Organisations widely adopt social media to communicate with stakeholders, yet research into content marketing in the South African non-profit sector is sparse. It is concerned with consistently producing valuable and relevant content for social media. As it is generally associated with the field of marketing, limited research exists from a communication perspective. This perceived gap in taking a communication stance prompted this investigation into the ways in which these organisations attend to social media content aspects.
The research objective was to acquire a broad understanding of content marketing on social media, unique to South African non-profit organisations. Key areas that were uncovered and statistically verified in an earlier quantitative study and how these are attended to in real life were explored.
A qualitative approach was used to obtain in-depth insights into the use of content marketing. Semi-structured interviews were used as data collection method to explore non-profit sector’s approaches to social media communication, and to determine whether their efforts could be regarded as being integrated.
The findings yielded valuable insights into the ways that non-profit sectors in South Africa practise social media communication. The benefits of using social media for communication is acknowledged, yet vital aspects such as sourcing content, considering stakeholders’ needs and demographics communication, using available planning tools and recognising employees as internal ambassadors are not considered.
The findings of this study highlight several key areas and topics that organisations should consider an integrated social media communication approach as alternative for content marketing in the non-profit sector.
In the global communication landscape, social media networking sites have emerged as powerful platforms for non-profit organisations to communicate with stakeholders. The adoption of social media by non-profit organisations has been widely studied, yet there remains a paucity of evidence addressing social media communication (SMC) through an integrated lens within the context of content marketing. Also, despite the importance of brand content on social media to attract the target audience, to date, the integration of SMC for greater impact of brand content has received scant attention in the research literature, specifically for the South African non-profit sector. It is also still not known whether South African non-profit organisations consider an integrated perspective as important for their SMC when creating and sharing content.
In this regard, content marketing aims to consistently create and curate valuable and relevant information on a strategic level with an eye on changing or enhancing consumer behaviour and ultimately build beneficial consumer relationships (Ashley & Tuten
As content management is generally associated with the field of marketing and is referred to as a marketing paradigm, limited research exists from a communication perspective. The lack of research with a distinctive communication stance largely prompted this investigation into how non-profit organisations’ content is created and brand messages are conveyed on social media.
To address this gap in the literature, this article adopts an integrated social media communication (ISMC) standpoint to answer the following two research questions:
How can SMC be integrated to practise content marketing coherently and strategically?
How do non-profit organisations currently use content marketing?
This article is organised as follows: firstly, the theoretical foundation and aspects related to the focus of the research are presented by providing a synopsis of research into the elements of ISMC and key areas of SMC and content marketing. A communication perspective with the fundamental role of content is then outlined. Secondly, an integrated communication (IC) perspective to social media content marketing is conceptualised by identifying key areas and features from the literature discussed. Thirdly, the findings of the interviews are described and linked to these key areas and features. Then theoretical and practical implications of the study when practising ISMC within the context of content marketing are highlighted. Finally, concluding remarks are made with recommendations for further studies.
This section addresses research objective 1, namely to investigate how SMC can be integrated by presenting the elements of ISMC and key areas of SMC and content marketing. This article centres around the notion that content marketing uses different social media platforms on which non-profit organisations could manage content to draw attention to and ultimately attain a favourable brand.
The view is that every message and action collectively qualifies as
Key areas of an integrated communication approach to social media content marketing.
| Key areas | Level | Content marketing elements (Du Plessis |
|---|---|---|
Social media presence and communication strategy |
Strategic level | Strategic element |
Stakeholder integration (conversation/dialogue) Social media content (sourcing of content, planning and scheduling documents: Timing) Convergence of multiple social media platforms |
Technical level | Formation element, corollary element, medium element, intrinsic element, communication element |
A social listening orientation Community Environmental and cross-functional integration Management of synergy and consistency of communication endeavours by an individual or team of communicators Evaluation |
Strategic level | Strategic element, corollary element, intrinsic |
The definition by the Content Marketing Institute, as put forward by Pulizzi (
Social media content should be recognised as a strategic business asset that needs to be aligned with the organisation’s goals, irrespective of the specific management function’s outlook and use of communication (cf. Sun & Asencio
The primary contribution of this article is to provide insights into an integrated approach to SMC with specific consideration of the corporate brand and content marketing.
