I agree to each of the pointers you have mentioned. Especially about the ROI part for the not for Profits. Also about loyalists, I agree to you no less. Any brand have to have loyalists, and especially for causing and increasing engagement, the brand, whether a successful big league or a fresh entrant in the market, each requires its own share of brand loyalty.

I invite you to join our Official facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/ennovent/52844098052 and for constant updates on Disruptive Innovations for Sustainability of the BoP, our twitter: http://twitter.com/ennovent

But I wonder whether marketing on social media can ever reach the scale of marketing on mass media like TV, mainline newspapers, horizontal portals etc. Also, ads on mass media have this ability to make people feel “I know this organization and I guess they are sizable”! Well, there is no money available to do traditional advertising effectively, there it stops. But marketing on social media need not stop for the lack of money. What’s important is to recruit as big a bunch of enthusiasts and loyalists as possible. Audience loyalty is a hygiene factor for any media outlet and any publisher of content making use of the outlet and social media is not an exception. A user (donor or writer or reader, influencer or any kind of contributor) retained is equivalent to 20 users recruited in the online space.

Some simple best practices while using social media for marketing would be –

1) Recruit users
2) Have enough content/activity and update it frequently enough to keep them hooked
3) Seed the discussions. Nothing takes off on its own. At least, the probability is so low that it wouldn’t be prudent to bet on it.
4) Don’t worry about getting tangible value of out it all the time or right away (like donations, volunteers etc.) Even a little goodwill is fabulous ROI.