits, retail, as I mentioned, a lot of health, pharma, that type of thing and I really got into influencer marketing.
Speaker 3:I read blogs in the early 2000s, like a lot of us did, and I have a blog and I still do, and I haven't posted for a while, but you know, kind of just fell into it accidentally one day reading them. You know the healthy living bloggers of the early 2000s were my favorites. And then, for a career standpoint, in about like 2013-ish, I did my first influencer campaign with Rue21. First they did a back-to-school thing, so I just like found people online and worked with them and gave them free clothing and that was very simple and easy. Then they launched a plus-size line maybe a year later. And then I worked with Gabby Fresh, who's, I think, still out there today and that was pretty cool. So that was like my first real campaign working with a manager negotiating. It was very, very early and since then I've done a lot more of it, especially now that I'm at the motherhood.
Speaker 3:And the motherhood has a really cool story because Cooper Monroe, our CEO, started the same way. She has a corporate PR communications background, like all of us do, and she was a new mom in the late 90s, early 2000s and she started a blog too, as just an outlet to share information online. You know a lot of moms were out there in that time and she actually turned it into a business model. She has a really cool story about you know. She posted something about Hurricane Katrina. When the levees broke she was like let's do something and help donate. And sure enough, she filled up trucks of stuff and sent it down there and it kind of went viral at the time before viral was even a thing and she made it into a business model.
Speaker 3:She was figuring it out in the early days and then made it into what's today as an influencer marketing agency. It wasn't even called influencer marketing then. It was still working with bloggers today as an influencer marketing agency. It wasn't even called influencer marketing. Then it was still working with bloggers and she was one of the first people to make sure to pay bloggers and influencers, because there's a lot of time that goes into it, as we all know today, and a lot of people are just like, oh yeah, still send them free product. That's fine and some people want to do that, but she was one of the first that was like no, no, this is actually a business and their time. Women have to pay for childcare, pay for materials, edit, develop it, all those things that go into it. So we really pride ourselves to be pioneers in this industry.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. So I think it's a misconception, right? Maybe we can do a little myth buster here. Do a little myth buster here. When you say influencer marketing to somebody, they envision the 20 something or teenage, like older teenager who is showing you how they do their makeup and talking about products, right, or like here's my green smoothie for the day, cause AG1 has sponsored my videos, right and those. We've all seen the pieces. And so I think, when we say influencer marketing for nonprofits, I was like, well, I don't have a physical product, I can't send them something, I can't, I'm not showcasing a new bronzer. So when we talk about it for nonprofits, what does that look like? And can you talk about some examples that you've seen work really well for nonprofits in terms of, maybe, awareness campaigns or even fundraising?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great question and I think people are still confused. You think of influencers. You think here's my outfit of the day, here's my smoothie of the day.
Speaker 3:Correct. Yes, so yes, that's alive and well and still going on, but the fact of the matter is, influencer has been exploded I don't recall the actual number that the industry is worth right now, but it's in the billions and it's gotten a lot of more competition, but I think in a good way, you know, you can find people that have specific things to talk about and it's not just about products anymore, and that's very important. You know you want to sell products or show awareness for that, but the awareness piece and I really think that 2020 was the turning point here, because we saw a really critical election, we saw the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the killing of George Floyd. There was a lot of pivotal moments in 2020. And people took the curtain down and spoke about things. People who might have never spoken about racial injustice spoke up. People were talking about vaccines. Some don't want to talk about that, and that's fine, but they have these platforms and they want to create awareness on things and you know it causes controversy. As we know, today more than ever, there's so much controversy online and so much fighting and this and that, but it's also opened the doors on a lot of things and a lot of awareness on important things like I mentioned. So while some influencers are just more fashion or beauty or that type of thing, and there's the YouTubers and those day in the life content, a lot of them are incorporating these movements or awareness issues into their content. They're more lifestyle and things like that.
Speaker 3:And you know an example we work with the nonprofit families fighting flu. They are in their 20th year. They were founded by several families who either lost a loved one to flu or they had a serious complication or, you know, developed sepsis or pneumonia and lost a limb or something like that. So, like very serious cases, a lot of them were children. So these families decided to get together and create more awareness on the importance of the flu vaccine and they were one of the pivotal players in getting the vaccine approved for those six months of age and older, because you know, maybe a four-year-old in the year 2000 was not getting a flu shot, but now they can. So they really are pivotal players in this and they still are. And they're actually, you know, with the negativity around the COVID-19 vaccine they've seen some hesitancy. So now is even more important than ever to get the word out about the flu vaccine, because it's been out since, you know, the 1940s and clearly it's been researched and everything. So we found a group of influencers to work with.
