A Strategic & Complete Guide to Social Media for Nonprofits

Social Media for Non-profits: Social Media is a phenomenal place to tell your story, engage with your followers, viewers and thus get results. This means that there is no time for creating a social media marketing strategy.

Regarding Non-profit organizations, they have become increasingly social and active over recent years. It can be cultivating a dedicated Facebook following or getting networks on Snapchat or Instagram.

Social Media Strategies for Nonprofits

Non-profit Organizations have never been down from a challenge, though the changing algorithms of popular networks made it difficult to keep the cause at the top level. Initially, social media always preferred on a limited budget to reach out to any audience.

Furthermore, if your non-profit organization does not have any understanding of the purpose and function of a given social media site, you will certainly feel like you are spinning your wheels without much to show it.

Steps To Develop a Non-Profit Social Media Strategy

There are some guided steps on how to develop a non-profit social media strategy and prove the value of social media to your organization. It will be an effective strategy.

Social Media’s Role in your Non-profit Organization

Social Media and Non-profit must go hand in hand. Both cannot be alone out there. It should be accompanied by strategic goals and target audiences. One of the advantages is customer engagement. It is important to get the viewer’s attention and capture it.

The main pointers to keep in mind are the actions to be taken and the content created regarding the overall communications and digital strategy.

You need to put your efforts on how to connect your organization’s social media marketing actions to your website, blog, event promotions or any other content shared online. Both are related to each other for getting attention and engagements.

Assure Yourself For What You Want to Accomplish

Being associated with a non-profit organization, you must be having your mission. It can be anything in general, a social cause relating to poverty, helping the underprivileged, or protecting any species. So, accordingly, your social goals are also important and should be clear. Some social goals are – 

• Fundraising
• Brand building
• Reputation management
• Community engagement and education

Social Media provides a connection for community engagement. Therefore, once you have decided about your goals, you need to measure and know what steps you will take to get the outcome of your social media efforts.

Interesting read: Social Media Manager V/S Community Manager

It can directly relate to responses to your posts and engagement, use of the specific hashtag, and online campaigns for your community engagement.

Recognize your Target Audience

Do many non-profit organizations say that the general public is their target audience?? No!

The target audience is your ideal supporters who are represented according to your goal requirement. For this, Twitter and Facebook are needed to be used as the best social media management tool.

You will have an idea of who is already following you, comments and shares. Research and speak to the offline supporters to gain insights about what matters to them when they are supporting their cause.

You can also create multiple options in different groups considering your cause. 

Choose the Right Networks

Social media demographics help a lot in finding and identifying your target audience. You can know where your audience is active, and thus focus your efforts on those networks.

Work hard on two or three networks with a large potential to reach your audience. Do not waste your time on all the networks, as it will take all your attention which may not be necessary.

Create your Content Strategy

Create your Content Strategy for your non-profit organization that sends your message everywhere.

You need to know what to share

• Analyze your past posts to see the performance and what types of content engage your followers.
• You can also ask your supporters, viewers about their interests. What they would prefer to see from your organization?
• Gather this information in person, email survey, or by asking on social media.
• Develop content categories for social media that can be evaluated regularly.

For creating your content, you can include two important aspects – What problems do people have in their lives and for which they seek solutions in your organization?

Secondly, what tips or tools can you give them that will make their lives easy?

Types of Content

• Your organization should share a variety of posts across channels, networks. It can be in the form of pictures, short videos, or text.
• Visual contents are considered more as compared to text.
• There are ways to create images that can be beautiful graphics, capturing snapshots and short videos on your phone which can be shared with your followers. This will give them behind-the-scenes of your organization.

Social Media can be a helpful tool for directing people to your website, blog and mailing list. You can also track how many people are coming from social and signing up.

Posting Frequently

Social media calendar will help you plan and schedule your social posts accordingly. Whether you are working in a team or reaching out to others for photos/information, a content calendar will help you to stay on top of planning campaigns and scheduling content.

This will keep your posting frequency in check and on time.

In this way, you can easily manage your community, share-worthy content, and measure your impact for your non-profit organization.

Engagements Must be Placed First

The most powerful aspect of social media is something which companies and organizations must remember – It is SOCIAL! Many brands use it as a broadcasting platform.

It is a place to capture people’s attention, a publishing platform, connect with supporters and build up your business.

Engagements become a priority, as they lead to an increase in your business, blog content or your website gets more attention and reach. To get new engagements to join in comments, posts regarding your organization, respond to questions and relevant hashtags are important.

Brand voices out here are needed to let your supporters feel connected. So along with formal, you can use humor too to connect further.

Cross-promote your Content

Social sharing is a powerful way to raise awareness for your cause. The value of the following is great which can be expected through stories, tips, and images. You must be fearlessly cross-promote your social media content on other channels.

Ways to Cross-promote

• Start a Private group – invite your followers to join a private group. To make it easy, you can provide sample posts for Facebook, sample Tweets, etc.
• Promote through other Communication Channels – send a link to your team members, and ask them to like it, comment and tell you what their views. You can support your social with email, and other means of communication.
• Provide some sample posts – make things easy for people. Give them options. Tell them that sharing is meaningful and it helps. You can share prewritten posts when you are launching a big campaign. You can ask them to support you on Facebook, Twitter or whatever network they are active on. 

Track and Measure Your Results

Track your social media efforts to ensure that you are on the right track and progressing towards your goals. The results will show the related interested time and resources into social media for non-profits. This will help you to adjust your content strategy to the content that performs best.

Google analytics or social media Analytics tools also can be used to know what content is getting a good rate of return and driving website traffic.

Conclusion

Over time, it is important to create a habit of strategy and measurement. The above tips will surely help you out in knowing what content gets your community upgraded and how to improve your social media for non-profits’ strategy to get the best possible results.