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A Strategic Guide to Social Media for Nonprofitssproutsocial.com/insights/guides/nonprofit-social-media-guide/

A Strategic Guide to Social Media for Nonprofits

Social media presents an enormous opportunity for nonprofit organizations to connectwith their supporters, but it isn’t always easy. Thankfully, nonprofits have never been agroup to back down from a challenge.

Part of social’s original appeal was the potential to reach a larger audience for free. Andsocial media works: 55% of people who engage with causes via social media are inspired totake further action, like donating money (68%), volunteering (53%), donating items (52%) orattending an event (43%).

But the growing popularity and changing algorithms of social platforms have made itdifficult to keep your cause at the top of supporters’ newsfeeds. Your organization needs anonprofit social media strategy that will help you face these challenges and ultimately raiseawareness, engage with supporters and get results.

There’s no time like the present to create or refresh your approach, and we’re going to helplead you through the process. We spoke to five nonprofit social experts to get their bestadvice and actionable insights to shape your strategy. In this guide, you’ll find their wisdomalong with examples of organizations thriving on social and actionable tips for how you canget the most from this powerful channel.

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“Social media shouldn’t be out there alone; it should be integrated and aligned with yourstrategic goals and target audiences,” said Beth Kanter, nonprofit consultant and author ofBeth’s Blog, one of the longest running blogs about nonprofits and social media. “The rolethat it can play really well is engagement, especially donor engagement and donorretention, getting people to pay attention.”

The actions you take and the content you create on social should ladder up to the overallgoals of your organization, including serving your mission and advancing your annualpriorities. This ensures that your approach is aligned to the rest of your marketing andcommunications strategy, and that you can secure buy-in from other team members forcrucial collaboration, investment and resources.

For example, if one of your organization’s goals is to increase donor retention, yournumber one priority on social might be to foster engagement with your community anddonors. Your goals might look something like this:

Increase the number of current donors following us on socialIncrease engagement on social by 20%Increase website traffic driven by social by 15%

But don’t stop there. Just as you need a well-defined mission for your organization, youneed clear goals and objectives for social media too. To set your goals, follow the “SMART”goal framework: Each goal should be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and timely.Download our free 2020 toolkit for a SMART goals template and other resources for yoursocial media planning.

Here are a few examples of annual social media goals:

Increase your organization’s social impressions by 15%: Reach new members,donors, participants and volunteers, and educate these groups on what you do andwhy.Boost social engagement by 20%: Keep your organization top-of-mind, buildcommunity and encourage word-of-mouth mentions of your nonprofit.Increase actions taken from social by 10%: Increase newsletter subscriptions, driveevent ticket sales, recruit volunteers and increase donations.

Once you’ve set your goals and determined the right social media metrics to measurethem, share them with your stakeholders (your team, leadership, board and keyvolunteers) to make sure everyone is on the same page. Your goals will be easier toachieve when your social media lead or team is working closely with the rest of yourorganization. From there, you can start to determine specific objectives and tactics.

“A lot of nonprofits say, ‘well, our audience is the general public,’ but if you think you’re2/12

“A lot of nonprofits say, ‘well, our audience is the general public,’ but if you think you’respeaking to the general public, you’re probably speaking to nobody,” said Bridgett Colling,Marketing Manager at Highland Solutions and expert on nonprofit and cause marketing.

Colling recommends that nonprofits develop audience personas, which arerepresentations of your ideal supporters based on demographic data and informationabout individual members of your target audience.

To learn the demographics of your current social media following, you can use nativeanalytics on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, or use a social media management toollike Sprout Social. When you start a free trial of Sprout and connect your profiles, youraudience’s demographic data will begin to populate, which you can see in your dashboardor export as a report. Additionally, if you’re using social listening to understand how youraudience talks about your organization or relevant topics, you can also exploredemographic breakdowns of people engaged in those discussions.

It’s also important to consider people you aren’t reaching yet, but would like to. You canuse tools like social listening topics focused on your cause area or in-person focus groups.You can also use anecdotal data from your conversations at fairs and events to betterunderstand the demographics of your potential audience, what drew them to your cause,why they might get excited about your organization and how they want to engage.

Armed with all of this data, you can create multiple personas that represent supporters indifferent groups. Consider the makeup of your volunteer base, your board and juniorboard, your program participants and your influencers/advocates (e.g. local educators or 3/12

board, your program participants and your influencers/advocates (e.g. local educators orexperts in your space). Give each persona a name as well as a comprehensive demographicbackground, then add specific details about what this person cares about, what theirtypical day is like, who they trust and more.