Speaker 3:This is our third year, so we've got a new team. We've got some people who've worked with us the last three years, some new faces, but either people who have personal flu stories, like we have one woman who her child was in the ER. She developed flu and then it turned into pneumonia. Her child had COPD at four or five years old. So sharing those personal stories that again, maybe if this was 2011, they weren't maybe talking about so much, but now it's like, yeah, my child didn't have the flu vaccine and she really got sick and it's been proven that the flu vaccine could help.
Speaker 3:So sharing, and this woman, you know she shares her smoothie in the morning too, but she's also talking about she's a mom, she's got five girls. So I think that's a really important thing that you can be very specific these days and finding people that either have a personal story and connection to your nonprofit or they are learning about it for the first time and are interested and want to share with their audiences. Researching, finding the right people for your campaign or for just your organization yeah, so within that, you are so spot on right.
Speaker 2:2020 changed the game for what we say online and how we go about some of those pieces, and I love that. Personally, I'm a big fan of the more authentic, more real, like here's who I am holistically, instead of just this tiny little piece of my life. I like the feel of all of that. So, if a nonprofit is looking to dip their toe in because nonprofits tend to be a little slower to adopt, is that something that you would say like? I'm going to liken it back to the beginnings of social media. So nonprofits kind of started to dip their toe in and by the time they really embraced it, they'd missed the boat and they were behind.
Speaker 2:Where for-profit and where kind of society was right On using social media for fundraising, for awareness, whatever the case may be, I think they were. We were slow adopters and so then we missed. Now we're playing catch up. Do you feel like we're in a similar place right now, or are we still in? It's OK to dip your toe and take your time, or is this something that? Nope, we're jumping on the bandwagon. It's time to go.
Speaker 3:Where are we in the timeline? Yeah, I totally agree that the social media piece was a little bit slower to adopt. But the good news is, if a nonprofit has never done influencer marketing, they're not necessarily behind, they just have an opportunity. And I think it's okay to dip the toe in and slowly start, because first of all you need to get comfortable, because these people don't work for your organization, you're just working with them. So you have to develop that trust. It's a two-way street. So a really good way that we've done it in the past with some clients is to do like an onboarding call and that's a way to kind of get to know each other. Like the nonprofit can tell their story, maybe the founders on the call maybe not, but some of the key team members or people who can tell the story well, and then the influencers can talk and say this is why I'm interested and they can kind of get to know each other.
Speaker 3:But I think starting slow is very important in influencer marketing for nonprofits because you know you don't want just anybody sharing your message. Anybody can share your message online. That's the fact of the matter. But with influencers you can build that trust and you can gain control, because you can put a contract into place and say, listen, if this is a good fit and we vetted you and you seem great, then we want to work together and here's the scope of work and here's what you're going to deliver and let's sign on it. So that way you're not just willy nnilly hoping this person posts and then you put together that briefing document and you have that onboarding call and you talk about those key messages for your organization.
Speaker 3:What are our goals? Do we want to fundraise? Do we want people to come to a walk? Do we want volunteers? And then what is the messaging behind that? And then you can really decide who you want to work with and have that kind of control and I hate to say the word control, but it's more comfortable and more apt to get your stakeholders on board because they know there's specific documents in place. We've vetted this person. You know we can do even a criminal background check on some folks to make sure they don't have a track record. They're credible. We've worked with pharma companies who we've looked to see if they're working with a medical professional who's an influencer, if they're not barred from their medical license. You know those steps to make people more comfortable so that you can both work together.
Speaker 3:So I think it's different than with social media, because social moves so fast and everything, and so does influencer. But you could at least lay the pieces and the foundation and test it with a few trusted influencers. Start there, measure your results and then keep building off of that and you can create really great ambassadors for your brand. And if it works out, their audience comes to know you because they're like oh, this influencer I've followed her for a year and she's talked about this nonprofit several times already. And she's talked about this nonprofit several times already and it's like, oh, it's very authentic. And of course it has to be authentic If it's like out of left field that they're talking about this already and it really doesn't fit their personal brand, people can see right through that. So there's a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes too, which is another thing that I don't think a lot of people still realize.