Areas with unique features that are of similar significance to social media content marketing as point of departure were explored, empirically tested and validated in advance by means of online surveys (Swart
Distinct strategic and tactical points to facilitate SMC in an integrated manner that centre on content are illustrated in
The key areas discussed in
Unique aspects that could serve as the foundation of integrating social media brand communication were investigated. It was probed from the point of view that a social media presence and a communication strategy are non-negotiable attributes and of strategic importance to organisations to communicate on social media (Swart
Brand contact points encapsulate various ways or points of contact through which the non-profit organisation connects and engages with its stakeholders on social media and through which integration can be realised (Swart
The three ways or features to promote the integration of social media are the integration of stakeholders, social media content and using social media combined with traditional media and the convergence of media. The assumption concerning
Once organisations realise that
The social media content feature focuses uniquely on the different types of content, as supported by views in literature. For purposes at hand the types of content are largely classified as ‘created or owned, curated or repurposed’ and ‘co-created or earned/electronic word of mouth (eWOM)’ (Basu
This area comprises five features and is positioned on a strategic level and directed at achieving the preceding key areas set on strategic and tactical levels.
The first feature relates to the fact that amidst information overload in a social media environment, organisations need to accept that conversations about the brand will take place on social media because the way stakeholders communicate is inherently conversational (cf. Ahmad et al.
A conversational focus may hold specific benefits and it can be anticipated that listening to conversations could reveal valuable information about the expectations, needs and topics of interest of stakeholders (Sun & Asencio
Communities, as a second feature, are described as groups of people with the desire to connect, participate and collaborate with others (Nuccio
The third feature of this area emphasises the need for an awareness of and consideration of an organisation’s immediate environment. In this way they will be allowed to be adaptable and to keep up with technological developments (Swart
The fourth feature is about the importance of the management of communication synergy and consistency by an individual or a team of communicators as evident in the literature. The role of an individual or team is specifically emphasised in contemporary South African models on IC. It is envisaged that this could promote the coordination and consistency of communication on social media, considering the multiple communication functions in the organisation that might adversely affect communication. Sun and Asencio (
The evaluation of communication is the final feature and is regarded as non-negotiable and key to determine whether strategic objectives of organisation are being achieved (Keegan & Rowley
This study adopted an interpretive worldview that values the varied realities of individuals regarding an issue (Burton & Bartlett
Pursuing objective 2, the aim was to obtain an in-depth understanding of the content marketing on social media unique to South African Non-profit organisations (NPOs), through a qualitative approach. In context NPOs is considered as those with a public purpose that do not benefit from financial gain or profit (Swart
The areas identified in
Key areas and topics explored during the semi-structured interviews.
| Key areas | Strategic/technical levels | Topics |
|---|---|---|
Social media presence and communication strategy |
Strategic level | Challenges, basic requirements, values |
Stakeholder integration (conversation/dialogue) Social media content (sourcing of content, planning and scheduling documents: timing) Content convergence on multiple social media platforms |
Technical level | Conversation/dialogue, database Sourcing of content, planning and scheduling: timing Social media in conjunction with traditional media, interaction through media convergence |
Evaluation |
Strategic level | Evaluation of social media endeavours |
Specific challenges in terms of a trustworthy database or sample framework required explicit selection criteria to ensure that the selected organisations and individuals were able to provide expert information. The non-profit organisation was expected: (1) to be registered on the Prodder and CharitySA directories, (2) to be a registered non-profit organisation in South Africa, (3) to be active on social media, (4) to be accessible to allow for the verification of the mentioned aspects, and (5) to have a dedicated communication professional who could manage social media. Purposive sampling was therefore applied to select the participants and data saturation was achieved after a total of 10 interviews.
With the necessary permission from participants, the interviews were recorded and transcribed by an impartial professional.
The findings below are presented according to the preceding discussion of the IC approach to SMC.
The interviews set out to develop rapport with the participants and obtain details of their current position and experience in this sector. From the summary in
Participants’ profiles (Swart
| Participants | Non-profit sector | Position in the organisation | Years at organisation | Gender |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Participant 1 | Social services | Media relations: external communication | 6 months | Female |
| Participant 2 | Health | CEO and founder | 25 years | Female |
| Participant 3 | Social services | General manager | 17 years | Female |
| Participant 4 | Social services | Relationship manager | 10 years | Female |
| Participant 5 | Health | Marketing and fundraising officer | 3 months | Female |
| Participant 6 | Social services | Communication consultant | Consultant | Female |
| Participant 7 | Health | National campaign manager | 11 years | Female |
| Participant 8 | Education | Marketing and communication manager | 10 years | Female |
| Participant 9 | Business | Marketing and campaign coordinator | 1 year | Female |
| Participant 10 | Social services | Digital marketer/fundraiser | 1 year | Female |
CEO, chief executive officer.
The participation in and duration of the interviews were determined by and restricted to the availability of the participants and ranged from 20 to 40 min.
