Social Media Statistics

FrogLoop pulled some nice information out of NTEN's 2010 Nonprofit Benchmarks Report that is useful for social media benchmarking. I've included some of FrogLoops's highlights and added some additional graphs and slides I thought you might find useful.

According to 1200 nonprofits surveyed:

• Facebook is the number one used commercial social network by nonprofits. 86% said that they have a presence on Facebook, a 16% increase from 2009. However, nonprofits experienced a drop in their average community from 5,391 members in 2009 to 2,440 in 2010.
• 60% of nonprofits are on Twitter as compared to 43% in 2009. Twitter’s average community size (i.e. number of followers) grew the fastest and by 627%. In 2009 nonprofits had an average of 286 followers. In 2010 nonprofits average close to 1800 followers.
• LinkedIn (largely used by education institutions and professional associations) usage remained steady over the last year (32.9% in 2009 and 33.1% this year).
• YouTube usage also remained steady over the last year moving up slightly from 46.5% in 2009 to 48.1% in 2010.
• MySpace suffered a 45% drop in popularity, dropping from 26.1% in 2009 to 14.4% in 2010.
• 50% of nonprofits said they plan to hire social media staff in the next 12 months.
• 20% said that they will increase funding towards social media projects such as hiring consultants, designers, and programmers to ramp up their social media presence.
• The nonprofits that have experienced the most success with social media are the organizations that have 2+ full time social media staff. These staff members spend time listening and engaging communities and are developing metrics to measure their impact.
• However, even with 2+ social media staff, nonprofits still face significant challenges and are requesting additional staff to increase their capacity for doing even more with social media.
• Fundraising is a priority, but few are bringing in significant dollars through the channel. Graphs below.

Though the report does not mention this, it is important to note that just because dollars aren't coming in directly through the social media channel, it doesn't mean that fundraising via social media isn't successful. It can be challenging to measure, but I would argue that the case-building conducted via Facebook, Twitter, etc. can make your direct marketing appeals and fundraising events more successful.

Interesting stats:

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