Understanding your target audience when planning your strategy—and continuing to learnmore as it evolves—is a crucial aspect of creating successful social media content.

Once you’ve identified your target audience, find out which social platforms they use mostoften and focus your efforts there.

If you have limited time to spend on social, don’t spread yourself too thin by worryingabout creating a presence on every platform. It’s better to excel on two or three with agreater potential for reaching your audience than to phone it in on four or five.

To get an idea of which social platforms your target audience prefers, check out our poston social media demographics where we break down the dominant demographics of eachone. Here’s an example showing Facebook usage among key demographics:

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Another factor to consider is which platforms lend themselves most naturally to the type ofcontent you want to share. If you work for an arts or music organization, think aboutwhere your audience watches videos of performances. If you work for an animal rescue,consider how your target audience views and shares pictures of adorable animals on social(hint: Instagram might be a good fit). Prioritize the platforms where you can devote timeand energy to create interesting, distinctive content for an audience that will welcome it—and we’ll talk about saving time when creating that content next.

As you’re creating a content strategy for your nonprofit, it’s important to understand whypeople follow brands to begin with. Our annual Sprout Social Index survey found that thetop reasons people follow brands are for information on products and services (for you,that might be programs, events and campaigns), for entertainment and to stay up to dateon news about the brand. We also looked at what kind of content consumers engage withmost and found a strong preference for content that’s entertaining, inspirational andeducational.

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Starting with that industry perspective, you can use your organization’s social data tounderstand past performance and what has and hasn’t been successful.

What to share

Start by measuring the performance of past posts to identify which content is helping youtoward your goals, and to understand what types of content resonates most with youraudience. Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask supporters what type of stories they wouldlike to see from your organization. You can gather this information in person, via an emailsurvey or by asking on social.

Kivi Leroux Miller, nonprofit consultant and President of Nonprofit Marketing Guide,suggests two questions to guide your content creation: “What problems do people have intheir own lives when trying to live out the values they share with your organization?” and“What tips or tools can you give them that make their lives easier as they try to be a betterenvironmentalist, animal lover, parent, etc.?”

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Start by developing content categories for social media that you can cycle through on aregular basis, such as volunteer spotlights, client stories and how-tos.

The Toy Association is a non-profit trade association with over 900 businesses that createtoys and games for kids. Part of the nonprofit’s social media strategy involves Genius ofPlay, which encourages parents to make playtime a part of their kids’ daily lives. Genius ofPlay uses social media to share helpful content for parents, and to spark dialogue aboutissues their audience cares about.

According to our new survey, parents spend almost as much 1-on-1 time with their device asthey do quality time with their children.

Posted by Genius of Play on Sunday, November 10, 2019

Types of content

From pictures and graphics to short videos and text, your organization should share avariety of posts across platforms. Visual content can often reach emotional triggers in waysthat words alone can’t.

There are plenty of free tools for image creation that can help you create beautifulgraphics, but don’t worry about making every image highly polished. Capturing snapshotsand short videos on your phone enables you to share powerful moments from events, andthose types of posts can give your followers a meaningful peek behind the scenes of yourorganization.

While every single post shouldn’t link elsewhere, social media can be a helpful tool fordirecting people to your website, blog or mailing list. Executive coach and fundraisingexpert Marc Pitman says that one common mistake is creating content that keeps youraudience on social and never captures additional information so they can stay connectedto your brand.

“You should have a healthy mix of content that points back to your site and helps buildyour email list where you give away helpful content—an ethical bribe,” he says. “Then youcan track how many people are coming from social and signing up or taking action.”

Posting frequency

Creating a social media content calendar will help you plan and schedule your social mediaposts in advance. If you are working with a team, or reaching out to others in yourorganization for photos or information, a content calendar will help you stay on top ofplanning campaigns and scheduling content in advance.

Determine a posting frequency and cadence that will keep your organization in front of 7/12

Determine a posting frequency and cadence that will keep your organization in front ofyour audience while leaving you time to manage your community, share newsworthycontent and measure your impact.

If you’re unsure of when you should Tweet or post on Instagram, check out our researchinto the best times to post on social media, specifically for nonprofits. For example, hereare the best times to post on Facebook for optimal audience engagement:

Social media is far more than a publishing platform—it’s a place to capture people’sattention, connect with supporters and build communities. In a recent survey on socialmedia and connection, we found that 64% of people expect brands to connect with theiraudiences, and they rank social media as the number one place to do that.

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“The most powerful thing about social media is something many companies andorganizations often forget: It’s social,” says Chara Smith, former creative team member atcharity: water. “Instead, many brands use social media as a broadcasting platform.”

