This is a guest post by Julia C. Campbell, Digital Marketing Strategist and Founder of J Campbell Social Marketing.
Nonprofits use social media platforms every single day to connect with constituents, raise awareness for causes, and collect donations.
With engaged followers on one or more of the major social networks, organizations can effectively spread the word about fundraising campaigns, new initiatives, and advocacy work. However, simply having 1,000 Facebook fans or 5,000 Twitter followers is not the best indication of social media success. It’s possible to have thousands of followers who never read your posts or click on your links. The key is to build a thriving online community of your nonprofit’s ideal fans—the ones who will actively engage with your content, share it with their networks, and respond to your calls to action.
Learn how you can utilize the Classy for Facebook integration to expand your reach, increase fundraiser retention, and ultimately raise more, and with the following guide:
Classy + Facebook: A Guide to Boosting Fundraiser Retention
Here are 11 simple ways you can grow your nonprofit social media followers, starting today.
- 1. Hold Creative Contests
- 2. Include a Visual With Every Post
- 3. Share More Videos
- 4. Be Responsive to Your Fans
- 5. Change and Rotate Your Profile Photos and Banners
- 6. Give Fans a Reason to Follow You
- 7. Encourage Tagging
- 8. Use Hashtags to Get Found
- 9. Be Entertaining and Use Humor
- 10. Explore Paid Social
- 11. Never Buy Followers
1. Hold Creative Contests
Contests are a great way to get new people to start liking you and keep your current fans engaged. Experiment with contests on every social network on which you are active.
On Facebook, you can now hold contests right on your Page. Some examples include:
- Like to win
- Comment to win – participants leave a comment or answer a question
- Caption contest – either the best caption (you choose) or the one with the most likes wins
- Fill-in-the-blank contest – ask participants to answer a trivia question
- Photo contest – either the best photo (you choose) or the one with the most like wins
- Multiple choice contest
Tips for a successful social media contest:
- Promote it everywhere. Use your website, email list, and other social networks to drum up participation.
- Do not give away prizes unrelated to your nonprofit. For example, if you give away a new iPad, you might drive a lot of engagement and participation, but not necessarily from people who will eventually become donors, volunteers, or lifelong fans. Some ideas for contest prizes include tickets to your big charity event, lunch with the board chair, or an annual membership.
- Follow up with entrants who don’t win. Send them a thank you for participating, along with a great story about your organization’s work.
2. Include a Visual With Every Post
Visuals are high-performers on social media, so be sure to include an eye-catching, colorful image or graphic with each post. Consider these visual marketing statistics, compiled by HubSpot:
- Content with relevant images rack up 94 percent more views than content without images.
- Compared to other types of content, visual content is more than 40 times more likely to get shared on social media.
- Instagram photos showing faces get 38 percent more likes than photos without faces.
Use free graphic design tools like Canva to add graphics to your blog entries and social media posts The Ultimate Guide to Shareable Nonprofit Social Media Graphics.
3. Share More Videos
Video is one of the most engaging content types that you can post on social media. Facebook reported that 50 percent of Americans who use the platform on a daily basis watch at least one video every day.
Make sure to upload your video natively into the platform of your choice. This way, it will automatically play as people land on it while scrolling through their feeds, grabbing their attention. Lots of views can lead to increased reach, engagement, and exposure for your nonprofit.
Free Download: The Nonprofit Growth Guide
4. Be Responsive to Your Fans
Did you know that 83 percent of your Facebook fans and 71 percent of your Twitter followers expect a response from you the same day they ask a question? In fact, 32 percent of Twitter users expect you to respond within just 30 minutes.
Give your followers a fantastic user experience on social by being exceptionally responsive.
Use Businesses on Messenger for to interact directly with your Facebook Page fans. Page admins are now able to reply to public comments with a private message. Everyone can gauge your level of responsiveness by a badge on your Page.
