Connect with your audience on social media.
When you use social media, you always want to engage your followers. Your content should be more like part of a conversation than a post on a bulletin board.
Here are some tips for maintaining social media channels that support conversation and interaction.
Create Shareable Content
Making posts that people want to share can go a long way toward truly engaging with your audience.
Social media posts can be thought of as a form of social currency. People share content to create or strengthen connections with others. "This made me laugh, I hope it makes you laugh too!" "Can you believe this?!" "Dude--Sound on!"
The Sanrio company of Hello Kitty fame summarized the nature of shareable content with some amount of elegance: "Little gift, big smile."
Tag Others
Please, @ me.
Incorporate your donors, volunteers, and friends in your posts and tag them when you do.
Social media users have a high likelihood of responding to the notification "someone tagged you in a picture".
Photos are a great way to get started on this! Snap some pictures of volunteers serving at your organization, or of donors at a fundraising event. The Golden Rule of For-Profit Social Media: When you post photos to social media, tag, tag, tag!
Communicate Often
Social media moves quickly. Be proactive about scheduling content to make sure there's a consistent stream of new posts. Make sure to check your social media channels often to see if people have reached out to your organization so that you can respond in a timely manner.
Post in the Moment When You Can
Social media cares about what's happening now. Hot off the presses, read all about it! Social media users scroll their timeline looking for new content, and it is in your best interest to be the supplier of said content.
Livestream an event, post pictures from the event, respond to current events-- Social media users will cool on your organization's account if it is perceived to be 100% automated.
Keep Your Content Balanced
Here, we talk primarily about using social media for fundraising campaigns. That's our specialty!
You want to be well-rounded with your content. So, you want to consistently post about a few different things: what your organization is doing, how to give, and other major updates. Here's what that means for scheduling content about fundraising:
- When you're doing a big campaign, make sure you talk about other things as well. In addition to letting your followers know they can donate a car, create content that shows what their donation supports. Be quick to share success stories of your organization's work!
- When you have some downtime between six week campaigns, you should still be fundraising. Continue to schedule general awareness content that tells people how they can give to your organization.