Speaker 1:I think it's getting there, but yeah, I think it's getting there, but yeah, I think the slow dip and delivers a user-friendly experience for your supporters. Design captivating donation forms, accept digital wallet payments, seamlessly monitor donations and automate receipt generation. Joining is a breeze, with no setup or monthly fees From customizable donation forms and four times faster, ultra-swift checkout to seamless in-person giving with DonorBox Live Kiosk. Donorbox makes giving simple and fast for your donors. Visit DonorBoxorg and unlock your full fundraising potential today.
Speaker 2:So I want to double back to something that you had said about. You know anybody can share your message online, right? It doesn't have to be the person, that national platform who's got hundreds of thousands of followers, or is there maybe a first step where we can kind of cultivate somebody internally? Have you seen that work at all? Or does it have to be somebody that starts with a giant platform?
Speaker 3:No, I think again that that crawl, walk, run, approach or that dip in your toe, all of the phrases there. No, it can certainly be someone that that crawl, walk, run, approach or that dip in your toe, all of the all the phrases there. No, it can certainly be someone with a smaller following, especially like if you are a nonprofit, who's local. I'm just going to use Pittsburgh as an example. You know, you can find someone in Pittsburgh who might have. You know, we've worked with someone as low as like 3000 followers, like 3,000 followers, but those very hyper-local, niche, nano-influencers, so to speak, they have really connected, engaged audiences, because if you're looking for someone who is local, chances are they're going to talk about their city a lot and they're going to already talk about initiatives going on in that local area and they've got a lot of local people following them, so you can start there. Or they just talk about a specific thing that's very specific to a group of people who might not be in that area. So I think starting small is good and even internally there's been organizations. There's a lot of employee-generated content now, or they're hiring their social person to develop the content, like the American Red Cross. I spoke with the woman that runs their TikTok and she started it very grassroots. She was just in her apartment and was like in her bathtub talking about if there's a flood, what to do or, you know, like things that people have in their houses that already made sense at. The American Red Cross already talked about she was being really savvy with that and she's not an influencer, but she made their organization more well known, especially on TikTok, and it was just cool to see how, you know, and in something like TikTok too, it takes a lot of hours to produce all the content, all the videos, and it doesn't have to be this beautiful content anymore that's very overly produced. It could be in this person's apartment who maybe has a ring light and a stand for their phone and develops the content and then, you know, works with somebody internally to edit it. So you know it still could be that way and I think that's a good way to start too is like maybe tapping someone in the organization that already works for you and maybe has an interest in it to start small like that, and then maybe they work one-on-one with an influencer who's maybe a bit smaller.
Speaker 3:We love nano-influencers.
Speaker 3:I think they're an important piece to the puzzle, because everyone has their own passions and things that they're sharing, and they could be small, but they could be mighty in terms of that message.
Speaker 3:And then, if you want to spread that reach around too, one thing we do is boost content a lot through meta and TikTok, so you could maybe have someone with the very small following, but they're producing amazing content for you, and then you can boost that content or use that content organically on your channel. So maybe you're getting some user generated content and then you're sharing it in your story or putting it in your email newsletter or something like that. You know, the content can really go far. Again, that's all in the scope of what you agreed upon, how the usage works and all of that, but that's something too, that organic content can be shared, as long as you credit the influencer in a certain amount of time after you've worked together. That's another great way to tap that person too and not have to go to someone with a million followers and spend thousands and thousands of dollars where you could do a smaller following and start there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so is there a specific demographic where influencer reaches best? So you say things like they're doing really well on TikTok, which to me implies a younger demographic, right? Whereas somebody says, oh, I'm doing all my stuff on Facebook, I'm like okay, so that to me implies maybe an older demographic and platform wise. So is there a way for influencer to kind of hit across the board, or does there need to be a separate strategy and kind of a different way of thinking about that content for each platform?
Speaker 3:That's a great question and I think, um, tiktok has typically skewed a bit younger, but I think as it grows, it has reached an older demographic there. I think they're slowly building up and I do think Facebook does skew older, but the thing is people are still across these channels and using it. So what I would recommend is you know to research and see, like, who your audience is right now, like how old are they and what platforms they're using. Do a little research on, like, current TikTok users, current Instagram users and things. I think Instagram still kind of reigns as the typical social channel that is most used, that most people are aware of and are using. But, like, say, you do want to reach an older demographic and your your content's on instagram. When you boost the content, like, facebook will generate that content into the, the face or the meta platform will generate it onto facebook and show people. Hey, um, here's some. Like. My dad loves to watch facebook reels and I'm like oh well, on instagram too.
