- Ask Yourself: What’s Your Purpose?
To start, your first step should be to work out what your nonprofit aims to accomplish. What cause are you raising awareness for? Is it important that you generate donations, or is your aim to get people to attend events or volunteer for your cause? The answers to these questions will inform your entire social campaign, so be sure you have a clear understanding of your goals.
- Figure Out Who You’re Marketing To
Once you know the goals your nonprofit is aiming to achieve, the next step is to determine your target audience. Again, this is something that will inform every step you take moving forward. Different messages resonate with different people, after all.
Try to be as specific as possible — think about their age, location, economic background, what they likely think of your nonprofit, and what you’d like them to think about it.” You should also consider what types of people would like to volunteer for your cause and tailor your messaging towards them.
- Choose Your Social Network Wisely
The next question you need to answer is which social network (or social networks) you’ll be marketing on. At this point, it’s worth mentioning that, according to a 2014 Hubspot survey, Facebook is the #1 social network used by nonprofits at 98%, with Twitter coming in second at 70%. YouTube is an effective network to use for volunteer training videos and videos of past events to recruit more volunteers. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be on all these networks — only that they’re typically a safe bet for social media investments.
- Figure Out What To Track
How will you determine your success? What metrics should you track in order to work out whether or not your campaign worked out the way you needed it to? Since you’re running a nonprofit, you’ve got something of an advantage in this regard — according to Buffer,
How much time and money do you realistically have to devote to social media? How skilled are you at creating content, and what does your writing look like? In order to successfully assess your strengths and abilities, you must first account for your weaknesses and limitations, and mitigate those limitations.
- Display Integrity and Transparency
On the one hand, they’re automatically considered to be a trustworthy source of information, and people experience a genuine need to connect with them and their causes. They’re also well-positioned to provide rich, emotive content.
On the other hand, if they send their messages poorly or ineffectively, the backlash is far worse than for other organizations. You need to be certain that you’re transparent and responsive, or things will very likely blow up in your face.
- Look At What Other Nonprofits Have Done Right
Last, but certainly not least, take a look at how other nonprofits have driven their causes to success on social media. Another strategy nonprofits use successfully is asking their audience questions. For example, if you are trying to recruit volunteers for an event, you can ask what the volunteers from last year’s event what they enjoyed the most.