The discussions to follow attend to reporting the most noteworthy findings of the qualitative enquiry of the aspects presented in
As indicated in
When asked about specific challenges facing individuals when communicating on social media, responses mainly evolved around content, the coordination thereof, social media messages and engagement on social media. It is evident that although content drives social media, these organisations do not follow a definite approach to aspects relating to social media content marketing,
The participants displayed an awareness of appropriate and credible content that is apparently dependent on the type of organisation and key to content marketing, as previously stated. Participants said that ‘… it’s about finding the most suitable content but to make sure it is relevant’, ‘you obviously need to have relevant and up-to-date content’ and ‘… to be credible or to credibly tell you message’.
Some non-profit organisations who deal with sensitive issues and vulnerable audiences, such as human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) and children, raised the finding of such data as challenging. A participant commented that ‘we deal with AIDS, HIV and AIDS [sic], right, so, it is not an easy subject, to talk about, or to post content about’.
The importance of a listening orientation was emphasised as follows: ‘requires knowledge of your stakeholder, that requires knowledge of what uhm [
Challenges pertaining to the coordination of content were mainly expressed by those who are employed in larger organisations that follow a decentralised approach to SMC. Comments included the following: ‘you have the challenges of someone posting something that wasn’t approved or perhaps spelling errors or that kind of thing’ and ‘for content purposes there were probably about six other people who contributed because we have six other branches’. The negative impact on the corporate brand was specifically identified: ‘if they tweet something or say something on social media, people will link them to us’.
The interviews additionally uncovered uncertainties to determine whether messages reach the intended audiences and to create ‘sort of unique selling points and differentiating oneself’. A participant mentioned that ‘to get your message across is the main challenge’. The distribution of consistent messages was moreover emphasised and formulated, saying that ‘we are quite inconsistent when we say something’, and explained as referring to the ‘regularity with which we post’. Moreover, this theme specifically relates to the
Engagement on social media emerged as a fourth challenge. One participant outright admitted that ‘it is difficult to engage’ and to ‘have engaging content’ on social media. Considering scholarly standpoints in the literature, it is closely linked to conversations on social media and participation in such conversation by organisations. Engagement occurs when people connect on social media (when extensive conversations take place between the organisation and stakeholders and when individuals talk about the corporate brand and share its content (Ho et al.
The basic requirements for social media brand communication explored the fundamentals for a social media presence and communication with stakeholders. The participants identified a variety of requirements, ranging from knowing the cause of the organisation, the need for experience and skills, a basic communication and social media background, providing more information and the importance of photos to access to technology. Interesting is the comment ‘someone to manage it’ that underlines the importance of an individual or team to achieve and maintain the integration of social media (
Aspects related to the strategic intent and the aim to achieve a consistent corporate brand through IC were emphasised in the interviews. The point by a participant that stressed the need for ‘emotional’ and ‘some motivational’ content is fitting and in line with the notion that corporate branding aims to create emotional links to an organisation. Likewise, a participant elaborated on the importance of achieving brand consistency, by stating that the ‘branding needs to be uniform’. The participants highlighted the need for strategic guidelines for communication on social media as follows: ‘a strategy in terms of clear messages’ and ‘a clear strategy for social media’. The need to adopt a stakeholder perspective to allow organisations to understand ‘who we’re talking to, who we should be talking to, and who’s out there in the space’ was stressed.
The comment that employees are ‘all ambassadors’ draws consideration to the worth of employees as agents of the corporate brand and the point pertaining to
Corporate brand values as a fundamental element in the present context and for the existence of organisations was investigated.
Literature proposes that corporate values should be aligned with those of the stakeholders and the focus was predominantly on the ways in which non-profit organisations approach this (cf. Hollebeek & MacKy
The participants largely admitted that their values undeniably define the organisation and are inherently linked to their respective causes: ‘if people don’t believe in your values or don’t even know your values, then how do they support you?’ and ‘values are such an important part of this organisation in terms of who we hire, our internal stakeholders and of course our external stakeholders’. Only one participant believed that it is the responsibility of the organisation to be informed about their stakeholders’ values and to align itself thereto: ‘… as well as the mission clearly to the public and all the messages that go out on any platform, needs to be in alignment with those values’. It was concluded that organisations do not align their values with those of stakeholders per se but that associations with organisations are primarily made based on their corporate values. A participant affirmed this by saying that ‘we stand by our own values’.
The views of the participants on the avenue of social media integration were established by exploring ‘stakeholder integration (conversations and database), the way content is created and sourced’ and ‘the social media communication mix (using social media combined with traditional media)’.
Considering the main use of social media by organisations currently, participants were asked to express their opinion on the main benefit or use thereof either to distribute information or to engage in two-way conversations with stakeholders (cf. Gearhart & Maben
The participants raised the difficulties they experience in terms of stakeholder segmentation because participation on social media is unhindered that prevents them from being informed of discussions and topics raised about the organisation.
