Social Media for Nonprofits: 6 Essential Strategies for Success

‍Video transcript ↓

In today's age, we all know that social media marketing is important. It plays an integral part in any organization’s strategy to attract, engage, convert, and retain people.

In fact, nonprofit marketing and fundraising go hand-in-hand. The more active you are on social media, the more people will know about your organization.

And, the more people know about your organization, the more effective your fundraising will be.

Therefore, social media for nonprofits is one of the most valuable fundraising tools.

The trick is to use it effectively, which can prove to be more difficult than it seems. That's why in today's video, we're going through the 6 essential social media strategies to set your nonprofit social media strategy up for success.

I'm Addie with Anedot, and let's jump into it.

1. Use your nonprofit brand’s visual identity consistently

So first up, what is social media?

More often than not, it's an ever-scrolling, never-ending feed, where people are deciding what to view in fractions of a second.

So if you manage to stop someone from scrolling with some amazing content, you want to make sure your brand is as recognizable as possible.

This is where the importance of your nonprofit branding comes into play.

Now, for those who are wondering, your nonprofit’s visual identity is a part of your brand, and it includes your wordmark or logo mark, brand colors, and mission statement or slogan.

If you're wondering how to implement all of this into your posts, an easy way to do it is to add a tasteful watermark on a small portion of your social media graphics.

For example, an infographic that explains the recent success of your nonprofit is an interesting and shareable piece of content that could reach thousands of people.

So if your nonprofit’s branding is not on that infographic, you're missing out on free advertising for your organization.

Be sure to use your brand’s visual identity consistently across your social media graphics and headers to create awareness day after day, week after week.

2. Create a social media calendar

A successful nonprofit social media marketing strategy requires careful planning and timely execution.

One of the best ways to do this is to utilize a social media calendar. There are many calendar templates online that you can find and use for your organization.

For Anedot, we use a variation of Hubspot’s social media calendar template.

After choosing the right social media calendar for your organization, the next step is to figure out how many times you want to post on social media.

It is recommended to post at least once a day, but figure out what works best for your organization. The key thing is to be consistent with your posting.

Whether you plan to post once a day, or three times a week, stick with it and post consistently!

Another advantage of having a social media schedule is the amount of time you will save!

Planning out your posts ahead of schedule will save you a lot of time and help you stay productive to focus on other tasks.

A good way to go about this is to consider planning out your social media content for the entire month at the beginning of that month.

3. Use your brand voice consistently

Similar to your nonprofit’s visual identity is your brand voice.

If you're not sure what that is, you can think of it this way: Your nonprofit’s brand voice is its tone and personality, which directly affects what you say and how you say it.

Your brand voice is going to determine what your audience understands about you and how it makes them feel, which will move them to action.

Likewise, it's going to determine what your audience understands about you and how it makes them feel, which will move them to action.

‍So take a minute to think through it, and identify two or three key words that you can use as a north star to that voice.

Ask yourself this: Is my nonprofit's voice warm and happy, or youthful and sassy? How about excited, serious, urgent, hopeful, approachable, or faith-oriented?

To give you a specific example here, if your nonprofit is saving animals from being euthanized at a local shelter, your brand voice will most likely be warm and urgent.

See how that works? So use your brand voice consistently to draw emotion and create familiarity with your audience.

It will be the very thing that your audience connects with because it moves them.

4. Say more with less words

A common mistake to be aware of on social media is to use too many words to say something.

Social media as a medium is meant for quick, short, but valuable communication. The goal is to leverage short social media posts to draw emotion, inform, and call to action.

So if you have something to celebrate, find the most punchy way to express it with your brand voice.

Do you need urgent support? Well then, earnestly ask for help and briefly explain what's at stake.

Social media audiences want to engage with your organization through viewing, responding, and sharing but they don’t want to spend too much time dwelling on it.

After all, social media is designed to consume content quickly, and your nonprofit is only one account of many they are following on social media.

So, use emotion and brand voice with as few words as possible to increase engagement and conversions on your nonprofit’s social media accounts.

5. Engage your audience

An easy, but often overlooked social media tactic for nonprofits is to simply engage your audience.

As a nonprofit, your organization is people-focused. So, use this to your advantage! 

Some easy ways to engage your audience include:

• Interacting with posts that mention your organization - this could be in the form of liking, commenting, and sharing their posts.
• Interacting with posts of passionate people in your particular nonprofit community.
• Partnering with like-minded organizations - this can be done with social media content swaps, co-giveaways, fundraisers, virtual fundraisers, or social media takeovers.

Another way to engage with your audience is with calls to action.

This can be challenging because there’s a common misconception that if people just know what my organization is doing, what we stand for, and what we need, they will then act.

But more often than not, it doesn't end up turning out that way.

As mentioned earlier, this is probably because your nonprofit’s voice on social media is one of many, so it's essential that you're clear on what you're asking your audience to do.

Now, when writing calls to action, make sure the level of difficulty varies. I'll give you some examples.

6 nonprofit call to action examples:

• Sign up for our newsletter
• Download our annual report
• Make a first-time gift
• Share our new initiative’s page
• Become a monthly supporter
• Sign up to volunteer

So again, gauge the level of difficulty when making the call.

Something else to keep in mind is that using consistent calls to action does not necessarily mean they have to be frequent.

You can use some good judgment here to determine how often you should ask your audience to take action.

But we recommend a consistent weekly or monthly ask since it's a reasonable and sustainable frequency to achieve your nonprofit’s goals of gaining donors, recruiting volunteers, and gaining supporters.

→ Learn how donor engagement can help your organization retain donors and increase impact.

6. Have fun

A final strategy for social media for nonprofits is to simply have fun. It’s been said over and over again but it bears repeating: social media is social.

A great way to make nonprofit social media fun is to consistently comment on your audience’s posts and start conversations.

As previously mentioned, your nonprofit organization is people-focused and people will love the attention and care that you can provide through engaging your audience.

If you are struggling to have fun consistently, consider partnering with another team member and sharing the responsibility.

We know social media management can create burnout like any other public-facing role, so be sure to have a healthy pace to your posting and remember the "why."

What this really comes down to is serving an audience with relevant content that will help them.

This is done in hopes to garner more support, and eventually converting that audience into donors while building a community around your great cause.

So don't lose sight, and don't forget to take a break from your phone every once in a while.

Closing thoughts

With these 6 strategies, we know your social media account will be much more impactful for your organization's cause.

If you found them helpful, leave a comment on this YouTube video with which strategies you're using. We can't wait to see what you post!

And if you're looking for tactics on nonprofit fundraising, you can check out here: Nonprofit Fundraising in 2022.

Thanks for watching! Again, be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the notification button for more videos like these.

I’m Addie with Anedot, and we’ll see you next time!