As an organization you have something to offer the world. Incorporating social media has its costs but overall the investment should pay off for your organization. More than likely, your goal for social media is enhancing your message, enhancing your brand name or extending your reach. You should be using social media to sell what you normally sell. This is just a new way to do it.

A great example of this took place via Twitter on 3/9/09. The Italian restaurant Maggianos Little Italy decided to run a promotion. If you had a Twitter account and became their follower before 5PM CST you would be entered to win a $100.00 gift certificate to the restaurant.

That makes sense, they have food that they think is good and they are going to give a few people 100.00 dollar gift certificates. The expensive part of social media is the time requirements. What Maggianos did took very little time. It required one post of 140 characters or less. They opted to spend more time communicating with people via Twitter, which is always recommended to develop stronger connections. However for this contest to take place only the post announcing the giveaway was needed.

Before the announcement Maggianos had 127 followers now they have 2,391 -- all because of one post.

Remember, you don’t have to invent a product to sell via social media.  Simply sell what you already sell. Here are three examples:

1.    If your organization gives away a free tote with every $25 donation, you could give away a tote in a similar way to the Maggianos promotion.
2.    If people subscribe to your paper newsletter you can tease people by posting the link to an interesting article. At the end of the article you can have a place to sign up for the newsletter.
3.    If you run an annual photo contest, post links to previous winners. Show people where the winners photos are published. Then they can see this contest is worth their time. With every previous winner link include information about this year’s contest. This way you are giving (pictures) and taking (asking for submissions) from the community.

These three ideas do not need to be carried out on Twitter. You can use any social media site that can be easily updated.

The bottom line is that people want to buy what you have, that’s why you are still a functioning organization. When you use social media, you are simply packaging your product in a different way. Do not spend your time trying to find something new to sell. Instead, spend your time thinking of creative ways to use social media tools like Twitter to get buyers to pay attention to your message.

If you have other ideas or have run any successful campaigns please leave a comment and tell us about it.