Social Media Effectiveness for Public Engagement: Examples of Small Nonprofits

Social media sites are increasingly adopted by small nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to help them meet their public engagement goals. However, several characteristics of small organizations make it hard for them to effectively use social media sites. We present findings from interviews with 26 small NPOs' social media professionals on how they use multiple social media sites to support public engagement. Small NPOs use multiple social media sites to engage with different stakeholders toward various ends. However, these NPOs are not using social media to its full potential with regard to community-building and action mobilization. Several challenges in small NPOs, such as ineffective measurement of social media performance, deficient organizational resources, and lack of control over work, lead to strong tensions between social media engagement strategies and outcomes. Drawing on these findings, we present several practical implications for the design of successful public engagement social media tools.