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SWOT Analysis: American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Social Media

By: Jack Kelly

The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is one of the most well-known non-profit organizations that is trying to tackle America’s tragic suicide rate of 14 people per 100,000 as of recent statistics (Suicide, 2021). The goal of AFSP is to “Save Lives and Bring Hope to Those Affected by Suicide” while also raising awareness and support for those who personally deal with suicidal thoughts or people who have experienced a personal loss to suicide. AFSP uses many different social media platforms to raise awareness and engage with different demographics that are familiar with only one platform. AFSP has different strengths and weaknesses that directly relate to the success of their social media accounts. This SWOT analysis will highlight opportunities for improvement and strategies to enhance their continued success online.

STRENGTHS

Trusted organization

AFSP has been around since 1987 and is a well-established non-profit organization. AFSP is well known throughout the mental health community. This helps them on social media because it makes them credible while also reaching a wide audience of over 700,000 followers between their different accounts. The longevity of AFSP’s presence helps their posts receive traction from new audiences while continuing to give personal and relatable content.

Diverse Content

The American Foundation for Suicide prevention uses different kinds of content across its social media, ranging from informational posts, videos of personal struggles with mental health, and features that force interaction with its users, such as a poll or questions proposed to the viewer. The features that focus on user interaction are a keyway in finding new audiences by naturally having conversations within the comments on the discussion.

Celebrity/Brand partnerships

Many influencers, and other organizations such as sport teams will collaborate to increase awareness for suicide prevention. “The New Jersey Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) had the honor of participating in the New Jersey Devils and Prudential’s Mental Health Awareness Night on January 25th. This night was in support of the Hockey Talks annual initiative which began in 2013 to honor the legacy of Vancouver Canuck player, Rick Rypien who fought depression.” (Nelligan, n.d.). This event was posted not only on the New Jersey Devil’s social media accounts, but also the NHL league account reposted it. This hit a large audience that may not have been exposed to AFSP’s mission. They have also received different musicians such as Carry Underwood and Papa Roach who have promoted their brand to their audiences.

Weaknesses

Negative Feedback/Reputation of other non-profits

Misinformation can lead to users giving a negative criticism. This can also be caused by the reputation of other non-profits that are popular at the time. When a non-profit is caught using funds for other reasons, or you learn that the employees really don’t care about the goal, it will lead to lack in interaction with others.

Emotional Content

The content that AFSP posts can be found triggering which may lead to a bad reaction in the comment or reviews. This can hurt AFSP because while the engagement will lead to more viewers, the goal is to reach individual people and support them through their struggles. Triggers one of these people and causes the opposite reaction of what AFSP is looking for. This forces the social media team to post things that may not be too triggering, while also providing resources for an individual to seek help.

Engagement

All the social media accounts that AFSP runs have massive amounts of followers, but the engagement in their content is minimal. When looking at their posts, they only have a few thousand likes on their Instagram but have 141 thousand followers. This means that if they have 5000 interactions on a single post only 3.5% of its followers will engage with it.

Opportunities

More content in the media it excels in

The content that is posted on AFSP’s accounts sees the most engagement with its videos of people giving personal experiences in a playlist called “talk away the dark” and in posts where they ask a question for the user to respond to. These will be questions that can strike a personal emotion with the prompt.

Trends/Hashtags

Trends are an easy way for someone to get their content to new viewers. AFSP should use more hashtags while centered around the trends going on. These would have to follow a serious theme as they don’t want to reach the wrong audience. When using hashtags, all the content that AFSP is posting will be in the same area. This encourages the viewers to look into more than just one post on an account.

Advertising

AFSP gets lots of donations that not only go into helping fund resources for mental health, but also advertising their mission to get the largest engagement. “Seize the Awkward” was a large advertising campaign that was designed to reach people between the ages of 16-24.

Threats

Privacy

Many users will reach out to the account of AFSP to share personal stories. These stories must be protected for the risk of exposure to “at risk” individuals. Having a social media account hacked can lead to privacy breaches along with unwanted engagement with other content on the platform.

Changes in platform algorithms

Changes in the algorithm of a social media platform can affect the amount of users that can see AFSP’s content. This could make it impossible for AFSP to reach different audiences due to the lack of control over who will click on their content. This is why it is important that AFSP has a physical presence in the community as almost everyone has seen a flyer, poster, or representative of AFSP in a public space.

Competitors

While AFSP has a goal that can be seen as universal: ending suicide, there are other non-profits that also rely on their followers to donate. The Jed Foundation is another large non-profit that also looks to reach new audiences daily. This will take from the donations that could be given to AFSP, encouraging them to come up with new and competitive social media strategies.

Conclusion

Americans for Suicide Prevention has powerful tool to help assist the end of suicide. By using its strengths, it can reach new users while also continuously focusing on engaging with the current followers. Expanding their digital footprint, AFSP can continue to make an impact on suicide prevention.