Publicly recognize people who retweet, favorite, and mention your organization on Twitter. Thank users who comment on Instagram and YouTube. When you make your online community feel heard and acknowledged, they are more likely to become raving fans and your most loyal social media ambassadors.
5. Change and Rotate Your Profile Photos and Banners
Your profile photos and banners are some of your best and most-viewed social real estate. Use these visual mediums to showcase the impact of your work and the stories of those who benefit from your services.
On Facebook, change up your cover photo at least once per month, and remember to write a great caption. On Twitter, use your profile picture and banner photo to highlight your great work. Don’t just stretch out and pixelate a horizontal version of your logo—no one wants to connect with just a logo on social media. Personalize, humanize, and customize every channel you can with a visual image that speaks volumes. Make sure you use the right social media image sizes for each platform.
6. Give Fans a Reason to Follow You
Give prospective (and current) fans a reason to follow you on multiple platforms. Do not simply “set it and forget it” with generic, automated links blasted across all of your social media channels. Tailor your content for each channel’s users.
Use Twitter to share news and advocacy alerts. Use Facebook to tell compelling stories about the people who benefit from your work. Use Snapchat and Instagram to paint a visual picture and share behind-the-scenes information and tidbits.
Strategically use each social media channel based on its strengths and demographics. Give your stakeholders a good reason to connect with you on that specific network. What value are you providing? What are you offering that will entice them to stay tuned in? Think about the reasons people use each network to formulate a plan to consistently post and share content that resonates with your specific audience, wherever they congregate online.
7. Encourage Tagging
An effective strategy to engage followers is to encourage them to tag other people who may benefit from or enjoy a specific post. If you post an inspiring quote, write “Tag a friend who needs this today!” If you share a video about Mother’s Day, encourage your online community to tag a friend or friends who mean a lot to them and with whom they would like to share your message. Hopefully these new people will be drawn into the fold and join your online social media followers.
A word of caution—make sure to employ this method sparingly and only where it makes sense.
8. Use Hashtags to Get Found
There are two great ways to use hashtags to increase your social media followers:
a) Use popular hashtags strategically. I suggest using one per tweet, such as #OOTD (outfit of the day), #TBT (throw-back Thursday), #fail (self-explanatory), #FOMO (fear of missing out), etc. There are thousands of hashtags out there—check out Hashtags.org and Hashtagify.me to find ones that are relevant to your audience and your content.
b) Participate in trending topics and current events.
I check my Twitter feed regularly to see what is trending for the day. If it is something that I think would be of interest to my followers, I share a tweet with that hashtag. For example, on Monday you could use the trending hashtag #MondayMotivation to share a quote or an inspiring story with your followers. People searching that particular hashtag may come across your post will hopefully check you out and even follow you.
9. Be Entertaining and Use Humor
Take a note from the Frederiction SPCA, an animal adoption and protection agency that often shares entertaining memes and photos on their page.
Nonprofits that show a bit of humanity and humor do well on social media. Make sure that any content you share makes sense for your particular audience and your brand voice. Do not share cat memes for the sheer sake of sharing cat memes—your audience will get confused and may even unfollow you.
10. Explore Paid Social
Great social media success often involves a budget for many organizations, however shoestring. One of the best ways to grow your audience and gain more exposure is to invest a modest amount into paid social advertisements.
When done well, paid social ads can promote your content, increase conversions, and help you reach new people. Filters allow you to target your ideal fans on each social network by demographic, interest, behaviors, and more.
11. Never Buy Followers
Many people assume that purchasing fans and followers is a shortcut to building a huge online community, but this is general bad practice. Never purchase fans or followers for your nonprofit, or you will be throwing your money away. Why would you spend money to promote your message to a group of people that either does not exist (fake accounts), or could care less about your organization?
When used strategically and thoughtfully, social media platforms are a great way for nonprofits to connect with stakeholders, cultivate loyal donors, and expand their reach and audience. Try out some of these tactics to start engaging followers today.
Download: Classy + Facebook: A Guide to Boosting Fundraiser Retention
