How Your Small Nonprofit Can Benefit from the Power of Social Media

Building a solid social presence is important. It shouldn’t be your sole method of communication, but it should be a great daily representation of your nonprofit’s mission. Using social platforms to speak with your community in a relatable way helps build a great relationship with your current AND potential donors!

It can seem daunting to try and build a social media following as a smaller nonprofit. With so many organizations doing the same thing, you might feel lost in a sea of social pages. But don’t worry—there are a few super easy ways to stand out!

Pictures tell a story (and grab the viewer’s attention)

Social media offers engagement and connection at your fingertips. But how often do you stop to read a wall of text as you’re scrolling through your feed? Chances are you’re not. With a society on the go, we want instant gratification and information right away. Reading a long paragraph simply isn’t appealing.

It’s not entirely surprising that posts with images get more views and engagement. Pictures are powerful tools that tell a story. Draw your viewers in with an impactful image. It’s important to remember social media is just that, it’s social. Posting a picture and walking away isn’t enough. Engage with your followers as they engage with you—this ensures higher post visibility!

Images also cater to another audience that is often overlooked.

Fun stat: 35% of adults over the age of 65 are actively using social media. This statistic honestly surprised me! Social media and technology as a whole have a reputation of catering to younger audiences. Blocks of text can be difficult for older audiences to read, especially on mobile. Posting pictures can be a solution to this issue.

With older generations joining social platforms more and more, you don’t want to miss out on a clearly very engaged audience. Social media is for everyone!

Here’s a great example of an image with a high engagement rate: It isn’t a professional, high-quality image, but it’s genuine, which is more important.

Boost your call to action, boost your visibility

Your social pages aren’t just your organization’s voice—they give donors their own voice. Social sharing is huge. Be sure to promote your call-to-action posts so that donors can share, too! You don’t have to spend lots of money to get views on your post. A solid targeting strategy will be what makes or breaks your visibility.

So, who are you targeting? What are you looking to achieve? Let’s break down a simple but effective boosted post for Facebook.

• What segment is your organization a part of?
• What is the goal you’d like to achieve? Likes and engagement or new page followers?
• Audience demographics: this can get pretty specific, so play around with it to see what works. For nonprofits, it’s best to stick to behaviors like “volunteering” and “fundraising”

The more eyes you can get on your post means (ideally) more shares on other’s social pages! It’s easy to get plenty of likes on your page, but those likes don’t equal engagement. Sharing posts equals engagement. Engagement is the key to visibility on social media!

Tie it all together with emails and your website 

Do your emails and website have visible links to follow your social media pages? We recently published a blog about this because we noticed a real issue. Many nonprofits either made it hard to find their social pages OR they had broken links.

Say you did post your links to your website and emails—are they easy to get to? Are they visible? Social channels are such a valuable tool. Don’t let it get lost in text links. Link them visually. Badges, people! Pictures are attention grabbers. We preach this often, but people are visual by nature. Help them out by making your pages easy to find—they shouldn’t have to hunt for them. We can assure you, making this process easy means your social pages won’t be the only thing that’s liked!

Look how easy SPCA Florida made finding their social badges! Colorful visuals AND they’re placed at the very top of their website.

All your methods of communication should tie together. It makes it that much easier to be recognized in the realm of social media!

It’s powerful and affordable for all nonprofits—take advantage of this!

That’s the best part! We know funds can be tight. You don’t need thousands of dollars to be noticed on social media. You just need a loyal following and solid strategy.

Social media is a lot of fun. Because social platforms aren’t stagnant, there’s a lot of room for experimentation to see what works for your organization! Because you can always do something new, you open so many doors of possibility. Along with the possibility of standing out by posting engaging, relevant content, you can also increase donor retention and build relationships with your community.