References

(n.d.). Retrieved from Americans for Suicide Prevention: https://supporting.afsp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.personalCampaign&participantID=2891313

(n.d.). Retrieved from https://afsp.org/story/new-mental-health-psa-from-seize-the-awkward-encourages-young-adults-to-say-we-ca/

Nelligan, M. (n.d.). Retrieved from Americans for Suicide Prevention: https://afsp.org/chapter/nj-afsp-collaborates-with-the-nj-devils-and-prudential-center-to-host-a-mental-he

The Jed Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://giving.jedfoundation.org/page/sept2024match?gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwyL24BhCtARIsALo0fSBEZ8cQ9ob0wq5FhP6S34nMVhu_VVvuOVkJvIUfoGZIm0UspHPquzoaAq2pEALw_wcB&utm_campaign=SEM_2024&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google

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AFSP advanced - Jack Kelly

“A non-profit organization is an entity that is created and operated for a charitable or socially beneficial purpose rather than to make a profit.” (Kenton, 2024). The goal for this organization should be to promote its cause while also receiving support through donations to grow and offer more help. I chose to analyze the Americans for Suicide Preventions’ Social Media accounts’ metrics to see if I can find any weaknesses or strong points that they could benefit from.

Vanity metrics are basic ways to see how much interaction and activity that a page has with its followers. These include things such as likes, comments, and shares, where you see the interaction taking place but do not have any more data from it.

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) has a Facebook page with 598 thousand followers, but averages below 50 likes, comments, and reactions per post. This is commonly seen with large organization’s accounts as many people will follow something they recognize with or a general topic that can be supported but do not care to engage with the content. The potential to reach large audiences is not farfetched, but AFSP would have to investigate doing more video interviews with people who tell a personal story. This could be about themselves, or a loved one who has struggled with metal health. These types of post get the most interactions and lead to their followers finding a personal connection with the person in the video. There is also an abundance of the same post “Walk with Us”. While this is a major part of where AFSP gets their donations, I would recommend posting the flyer in different colors, or with images of the location of the walk that will be taking place.

AFSP’s Instagram has seen more interaction with their posts than any other social media. This is because the younger generations have been struggling with mental health and suicide related thoughts or actions. Since 2011 the suicide rate in young adults has increased 39% (Panchal, 2023). And with Instagram having 30.8% of its users between the ages of 18 and 24, AFSP’s followers are more likely to be able to relate to the content being posted which intern leads to more interaction with the posts and more donations.

I think that AFSP could generate more awareness and interactions if they created a playlist that was specific to a person’s struggles. Making a playlist of different stories would be a good spot for someone who is feeling the same way to receive the help they need or the donations to help another. Trying to find the different posts that are relevant to a user can be a turn off and make the user bored. The goal should be to post content in a way that is easy to find while also being able to increase click rates and awareness.

Bibliography

Panchal, H. S. (2023, 08 04). A Look at the Latest Suicide Data and Change Over the Last Decade. Retrieved from KFF: https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/a-look-at-the-latest-suicide-data-and-change-over-the-last-decade/

 Kenton, W. (2024, March 03). Nonprofit Organization (NPO): Definition and Example. Retrieved from Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/non-profitorganization.asp

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Jack Kelly's opinion of Social Media

Social Media can be defined many different ways and is always changing. My definition of Social Media is communication through different ways such as text, pictures, videos etc. on an electronic device. This could be from apps like Instagram that are designed to entertain and keep their users in contact with other all over the globe, while there are also apps like Yelp that are just for communicating one’s review of a business or experience to a broad audience. This is very similar to the book’s definition of Social Media as they define it as “a wide range of online, word-of-mouth forums including blogs…”

I am consistently using Social Media throughout the day in many different ways. I use Instagram for keeping up with my long time and long distant friends, while I use Snapchat for my general communication with friends I talk to on a daily basis. I like to use Tik Tok to entertain myself, but recently I’ve been trying to replace Social Media with reading and listening to audiobooks. I do not post much on Social Media as I find myself more of a passive scroller. I do this because I don’t really care to inform people about what is going on in my life to a large audience, but rather talk to one person at a time, or let it spread by word of mouth. I tend to comment on more things than I should, and that forces me to see similar content because of my interaction with it. Even something as simple as watching the video multiple times in the background while I read the comments has led me to receiving videos of a similar topic.

I understand that every social media companies’ goal is to interact with the posts made on their platforms. The interaction from one user is designed to boost the post and make it reach a wider audience. This is attractive to the companies who want to advertise on the app as a single post can go from being seen by just one person, to quite literally millions in just a few hours. I struggle to understand the policies that are put into place for the different companies, such as Tik Tok facing being shut down due to the user information that is being collected and given to foreign governments, but if the user has signed an agreement with the company to share their information, why does the government have any say in what can be done? Another issue that I find hard to understand is the legality of holding a social media company reliable for things such as injuries during a common fad or challenge.

In Social Media Communications, I hope to learn the different strategies of reaching a larger audience while also getting a grasp on how the legal background works. I hope to in turn use those skills for my own career in Web Technology and also just in my basic personal life to stay in the best communication with friends and family.