In this day and age, social media is key for connecting with audiences on a closer level. With multiple platforms to choose from, there are so many opportunities to directly engage with supporters of your organisation. By doing this tactfully, you can raise awareness, boost engagement and achieve major goals.
This is why social media for charities is crucial. Not only do charities need to spread the good word about their cause - they also need to fundraise, recruit volunteers and share important information.
While social media is free and easy-to-use, it is not a quick solution. That’s why a strategy must be developed in order to ensure future success for charities in the long-run.
In this blog, we’ll talk you through our top 5 social media strategies that your charity can begin implementing today.
Why Should Charities Use Social Media?
To put it simply: social media is fast-paced, personal and wide-reaching. This benefits charities for many reasons.
Why? Due to its fast-paced nature, charities can make the most of posting regularly. This is great for promoting different things, such as an upcoming event, new projects or support appeal. While your content should be diverse and never duplicated - your charity’s message and mission should always be at the fore.
Social media is personal, meaning you can treat it like you are conversing with an acquaintance. You can also use different platforms to showcase real-life journeys and experiences. This way, you can start conversations around the work your charity is doing to help people in similar situations. This creates newfound relationships, and fosters the conversion of follower, to supporter, to even donor.
What’s more, social media is now woven into our daily lives. As of April 2021, almost 4 billion people use social media worldwide. This is a number that cannot be ignored by charities, especially when every little helps. With this wide reach, a charity can introduce itself to thousands of new people every day.
5 Effective Social Media Strategies for Charities
As we now know, social media can help charities in extraordinary ways. But how can you guarantee success? Here’s our top 5 strategies:
Post Interactive Content
Interactive content encourages people to actively engage. The more you post content that invites your audience to get involved, the greater chance you have of building and solidifying relationships.
If you were to only post static content that just requires passive glancing, then your engagement rate would be less likely to increase.
Interactive content does not have to be time consuming to create. Social media platforms make this type of content convenient and easy with built-in features, such as:
Twitter polls
Instagram Stories e.g. hosting a Q&A session, polls, comment boxes
Facebook surveys
Also, the content you make can be simple and light-hearted. While it is a charity, many people don’t like to be constantly bogged down with heavy topics. Check out this example by Macmillan Cancer Support, who used a GIF video to ask their audience how they look after their mental health:
Use Hashtags
Using hashtags is a great way to extend and track your post’s reach. This could be by using a popular hashtag, or creating your very own.
With a hashtag, it can increase your organic reach because it allows the content to be found in native search. All the big platforms - Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn - offer searchable hashtags. With millions of users visiting these each day, it is an innovative way to be found on social media.
If you’re not sure where to start, here’s a list of hashtags you can use in your content:
Once you build a bigger following, you can then try to create a buzz around your own hashtag, like the way British Red Cross uses its staple hashtag ‘#PowerOfKindness’.
Respond Daily
Once you begin to raise awareness and generate a buzz about your charity, chances are your messages and comments will increase. This may be about anything, from opening times to queries around volunteering.
No matter what it is, the timing of your response is just as important as what you respond with. That’s why we recommend that you set time aside each day to check and reply to those showing an interest in your charity.
Not only will this show that you care, it will also ensure that interest isn’t lost and provide an opportunity to make a good impression. This is vital, as how you handle a query may be enough to boost your chances of being recommended to others, or receiving a positive review.
Have a Clear CTA
A CTA (call to action) is extremely important for charities. This CTA may be to enquire about volunteering, request information packs, or even donate to the cause.
No matter what the CTA is, it is important that your posts always have a link available to encourage clicks. This stops users rummaging around the content and having to navigate to your bio or ‘About’ section. Unfortunately, social media users can be lazy and give up more easily once their momentum has gone.
Luckily, social media sites are very aware of this necessity for charity pages. So much so, Facebook even offers a ‘Donate’ button, making the call to action clear and unmissable.
Measure Results Regularly
Surprisingly, many marketers within charities do not measure the effectiveness of the content they’re creating. That leads to one huge problem: uncertainty on whether your efforts are working successfully, or not.
This is essential, because by keeping track of your analytics, you can see what post types are performing well, and what ones need more attention. This way, you can adapt your content to ensure success all of the time instead of just some of the time.
You can do this by using built-in features across all platforms, such as:
Facebook Insights
Instagram Insights
Twitter Analytics
Pinterest Analytics
These are all handy for extracting data on who you have reached and their actions. They are also ideal for researching audience gaps more deeply - helping you to create content that appeals to them and returns higher engagement rates.
By applying these top strategies, your charity’s social media pages will see a huge difference in followers, engagement and overall support. Find this information useful? Connect with us Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn to stay up to date on all things relevant to charities, social enterprises and nonprofit organisations.