One of the most efficient ways to reach more supporters is through social media.
Why is Social Media Important for
Your Nonprofit?
Engaging with the community you serve has become an important part of nonprofit work, especially in this digital age when it’s easier to reach out for funds and support through social media, but many nonprofits don’t utilize social media successfully enough to make a difference in their marketing. Many nonprofits hire interns to control their social media presence, but that isn’t enough because “to be effective . . . your social media strategy should be integrated with your overall marketing strategy and aligned with you nonprofit’s goals and target audiences.”
One benefit of using social media is that it allows nonprofits to “reach a wide audience in a quick, cost-effective way . . . to tell you organization’s story.”
Using social media is a way to “engage supporters, capturing and retaining their attention.” Everyone likes to feel like their voice is being heard, and if someone supports a nonprofit, they will be more likely to keep supporting that nonprofit if they feel like their questions are getting answers and they’re getting responses.
Tips for Using Social Media
Each social media platform is geared toward a specific type of audiences as detailed in “Social Media Best Practices for Nonprofits—A Comprehensive Guide.”
For instance, two of the most popular and well-known social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, both focus on sharing news, but Twitter is much more of a conversational tool whereas Facebook is more focused on entertainment through functions such as video content and live streaming. One perk of Facebook is that it also “currently sends more website referral traffic than any other social media channel.”
After deciding what social media platform works best for you, you should set benchmarks in order to track the advantages of social media page and to track how well it is working. This allows you to set attainable goals, and to ensure that those goals are met.
Social media should not, however, only be used to self-promote and ask for donors. Most posts should be focused on the audience by either helping the audience or offering valuable advice or information.
A great way to use social media is by posting interactive content that encourages the audience to interact. Some examples of this include “Twitter polls, a Q&A session through Instagram Stories, or a Facebook survey.” These types of interactive posts engage the audience and encourage their responses.
How Social Media Can Benefit Your Nonprofit
Rather than a traditional website on which the community and the media can learn about a nonprofit, social media provides nonprofits with the change to engage with their constituents and their community members. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have “built-in interactivity.” This interactivity allows you to create a network you can contact in real time.
Instead of using social media to generate dialogue between the organization and its supporters, more often the nonprofits use social media as more of an outlet for distributing information. While this is also helpful in raising awareness and trying to get more followers and supporters, a two-way dialogue is better for sparking and keeping interest.
Simple ways for you to engage with your community through social media:
-
Acknowledge current and local events (this includes noteworthy events in the community such as sports teams from the community and events taking place in the community)
-
Reply to people publicly (this generates a conversation)
-
Promote their own events to help raise support increase turnout
Choosing the Right Platform for Your Nonprofit
To maximize social media efforts, you need to set goals that allow them to see the outcomes of using social media. Are you more interested in receiving donations or raising awareness for their cause? Having these types of goals will allow you to use social media efficiently because they make it clear what you should be trying to do through the use of social media.
As for choosing a social media platform, it might be wise for you to choose whichever one will allow them to interact with their current supporters and then only begin to branch out to other platforms depending on how well the social media effort is going. This allows you to become more present on social media one step at a time rather than trying to reach everyone on every platform available.
Engaging Through Social Media
One of the aspects of social media that you can capitalize on is being able to engage with their audiences. Engaging with the audience consistently builds a rapport and allows for the growth of supporters. It places the you into the community and shows that not only do you care about the issues in the community but also want to converse with the community members themselves, which in turn builds trust.
Unfortunately, in a survey conducted by the Case Foundation, most nonprofits overwhelmingly said that “their most important communication tools were email and their websites . . . [which] may have to do with the fact that in their mind, the pinnacle of engagement is donation.” Rather than trying to connect with the community and gain support through that, most nonprofits are focused too much on their donation pages. Those that do use social media often use it more as a “megaphone, announcing events and activities and sharing organization-centric info.” This does not inspire confidence and or a rapport with the community, and in turn donors and supporters become more likely just to scroll by the nonprofit’s posts rather than actually trying to engage in them.
There are ways to begin connecting with the community, but you have to be willing to be willing to try. One of the easiest ways to connect with you communities is to make social media platforms a way to have an actual conversation with supports and the community. Simply making it a conversation raises interaction on social media.
Lastly, creating an editorial calendar in which you work out what will be posted, how often to post, and who will do the posting will ease the frustration of trying to jump into the social media platforms. It allows you to curate the image that you hope to give the community and is invaluable for ensuring that questions and comments from supporters do not get missed, which builds trust.
Social Media is a great way to build a rapport with your community.