With limited time to spend on social, engagement should be a priority. Respond toquestions, comments and posts tagging your organization, and look for relevant hashtagsto find new conversations to join. While your tone may be more formal on other outlets,social media is a particularly good place to cultivate a personable brand voice that helpssupporters feel connected. Don’t be afraid to use humor to connect either.

“Part of what we’re trying to do with engagement is show donors that we see them as morethan an ATM,” Pitman said. “The social media accounts that show humanity seem to getnoted more, particularly when you give quick or humorous responses.”

Men’s health non-profit Movember regularly uses humor on social media to add a littlelight-heartedness to support a serious cause—and, when their followers comment on theircontent, they respond and engage in some on-brand banter.

Even the most enthusiastic proponents of your organization may not realize that socialsharing is a powerful way they can raise awareness for your cause. If you are creating orramping up your presence on a specific platform, make it known to all of your constituents 9/12

ramping up your presence on a specific platform, make it known to all of your constituentsthat they can connect with you there.

Show them the value of following—the stories, tips and images they can expect to see—and educate them about the best ways to show support. Don’t be afraid to cross-promoteyour social media content on other channels.

Our experts provided a few suggestions to get your advocates talking:

Start a private group

“Invite them to join a private group or another mechanism of communication so you can‘rock ‘n’ roll,’” Kanter said. “Everyone likes to be on a winning team and to cheer on theteam, so you need that kind of connection. Make it super easy: Provide sample posts forFacebook, sample Tweets, etc.”

For example, the Chicago-based Anti-Cruelty Society has private Facebook groups forpeople who foster their animals as well as for their volunteers. These groups create placesfor their audience to connect with each other, share their stories and swap practicalinformation. They give the organization a go-to place to solicit help with their efforts.

Promote via other communication channels

“Support your social with email, phone and other means of communication,” Pitman said.“Send a link to board members, and ask them to like it, share it, comment and tell youwhat they think. However you want them to interact with you, let them know. People can’tread our minds. It’s not obvious to them; their universe doesn’t revolve around ournonprofit or our social media outreach.”

Here’s a snippet from an email from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) .When thanking supporters for signing up for their email newsletter, they include a CTA tochange your social media profile pictures in order to further spread awareness.

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Provide sample posts

“Make it easy to share by sending an email with pre-written Tweets and graphics peoplecan share when you’re launching a big campaign, telling them one of the ways they cansupport you is to share on Facebook, Twitter or whatever network you think they’re mostactive on,” Colling said. “Make it easy for people. Give them options. And tell them thatsharing is meaningful.”

The nonprofit mentioned above, PanCAN, is raising awareness about pancreatic cancersymptoms in order to promote early detection. They have created created free socialgraphics and GIFs that their supporters can use to spread the message and educate theirnetworks as part of their campaign.

If you have high-profile advocates or an internal team that’s active on social, you can usean advocacy platform to curate content and messaging for your advocates to share. Thisway, your team can log in and start sharing content with just a few clicks. What if youadded five minutes to the end of your next board meeting or volunteer training to provideguidance and encourage social sharing?

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From day one, track your social media efforts to ensure that you are progressing towardyour goals. Demonstrating results will show your leadership the importance of investingtime and resources into social, and it will help you adjust your content strategy to focus onthe type of content that performs best.

“If it doesn’t get results, don’t do it,” says Kanter. “You don’t get impact by wishful thinking.”

Kanter suggests that you look not only at what content is getting a good rate of return, butalso at what takes less time to get that return. For goals such as driving website traffic,Colling recommends using Google Analytics to see how many social referrals are gettingpeople to your website.

“Even better, if you put goal tracking in your Google Analytics, you can see how manyreferrals actually led to someone completing a donation,” she said.

You can use information from social platforms’ native analytics (Twitter Analytics, FacebookInsights, YouTube Analytics) to create your own reports. For a clear breakdown of how touse native analytics, check out our post on the social media metrics that matter.

If you don’t have time to run reports, this is just one of many areas where a social mediaanalytics tool will help. You can use Sprout to run weekly or monthly presentation-readyreports on everything from sent message performance to audience changes toengagement.

Above all, remember to listen and create a habit of strategy and measurement. Over time,you will learn what content gets your community talking and how to fine-tune yournonprofit’s social media strategy to get the best possible results.

We’ll leave you with this one final piece of advice:

“It’s important to set reasonable expectations and know that social media and contentmarketing is a long game. You’re not going to put one post out there and instantly gethundreds of dollars in donations. Like any good relationship, it’s all about communicationover time.”—Bridgett Colling, Highland Solutions

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