Want better traction? How to improve your nonprofit social media strategy
Does something in your social media strategy feel off? Feeling like you’re putting in all this effort and never seeing any traction?
Let’s talk about how you can realign your social media strategy and build stronger connections with your audience.
Hint: it has nothing to do with asking for more donations on Instagram.
In this post, we’re going to walk through how to realign your expectations, goals, and content to create an effective social media strategy. If you prefer to listen, check out the podcast episode:
3 ways to realign and improve your nonprofit social media strategy
When’s the last time you assessed your strategy? Between year-end fundraising, consolidating your annual plan, and watching one too many webinars, it’s easy to lose track of your social media strategy.
Before you rush to plan more content or download another toolkit, you need to take a moment to adjust your strategy.
Realign your expectations.
Realigning your social media strategy starts with adjusting your expectations.
Here’s what I mean. How many times have you thought:
Social media takes too much time.
I’m not getting any traction or follower growth.
What’s the point?
I hear it time and time again. “Social media doesn’t have immediate ROI. Why am I bothering?” And, I get it. We’re impatient! We want a big audience and we want it now. We want more donations and we want them a week ago.
With all the messages getting thrown at us, it’s no wonder we think social media is instant gratification. We think social media is a one-stop shop for people to open their wallets and give generously overnight.
All those end-of-year roundups and fundraising webinars tell you the stats— the thousands of dollars raised through social—and you start to wonder, Am I doing something wrong?
Not exactly. We just have a habit of thinking about social media all wrong:
It’s not about immediate ROI.
It’s not a popularity contest.
It’s not an overnight success story.
In fact, it’s going to take a lot of upfront work before you start seeing the reward. There are a few things I want us to clear up here.
#1: Your audience is different.
As a Small Shop nonprofit, your audience looks completely different from the big name nonprofits. You can’t keep falling into the comparison trap; comparing your follower counts to massive, global nonprofits.
You’re also comparing yourself to accounts where you haven’t seen the whole story. Maybe they’ve had a solid content marketing strategy and they’ve been experimenting and growing for YEARS.
An Instagram account I started back in 2010, who’s had a dedicated team to support the content strategy is just about to hit 20K followers.
And they are posting multiple times a day. And there are cute photos of dogs and cats.
It takes WORK.
#2: Growth takes time.
You’re likely not going to see ROI from social media for a year or more. Give yourself more time than you think. And if you’re thinking, “Well, we’ve been on Instagram since 2016.”
Okay, let’s take a look at your strategy. (We’ll go into strategy in a minute here). But, usually, if you’re not connecting with your audience there is something out of alignment.
The first step to getting your social media on track is to re-center your expectations. Because being on social media is about so much more than raising funds.
2. Adjust your goals
Social media isn’t really about fundraising at all. It’s about spreading awareness and building relationships. That’s it.
Traditionally you’re probably thinking about social media in terms of follower counts, engagements, and, ideally donations. But, here’s how you should actually be thinking about social media. It’s mostly a place for:
Volunteer recruitment
Education and community-building
Email list growth
Does everything above lay the groundwork for fundraising? Absolutely, yes.
But if your only goal is to raise funds on social media, you’re likely going to be sharing a new fundraising campaign every other week (I’ve seen it before!). Focus instead on spreading awareness about your cause, educating about your nonprofit, and leading followers to join your email list.
Constantly asking for gifts and never serving your audience will eventually exhaust your followers.
How do you serve your followers? With inspiring, engaging, and educating content.
3. Refresh your content categories.
If you’ve been here for a while, you know I’m a little bit obsessed with social media content. It’s such a powerful marketing tool—and more than anything it’s a major way to quickly connect with your ideal audience.
I’m talking, real-life people who CARE as much as you care about the cause you’re fighting for—if not more.
You need to realign your social media content to match what your audience wants and needs. We’re going to take it back to marketing 101 here. Marketing is about sharing content to help your audience get to know, trust, and like you.
How do you do that? With education and storytelling.
#1 - Education
People want to be socially responsible and aware. Education on social media helps familiarize your audience with the issues you’re combatting through your nonprofit. Education allows you to empower your community to become more aware about the issues in their own backyard.
Share content about the issues you’re fighting to end with:
Recent news
Podcasts
Blogs and articles
Recent research or studies.
Another way to educate your audience is to provide updates on what you’re doing in your community.
#2 - Inspiring stories
Stories connect us. Storytelling is about sharing the impact of your nonprofit, sharing a bit of behind the scenes about you, your work, and a day in the life. It also means sharing stories from the volunteers, board members, and supporters and donors so you can humanize your nonprofit.
More than anything, it’s about sharing the stories of the people and places you impact. The transformation your donors make happen.
With education and storytelling, you’re helping your audience get to know, trust, and like your nonprofit. You’ll:
Familiarize your audiences with the issues, the impact, and the work you do.
Humanize your organization by showing the behind-the-scenes stories, community members.
By empowering your audience with information and inspiring your audience with real-life stories, you’re going to warm them up to want to take action. Action could mean joining your email list, signing up to volunteer, and maybe becoming a donor.
Build better relationships with a clear approach
Before you lose all hope in the power of social media, adjust your approach. Take a look at your goals and tweak your content accordingly.
If you’re stuck, grab 100 nonprofit captions here.
