Building an Awesome Social Media Strategy for Your Nonprofit

The advent of social media brought all marketers the joy of two-way communication. Branding efforts and advertisements that were almost always mere announcements then evolved to be conversations. Acknowledging the fact that this very essence of driving engagement is crucial for nonprofits, we’ve laid out everything one should keep in mind while devising a nonprofit’s social media strategy. 

Start by deciding on the segments you’ll be talking to.

It’s barely an exaggeration to say that everyone is on social media. For nonprofits, this means your donors, your volunteers, your endorsers, your beneficiaries, and more. This advantage of social media makes it one of the most powerful marketing tools your NPO could benefit from. Use this opportunity to include any or all of your stakeholders as your target audience in your social media marketing strategy. For instance, post impact stories that may motivate potential donors or volunteers, but also post calls to action to potential beneficiaries to sign up for your programs. 

Map out the social media channels that most closely resonate with all your stakeholders

For each segment that you’re targeting, understand which social media channels work best for them. For instance, if your NPO focuses on receiving donations and volunteers primarily from corporations, LinkedIn would probably the best platform to post content (here’s why more and more nonprofits are joining LinkedIn). On the other hand, you could keep your other, non-corporate donors informed about your happenings on Facebook and Instagram. In this case, these will be your secondary platforms. Understand where your primary audience spends most of their time and make those your primary channels of focus. 

Jump into the objectives you want to achieve with each of the segments and the KPIs you’re going to use to measure your success.

As they say: ‘If you don’t know what you want, it is impossible to get it.’ You need to know what you want to achieve through your social media channels, and then include that in your social media strategy. Below are a few simple objectives along with KPIs (key performance indicators) you could consider for your nonprofit. In terms of a benchmark, every business is unique —  see where you stand today and keep raising the bar. 

Brainstorm content ideas that will achieve your objectives and add them to your content calendar. 

For every objective you want to achieve on social media, you have to plan some corresponding content. It is true that content is king and it’s essential for you to give your content strategy thought and attention. Amidst all the clutter, good content will make your NPO stand apart from the rest and deliver a good Return On Investment (ROI). A piece of advice here would be to explore different topics and content formats (videos, GIFs, statistics, infographics, polls, animations, etc) and identify what your target audience engages with the most.

Consider paid strategies to amplify your outcomes.

If you’ve ever witnessed an instance where your best content did not perform, it might have had something to do with the social media platform’s algorithm. Every social media channel earns its revenue from businesses, and to make that happen, the latest algorithms are working towards minimizing the organic reach for businesses. However, the good news is that there are ways around it. In addition to following the best practices to increase your organic reach, very minimal investments can help you achieve great results. So, just look at your social media as an economical ad platform and consider making investments that make the best sense for your nonprofit. 

Create and maintain trackers.

Scrolling through all your posts and looking at your followers is never going to let you understand what really worked and what didn’t. It’s important to track every metric on each of the platforms and share with your team so that everyone involved in your social media strategy can set new goals for engagement each month. Doing this will also help you analyze your past content and the paid media strategies that gave you the most number of followers, engagement, shares etc. Based on these insights, you can then plan your subsequent social media strategy and be sure it’s a winning one!

Arriving at the right social media strategy is not rocket science, but it does take some time and effort. Remember that by keeping your content and voice authentic, your passion for your mission and impact will shine through. Stay true to your voice, your brand, and your mission, and your audience won’t be able to help but see how amazing your organization is.