Social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal. Businesses have leveraged social media for many years to sell their products and reach new audiences—so shouldn’t nonprofits be just as successful on these platforms?
With social media, nonprofits can broaden their reach, solicit donations, and raise awareness for their causes. In this guide, we’ll explain why social media is such a useful marketing method for nonprofits and provide tips on how you can optimize your strategy.
Why is social media an important channel for nonprofits?
While you likely already use a variety of digital marketing channels, social media offers unique benefits for nonprofits advertising their causes and services. These benefits include:
- Increased reach. With social media, you can easily reach current and potential supporters wherever they are. There are over 4.8 billion social media users around the world who can become champions of your cause.
- Better targeting abilities. Use the targeting abilities within each platform to ensure your ads reach people of specific demographics, interests, behaviors, and locations. You may even work with a data provider to build a custom lookalike audience that mirrors your supporter base and activate it across different social media platforms for more precise results.
- Cost-effectiveness. Compared to other marketing channels, social media advertising has relatively low associated costs—allowing you to create impactful campaigns without straining your marketing budget.
- Two-way communication. Social media is just that: social. Whereas traditional marketing methods talk at your supporters, social media allows them to join the conversation. Supporters can like and comment on your posts, and you can speak directly to them by tagging them or private messaging them. That way, you can build genuine relationships with your supporters online.
- Opportunities for visual storytelling. Did you know that 75% of people are visual learners? Social media allows you to make your work more digestible through engaging photos and videos.
- Shareability. What truly makes social media stand out from other marketing channels is the ability to quickly and easily share content. Your supporters can amplify your content and cause by reposting, tagging their friends and family, or sending them the link.
Whether you’re trying to invigorate your current supporter base or reach new audiences, social media allows you to spread your cause far and wide in a highly engaging way.
Tips for Leveraging Social Media as a Nonprofit
Now that you have a better understanding of why your nonprofit should advertise on social media, let’s explore some tips that will allow you to make the most of this marketing opportunity.
1. Define your goals.
Your goals will determine what your social media campaigns look like. Common goals nonprofits achieve with social media advertising include:
- Raising awareness for your cause
- Fundraising to increase donation revenue
- Encouraging event attendance
- Gaining new support
- Promoting your volunteer program
- Driving newsletter subscriptions
Additionally, defining your objectives can help you determine which platforms to use for which campaigns. For instance, Getting Attention’s digital marketing guide for nonprofits explains that Facebook has digital fundraising features that make it ideal for increasing donations whereas TikTok’s algorithm allows you to raise awareness and reach new audiences.
Check out this graphic from the Getting Attention guide that breaks down the audience, advantages, and content of different social media platforms for nonprofits:
As you can see, different platforms are ideal for different purposes. Before choosing a platform for your campaign, ensure it aligns with your campaign’s content and audience.
2. Get to know your audience.
With an understanding of who your audience members are, you can reach them on the right channels and personalize your messaging to their demographics and interests.
Start by surveying your database for useful supporter data to inform your campaigns. Then, consider supplementing your current data with a data append. A data append allows you to enrich your database with additional donor information, such as:
- Demographics
- Education
- Marital status
- Presence of children in the home
- Income
- Net worth
- Lifestyle information
Use this information to tailor your campaigns to your audience. For instance, if you find that a core segment of your audience is Millennials in the Houston area, you may lean on Facebook and Instagram to promote local events and volunteer opportunities to these supporters.
You can even use the data you collect to predict donors’ giving behavior and create social media campaigns that align with these insights. For example, if year-end is the most popular time for your donors to give—which is true for many nonprofits—you can ramp up your social media advertising in November and December.
3. Create a variety of compelling content.
Social media is unique in that it allows you to share content about various topics in many different forms. Take advantage of all social media has to offer by creating engaging, interactive content that inspires your supporters to get involved.
Here are some ideas for creating compelling content that your nonprofit can tweak to fit its needs:
- Share impactful statistics and infographics. Concrete statistics make key concepts related to your cause more tangible. For instance, if you’re trying to promote matching gifts, you may create an infographic demonstrating that over 26 million people work for companies with matching gifts. Then, urge your followers to check their eligibility and submit a request to double their donations to your nonprofit.
- Hold your audience’s attention with short-form videos. With the popularity of TikTok and Instagram Reels, it’s clear that organizations need to be creative with their social media marketing and tap into short-form video production. Take advantage of current trends on these platforms, and create engaging and innovative videos that display your work.
- Tell your beneficiaries’ stories. Encourage current and potential supporters to form an emotional connection with your cause through storytelling. With their permission, interview your beneficiaries, and highlight standout quotes and images on your social media profiles.
- Host polls, livestreams, and Q&A sessions. Social media platforms have numerous features that are specifically intended to increase engagement. Consider using a combination of polls, livestreams, and Q&A sessions to directly interact with your supporters and learn more about them.
Test a variety of platforms and formats to see which types of content perform the best for your specific audience.
4. Track your results.
Along the way, assess campaign effectiveness by analyzing relevant data points. Deep Sync explains that one of the primary forms of first-party data—or information sourced through supporter interactions—is social media engagement. This data includes:
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Post clicks
Start by seeing which of your posts have the highest engagement. Then, dive deeper into your social media comments to see which posts get the most engagement and what your supporters are saying. Are they sharing their experiences with your nonprofit? Are they tagging friends and family? Are they asking questions?
Try to respond to as many supporters as possible to show that you value their input. To collect even more feedback from your supporters, send them surveys about your social media presence and your nonprofit. You may do this directly on social media through polls or direct messages or send them a link to your survey via email.
Social media isn’t just for businesses to acquire new customers and show off their products. It’s an ideal medium for nonprofits to reach their supporters and inspire them to get more involved in their causes. Experiment with how you can best engage your audience on social media to effectively promote your services and overall mission.
Gabrielle Perham, MBA
Gabrielle is the Director of Marketing & Sales Operations for Deep Sync. She joined the organization in 2017 and brings 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, branding, communications, sales enablement, and digital marketing. With a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done attitude and a big-picture mindset, Gaby loves solving marketing and business challenges. She earned both a B.S. in Marketing and an M.B.A. in Marketing Management from the University of Tampa. Gaby enjoys spending time with her fiercely outspoken daughter; hiking and kayaking; rocking out in the first row of a live show; and giving back to her local community.
