Social media for nonprofits offer a lot of unique opportunities for organizations based on memberships, donations, humanitarian causes and more.
The global reach of social networks give nonprofits a chance to convey their message, tell their story and causes, talk to supporters, coordinate with government bodies and get results faster than any other platform.
However promising social media for nonprofits is, you can only achieve best results by following a well-focused strategy that lays out your guidelines and tips.
Email and websites have always ruled as the top nonprofit marketing channels. However, social media is starting to catch up.
Every year, we see an increase of email list sizes and Facebook and Twitter followers, as social media keeps growing three times faster than email for nonprofits.
Email is still ahead of social media but the gap is closing, with nonprofits using emails and websites as their main communications tools.
But most nonprofits now prefer to use social media for sharing updates and announcing events in the organization.
So, how do we use social media to its full potential? By identifying your target audience.
Identifying Your Target Audience
You have to develop personas for your target audience, representing supporters based on demographics and individual info about them.
Thru these personas you gain a better understanding about your followers. And you can research further by talking in person to donors and determine what matters most for them in supporting your cause.
The info you gathered will help create multiple personas representing supporters in various groups or brackets.
To segment mailing lists, study the makeup of your board members, donors, volunteers and more.
After that, name each persona, taking note of specific details that include things they care about, their typical workday, people they trust and a more extensive demographic background.
After identifying your target audience, check the latest demographics to choose the social networks where they are active most of the time.
Choosing the Right Social Networks
If you want to gain traction and be successful, choose only a few social networks to avoid spreading too thin.
A middling work on five social networks is worse than a focused, high-quality job on two or three networks.
The 2015 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report show that the most popular networks for nonprofits are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Creating a Balanced Content Strategy
Storytelling is a compelling way to convey your message to the audience, so ask loyal supporters what kind of stories they want to hear or read from your organization.
Use social media or an email survey to gather info from them, or even better, ask them in person.
After that, use their responses to craft a content strategy for social media that include stories from clients or followers, volunteer spotlights and requested how-to articles.
Here are a few content strategy tips to help you develop a social media for nonprofits:
- Show how grateful you are to sponsors by thanking them in public regularly.
- Encourage people in your community to ask questions and create conversations.
- Offer an option for people to donate thru more convenient means such as text messaging.
- Highlight a donor each week or month to show how much you appreciate their generosity.
- Start a crowdfunding page to let your social media followers donate quickly and easily.
- Connect with other nonprofits and organizations with the same mission to build your community and increase visibility.
Social media for nonprofits opens doors to connect with your audience that other channels simply don’t offer. But to take advantage of this platform, stop using it as a loudspeaker and create a brilliant strategy instead to boost donation results.