Speaker 3:He's like did you see these real? I'm like, yeah, I did um.
Speaker 2:I saw it. Saw it on TikTok two years ago. Calm down.
Speaker 3:Exactly, exactly. So it's just a way of meta is great because you can reach the Facebook Instagram user. A thing that I like to do too is so say you're starting an influencer program from the start, like you're not never used it before. It's like maybe let's test Facebook and Instagram to start. But if you find an influencer who has a strong TikTok following or wants to reshare that on their TikTok, maybe start there and like, dip your toe in and see again with the dipping in the toes, see if that's resonating for a TikTok audience. So you know not to put all your eggs in one basket, but not to go too broad either, because you want to test and see. So maybe you start with one platform and see if that's working and then go on to the next one and to the next one. So you know, and it depends on your goals, because if you want brand awareness and you want to just get that engagement, you can see that too.
Speaker 3:And like, tiktok has a thing it's called a campaign or a comment anchor. So you can not, instead of saying link in bio, which you still can, the links in the comments. So if people are commenting you can say, hey, the links right here that type of thing and, like Instagram stories, you can put a link right into the story. So if you're trying to generate link, clicks over to your website, you know both are good for that type of thing too. But if you want a lot of views, tiktok your website. You know both are good for that type of thing too, but if you want a lot of views, tiktok might be better because you can get more reach there. So it really depends on goals your ought, who you're trying to reach and everything like that.
Speaker 3:But I think that Instagram and Facebook content is a really great first approach. Unless you do have that like super Gen Z audience, that makes more sense to start on TikTok. And then affordability too. You know TikTok is all video that you can do, still images too, and people are doing that more and more. But with Instagram you have the opportunity to do a feed post, which is sometimes less expensive to try than a reel, or you can do a story, which is less expensive. So you can test the waters too and do a few things of content on Instagram that are maybe a little bit more affordable before you go big and do like a huge TikTok campaign.
Speaker 2:Got it. So let's talk about those goals for a second, because, from your perspective, I think it's a little challenging sometimes to think about what goals are for a thing you've never done. Yeah, that's helped define. Do you see that these campaigns are more successful on the advocacy side, in terms of, like, hey, we have this message that we really need to get everybody on board with and we're trying to rally support? Is it better on getting out volunteers or getting people to an event or doing fundraising? What have you seen be the most successful use of influencer?
Speaker 3:Use of influencer to go. Maybe it's a specific page on your website or just the main page, but driving those clicks over the influencers can only do so much, so to speak, like they're doing a lot. They're producing the content, they're making people aware, and then that call to action is where you want the people to go. So if they're going over to your page, what are you offering there? What is the information? So if there's a walk going on, you drive them to the walk page and they can sign up right there, you know. Or maybe the influencers going to this walk and it's like, hey, I'm going to be meeting up with you all on Saturday for this walk, come join me, or something like that. So I think it's really about driving people somewhere to make an action, and you're not always going to see that action right away too. You do one influencer post. It's not going to generate fundraising forever. It's a slow drip that takes time. And we talk about the marketing funnel with the top of the funnel, awareness, which the marketing funnel is kind of cyclical. At this point, definitely more, not really a funnel. Yeah, more of a tornado. It is a tornado it is. So you know, you've got to also marry influencer with your other strategies you have going on. If you're doing digital advertising, if you have a social media campaign for your nonprofit, if you're doing digital billboards, whatever the case may be, it all needs to kind of sync up and work together because you can't just have a post and it go viral and then generate a million views to your website.
Speaker 3:That might happen sometimes, but the thought is to do that consistency and that voice to produce that amazing content for you, to make people more aware. You know we get inundated with content every day. Think about all the pieces of content you've seen. You know it's 1030 in the morning right now currently, but I've seen probably a thousand pieces of content already this morning, just like looking at my email. I had some influencer content this morning.