As stressed earlier, content is fundamental to social media and the different types of content are created or owned, curated or repurposed and co-created or earned (eWOM) (cf. Mattke, Müller & Maier
These types denote the different opportunities for non-profit organisations to sensibly create and find suitable content, namely that content can be created by the organisation(s) and stakeholders and to gather content from a variety of sources (Mattke et al.
It was apparent that most organisations do not intentionally source content and mainly use it to ‘show people this is what we do with our money, with the money we have, this is the projects we do and this is how we do it’. In doing so many are of the view that it is imperative to acknowledge donors’ contributions mainly by posting photos of ‘donation drop-offs’ or handovers and in this sense disregard possibilities to utilise and creatively source content. It is evident that they rely on visuals (photos) to communicate their messages and connect with the stakeholder, as already hinted on in the section on
Participants largely agreed on the importance of storytelling but raised sensitivity concerns that are obviously unique to the cause of every organisation. Only one organisation deliberately sources stories from its stakeholders by using emails to uncover topics.
The focus was twofold, that is, on the use of numerous social media platforms and the use of social media combined with traditional media (Basu
Reasons impeding the use of a communication mix pertain to time, budgetary constraints and the sensitive nature of their causes. Despite the value of combining social media and traditional media, organisations do not purposefully use them together.
The evaluation of social media initiatives was purposely investigated in the interviews to obtain authentic insights into whether evaluation was a priority and how communication initiatives on social media are assessed.
Aspects such as online tracking and monitoring and the evaluation of the overall communication effort were discussed. Responses ranged from ‘Not that good at it’ to ‘Mm. We just use the Facebook platform where, on your page, you can go to Insight’ and ‘No, it’s way too academic’. The discussions revealed that non-profit organisations do not concentrate on staying informed of adverse statements or mentions of the corporate brand and mainly pay attention to the volume of posts and visits to their platforms that limit their ability to react or correct inaccurate statements or facts. In addition, they also do not use social media audits or a social media strategy that is a key requirement for ISMC (cf. Mulder
The theoretical implications for this study are twofold. Firstly, the study illustrates how SMC can be strengthened when an integrated approach is adopted to create and share content on social media platforms. Secondly, the findings extend our knowledge of how South African non-profit organisations currently use content marketing on social media to create awareness of their causes amongst their target audience. In doing so, the study’s findings not only address the scarcity of studies on this topic but also stimulate further academic debate and studies.
Practically, the study findings point out several shortcomings, which non-profit organisations must address about their current SMC. Organisations should purposefully determine ways to successfully connect with their stakeholders by attending to the challenges they face and in doing so increase their engagement on social media. Only a few non-profit organisations use the tools available for formal communication planning to attain consistent brand communication and overall uniformity. When sourcing content non-profit organisations generally should be mindful of stakeholders’ needs and demographics and recognise employees as internal ambassadors. Also, the combination of traditional and SMC methods as put forward in this article should receive consideration and can contribute to achieving an integrated social media approach. Non-profit organisation should be attentive to the need for consistent brand communication and messages through which the organisation may be uniquely portrayed.
Furthermore, organisations should adopt a listening approach to be able to track conversations and mentions about the brand. Significant also is the increased competition with the corporate sector that uniquely challenges the operations of non-profit organisations and the management of content, such as creating, sourcing and coordinating thereof. It is evident that an IC approach to the practice of content marketing could become a heuristic to non-profit organisations when planning and executing their SMC.
Although the findings of this study cannot be generalised to the larger population and are only applicable to the sample, they nevertheless yield valuable insights into how non-profit organisations in South Africa practise SMC within the context of content marketing. The contribution of this article mainly pertains to the identification of specific strategic and tactical points to achieve the integration of a comprehensive SMC on content marketing.
Future studies could refine the proposed key areas of ISMC and explore the possible relationships between them with a larger sample and using a quantitative approach. Opportunities also exist to investigate the application of ISMC in the for-profit sector.
The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced them when they wrote this paper.
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
C.S. conducted the overall doctoral study whilst registered as a student at the University of South Africa. C.d.P. was the supervisor and E.G. was the co-supervisor of the study and contributed to the writing of the article.
The researcher declared that the Policy for Research Ethics of UNISA was read and the study was carried out in strict accordance with the approved research proposal and the ethics policy of UNISA. Paragraph 5 of the Policy for Research Ethics in which integrity in research is detailed and UNISA’s Policy for Copyright Infringement and Plagiarism were adhered to in conducting this research.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author (C.S.) upon reasonable request. The key areas of an integrated approach to social media brand communication (
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the authors.