We all know that running a non-profit organization is exhausting and difficult, but you love it, right? You are working hard to solve a problem and make the world a better place. After all of your hard work, it can be defeating to introduce yourself and your organization and receive the response of, “Who are you? I’ve never heard of you before!” In addition to fighting the uphill battle of making a difference, you have to work even harder to spread awareness about your organization and why someone should support it. We’ve put together a guide to how your organization can utilize Social Media for Non-Profits to support your agenda.
- Connect With Your Current Donor Base (And Recruit More)
As your organization grows, it’s important to remember those who have supported you since the beginning. You can use social media for Non-Profits to connect with your current donor base, getting them involved in conversations and content you’re sharing on a regular basis. You’ll begin to notice that as you interact with your current donor and volunteer base, new names will begin to pop up that you don’t recognize. This is good! This means the quality of your interactions, the information you’re sharing, and your content is attracting new supporters! That is the whole point of your organization, right? To spread awareness and get people involved? Social media is perfect for that exact goal.
- Discover a New Target Audience
According to PEW Research, the most popular social media platform for someone over the age of 50 is YouTube. That’s likely a surprising statistic. Depending on what platforms you’re utilizing, you might discover a new audience that resonates with your cause that you might not have known before. To learn about the demographic makeup of your current social media following, you can use dive into the analytics section of each platform.
As we discussed previously, it’s important to measure your success and utilizing analytics is the best way to do that. You’ll see tried and true data based on your profiles detailing the location of your users, the time periods in which they’re active, their gender, and more. Each platform is slightly different in the insights they provide so it’s important to build a campaign that includes multiple platforms so you can learn as much as possible about your new audience.
- Control the Conversation
When spreading awareness for an organization, sometimes it can be difficult to instill the correct information and statistics behind your campaign. As you know, the general population doesn’t have a great memory and may misremember important things like your statement of faith, the area you serve, or even worse… your name! Social media for Non-Profits allows you to be intentional when it comes to sharing content and information.
- Create a Game Plan
Before you go all in sharing all of your earth-shattering statistics, try to come up with 3 to 5 key points about your organization. Being a leader of a non-profit organization, you know how important it is to have a mission. Your goals should be clear and concise, preferably in a bullet point list. This will help reign in your passion and really hammer in the important things you want people to remember when they talk about you to their friends!
Once you’ve determined your key points and goals, you will need to decide how you’re going to track your success and growth. Goals are great, but results are even better. As your organization grows, you want to be able to prove that your social media efforts have a part in that growth. Some examples of metrics to track are engagement rate (the number of people who “like”, “comment”, or “share” your content versus your total number of followers), reach, and clicks to a specific page on your website.
- Partner With Other Businesses
If you’re struggling with networking in your area, or expanding your professional network, we’ve got good news for you! Pretty much everyone and their mom (or maybe grand mom at this point) are using social media in one way or another; this includes businesses. When you host an event or secure a well-known business as a sponsor, shout it from the rooftops (well, laptop). Business owners are always looking for how to one-up their competition and when they see their competitor is supporting a local non-profit (like you), they’ll be looking to take it up a notch.
PRO TIP: After each event, it’s important to “tag” the business that sponsored the event or supported you in a social media post. This will result in your post being visible to the people who support said business. This gives you an opportunity to attract potential donors and volunteers from those who are loyal to that business.
- Run a Facebook Causes Campaign
Since its launch in 2006, Facebook Causes has gained 30 million members, created 150,000 campaigns, and raised more than 4 million dollars. As Facebook has expanded, they’ve begun to realize how important social media is for non-profit organizations like yours. Facebook Causes is an application that allows you to organize a community around fundraising. It’s a platform that supports discussion boards, sharing of content, and more. The best part about this tool is it is entirely under your control. You can either start your own campaign specific to your organization or you can focus on a larger cause at hand and partner with an organization larger than yours, who is fighting a similar fight.
Social media is, and likely always will be free to use. It’s completely free to set up an account and beyond running ads, it’s completely free to use as well. When running a non-profit organization, there is never enough money to support all of the amazing things you want to do. Social media for Non-Profits is a free tool that can help you raise awareness, secure potential donors, and raise money. It’s likely you won’t find a free tool that can meet each of those requirements anywhere else.
While social media for Non-Profits is free, it takes time. Just like in any other business, your time is money and chances are you’re busy fighting the good fight so you don’t have the time or resources to effectively manage a social media for Non-Profits campaign for your organization. That’s okay! That’s where we come in. Our staff is passionate about supporting non-profit organizations because we love working with people who get as fired up about what they love as we do. We can help you develop a campaign strategy, establish branding, build an execution plan, and execute it while you continue to change to the world.
Call 321-255-0900 or email us at info@theadleaf.com to get started today.
