Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) can greatly benefit from a well-planned social media strategy. By using social media platforms, NGOs can spread the word about their initiatives and connect with a wider audience.
Social media is a great way to communicate goals, showcase impact, and gain support from individuals, communities, and potential donors.
NGOs can use targeted messaging, strategic content creation, and social media tools to generate online conversations and create a sense of community around their cause.
Social media also provides valuable feedback and insights that NGOs can use to measure their impact, optimize their outreach, and adapt their strategies to better serve their beneficiaries. By embracing social media as a crucial part of their communication and advocacy efforts, NGOs can increase their reach, drive positive change, and ultimately achieve their mission more effectively.
How to Develop a Successful Social Media Strategy for Nonprofits
To achieve success in your nonprofit’s social media strategy, follow these steps:
- Define your goals.
- Develop metrics to measure your progress.
- Compose a social media policy to guide your actions.
- Choose the right channel to reach your audience.
- Build a social media calendar to plan your posts.
- Create compelling content that resonates with your followers.
Define Your Goals
To create a successful social media strategy for your nonprofit, it’s important to define specific goals that align with your organization’s mission statement. Some common goals that nonprofits have for social media are driving website traffic, engaging with the community, recruiting volunteers, acquiring and retaining donors, increasing brand awareness, and establishing thought leadership.
Develop metrics to measure your progress.
When launching a nonprofit social media strategy, it is important to measure and monitor the results. The ultimate goal for a nonprofit is to increase donations, volunteers, and achieve other set goals. Setting key performance indicators (KPIs) can help identify working strategies and eliminate those that don’t work. Some social media KPIs could include increased newsletter opt-ins, more event participants, new volunteer registration, a surge in website traffic, and the number of followers, likes, or fans.
Compose a social media policy to guide your actions.
It is important for nonprofit organizations to have a social media policy in place that guides their staff and volunteers on appropriate use of designated social media channels and how to avoid inappropriate online behavior.
Choose the right channel to reach your audience.
Looking for the right social media platform for your nonprofit organization? Here are the top choices to consider:
While it’s a good idea to have a presence on multiple social media platforms, not all nonprofits have the resources to maintain them. To start, focus on one or two channels and expand as you can manage.
Build a social media calendar to plan your posts
Many marketing and social media experts plan their posts in advance using a calendar or schedule. As for the frequency of posting, 60% of nonprofits post on social media between 0 and 3 times per week, while 21% post between 4-10 times per week. To ensure your followers stay engaged, aim to post at least once a week.
Create compelling content that resonates with your followers
Do you want to attract new volunteers and donors while still inspiring your current supporters? Consider these nonprofit social media content ideas:
- Images and Videos
- Interactive Content
- Inspiring Words
- Share, Repost, and Retweet
Images and Videos
Incorporating visual storytelling into your nonprofit’s social media strategy can increase post views by 94%. To achieve this, you can share various kinds of visuals like photos of happy volunteers participating in an initiative, a digital poster announcing upcoming events, a video montage of volunteers sharing their experiences working with your organization, or videos from community members affected by your program. You can also include an inspirational quote in an artful font to make your post more engaging.
Interactive Content
To connect with your supporters, share content that they can engage with. Almost all social media platforms offer ways to create interactive content that can be entertaining and enjoyable for your followers.
Inspiring Words
Your organization’s volunteers are essential to its success. It is a good idea to showcase their contributions by sharing their stories. This helps to highlight their impact and demonstrate why they are crucial to the organization. You can also promote upcoming volunteer opportunities and share positive feedback from past volunteers to encourage more participation.
Share, Repost, and Retweet
Creating new content multiple times per week may seem challenging. However, while it is essential for most of your content to be original and aligned with your organization’s mission, you can occasionally share or repost content created by others. This could include an inspiring news story, a picture of a cute animal, or a post from a community partner that you want to endorse and share with your supporters.
