Social Media Marketing Effectiveness of Non-Profit Organizations: An Analysis on Environmentalist Organizations

Abstract

Today, all for-profit and non-profit organizations use social media platforms as a marketing tool. Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have created a new area for organizations to communicate with their target audience, to increase brand awareness and to provide brand engagement. Measuring social media success for the organization along with the use of social media as a marketing tool has become a significant issue. This study aims to measure the social media marketing effectiveness of non-profit organizations, and thus examining Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts of 35 organizations operating in the field of environmental protection. Based upon the data obtained from Facebook, Twit-ter and Instagram social network sites, the organizations’ use of social media in the same event was interpreted according to the social media marketing effectiveness measurement metrics identified by Hoffman and Fodor; moreover, to what extent they were successful were analyzed in terms of brand awareness, brand engagement and word of mouth communication. TEMA Foundation and WWF Foundation were noted to use three social network sites more effectively and they were more successful regarding brand awareness, brand engagement and word of mouth communication compared to the other organizations.