Speaker 3:So people need to remember it and we talked about AG1 at the beginning. We've seen it so much because of that consistency. And you don't have to have an AG1 budget. We all wish we did, but getting that consistency out and that repetitiveness. You know you don't want to be like nonprofit, nonprofit every single day for this influencer, but if they have a steady stream of content going, then people are more inclined to remember it want to participate or whatever, take that action. So I think that's a really important point too is like the influencers can do so much and then it's up to the organization to follow through and make it happen and drive the people to do whatever it is that they want them to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if somebody was ready, like you, this podcast has got them convinced. They're ready, they want to take, they want to get involved, they want to start using influencer right? Is that something that folks can connect with the influencer that they like on their own? How do we even get started? What's the way to reach out to somebody? What's?
Speaker 3:the process look like there. So, in a very dialed down way, that's the way to do it Reach out to that person. You know, say you want to reach out to an influencer, you can DM them, you can send them an email. They usually have their emails pretty readily available, but it is a process. A lot of influencers are pretty business savvy these days. So it's like, okay, well, what's the scope, what's the terms, what's this, what's that?
Speaker 3:So, putting together that strategy on your end, first of like, what do we want them to do? How much? How many pieces of content is it exclusive? You know, say you work for a nonprofit and you don't want them to work with any other nonprofits. That's going to up the budget too, because they're approached by many people. So you put exclusivity terms into place. Or if you're boosting that content, like I mentioned, they have to grant you access to their business manager on Meta so you can boost that content for a certain amount of time. That's not something that you know. Typically, when we're working with a new client, we don't have paid usage rights unless the client's asking for it. Then we negotiate that into their scope.
Speaker 3:So there's a lot that goes into place and you know some people who are maybe newer influencers or don't know as much as more of the seasoned ones might not be asking all those questions, but be prepared for those. So making sure to have that in place and having that fee ready to go, like you know, you could ask them what their rates are, but they might say what's your budget? And you could say, well, this is what we have to offer. And you know, I'm always upfront with people too. If the budget I have is not anywhere near their range, then I'm like you know what I want to be respectful of, what's good for you and what your rate is, because no two influencers have the same rate. It's very across the board. Some people might be astronomical, some people might not. If you are a nonprofit and your budget is small, you can be upfront about that and say listen, this is what we have to offer. Some people are more inclined to be like yes, I want to work with you if it's a cause or something that is really close to their heart. So yeah, I think just trying is the first step. You know, I always recommend to work with an agency like mine, but I also understand that budgets might not be there yet.
Speaker 3:So I think just putting a plan in place to begin with and then just reaching out to people and seeing, sometimes finding people is the hardest part too. There's a lot of those platforms out there that some of them do a decent job, but it's very much still very manual the process of finding people. And you know I've built relationships up with influencers over the years. The Motherhood's got a know. I've built relationships up with influencers over the years. The motherhood's got a network that we've built up over almost 20 years of business. So we need people to like. We have a client come to us and say hey, I need a mom in Texas who's very health conscious. I'm like well, I have two people in mind right now. You know like.
Speaker 3:I can like you off the top of my head at this point. So once you work with people ongoing, you build relationships with them and you know who you can trust or who might make a good fit for certain campaigns too.
Speaker 2:That's great and, as we close out, if somebody wanted to find out more about the motherhood or the work that you're doing, or maybe connect with you on a campaign like this, what's the best way to connect with you or find the motherhood?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's great. The motherhoodcom is our website. We are not the motherhood maternity. Sometimes we'll get emails Contrary to our name. You know we work with all influencers. Moms are our sweet spot and our you know that's who we pride ourselves on. But we work with a variety of people. But the motherhoodcom. You can sign up for our newsletter. We send out a newsletter twice a month with industry trends and examples. Nonprofit is one of the topics that we cover. We have a contact us button you can reach out. We can do just a simple exploratory call and see what your needs are. We do newsletter crafting and content development too, not just influencer campaigns. So there's a variety of things that we can offer. But we we try to put out a lot of free information on our website and social media. We're on LinkedIn, Instagram primarily, so themotherhoodcom is where you can find all the links to all of that stuff.
Speaker 2:Perfect, deanna. Thank you so much. Really great conversations. I'm excited to see where this goes for folks. Again, my guest today has been Deanna Tomaselli, who's the VP of Client Services at the Motherhood. So definitely go check them out, deanna. Thanks so much for being here. Again, my name is Megan Spear and we'll see you next time on the Nonprofit Hub Podcast. Bye.