How to Create a Social Media Strategy for Your Nonprofit

Welcome back .

In today's video , I'm gonna share a 6 step framework on how to create a social media strategy for your nonprofit .

I've helped dozens of small to large nonprofits create and optimize their social media strategies .

By the end of this video , you'll know 6 steps on how to create a social media strategy for your nonprofit .

But before we dive in , I wanna share why it's so important to have a social media strategy .

So according to nonprofitsource.com , 55% of people who engage with nonprofits on social media end up taking some sort of action .

59% of those people end up donating money .

This is why it's so important for nonprofits to have a social media strategy .

So let's dive in .

The first step is to establish goals .

These goals are gonna be your compass and the cornerstone kind of goals can you set ?

Here are a few examples .

You can increase the kind of goals can you set ?

Here are a few examples .

You can increase awareness .

You can have a goal of measuring how many new followers that you get every month .

You can have a goal of increasing your engagement .

You can have a goal of getting people to send you messages .

You can have a goal of getting people to start fundraisers on your behalf or to use the donate sticker on Instagram .

There are a lot of different goals that you can have .

And so if you're just starting out , we recommend that you focus on goals like increase your social media following and increase your engagement .

And if you've been on social media for a while as a nonprofit and you have a good following and you have people engaging with you , that's when you should go to the next level of measuring things like trying to get people to send you messages , trying to get people to comment on your posts more , trying to get people to start fundraisers for you .

I would love to know , does your nonprofit have goals for social media ?

If you do , comment we have goals below .

If you don't , comment we're excited to get started with our goals .

And I don't ask this question .

There's no shame in it .

I only ask it so that I know where you guys are , and I can help provide resources in your journey .

The second step to creating your social media strategy is to identify your target audiences .

Now you might have multiple target audiences as a nonprofit .

You may have your clients , the people that you serve .

You may have corporate sponsors .

You may have volunteers , and you may have donors , all as separate target audiences .

It's important to drill down on exactly what kind of people represent those target audiences .

So 1 fun way that we like to do this is to pretend that we are creating a movie script for a nonprofit , and we have to cast characters .

And so in order to cast the characters , we have to make a list of what 1 person from this group would be like .

And so we write down things like their age , their income , their education level , their interest , whether they're male or female , if they have kids or not , where they go online , what do they like to read .

We get really specific , and we create a person .

And we use this character to help us draft content to write posts because that's when you can really visualize who you're talking to , and it makes your post much more effective and easier to write .

So this is something we highly recommend , and it's fun .

So create a person for each of your target audiences that you can keep in mind when you're dropping social content .

It'll make it seem like you are actually talking to someone instead of creating content and just throwing it out into the universe .

Step 3 of creating your social media strategy is to identify content categories .

So once you created your characters , your personas , your avatars from step 2 , you wanna think about the types of content that those people would wanna see on social media .

So some examples could be that you provide inspirational quotes , or maybe you provide funny memes , or maybe you provide educational posts to get people aware of certain issues or things that would be beneficial for them to know .

Or maybe you highlight testimonials or you highlight the impact statistics of your organization .

There's many different types of content categories that you can create .

And the key is that you create these categories content categories is to provide profit .

Now the key to creating content categories is to provide 3 times more value than you're asking .

And so if you are providing inspirational quotes and you're providing heartwarming stories , this is giving your social media followers value .

And so if you're giving them 3 times more value than you ask for things , when you do ask for donations or you do ask for people to get involved , they're much more likely to take action because they feel more connected to your nonprofit , and they know that you're just not a non profit that asks for things all the time .

So we really encourage you to get strategic with your content categories because the more strategic you are , the more engagement that you will get .

The 4th step to creating a social media strategy is to create your content framework .

So once you've established what types of content categories that you're gonna have , you can then create what's kind of like a styling guide .

So this can be your brand colors .

This could be a template for quotes that you're gonna provide .

This can also be any kind of requirements for testimonials .

Maybe you need a quote from someone that you helped along with a photo , or maybe you need a video of an event to do a recap .

Whatever types of content you want to provide so that they have a consistent look and feel , this is where you'll document your content framework .

And maybe you're thinking , I don't have a graphic designer .

How am I gonna create a template ?

There is a free resource called Canva .

It's a very easy to use plug and play type of graphic design software .

I don't even wanna call that because it's not technically graphic design , but it allows you to easily select a template that already has a quote in it and to adjust it to your brand colors and to put in your quote .

So I highly recommend that you check out Canva if you don't have support on staff to help you make things look pretty .

And because you're a nonprofit , you can actually apply for the pro version and get that completely free .

And what that will do is it'll give you a palette of colors that are easy to pick from .

It will let you save your fonts , and it will give you access to premium images .

Now in next week's video , we are going to share how you can create affordable videos .

So if you've been wanting to create videos for your nonprofit , but you just don't really know how , we highly encourage you to tune in for this video .

So make sure that you click the subscribe button down below and click the bell , and this will help you determine whether or not you can provide videos and how you can make this part of your content framework .

Step 5 of creating your social media strategy is 1 of the easiest .

It's determining your posting frequency .

At minimum , we recommend posting at least once a week .

And here are some other guidelines .

So if you remember when we talked about the content categories , we recommended giving 3 times more value than you ask .

So at minimum , make sure that you have 3 posts that are either educational , inspirational , or informative before you ask for donations or for volunteers and things of that nature .

The second tip that we have when it comes to frequency is to be consistent .

So whether you're posting once a week or 5 times a week , you wanna make sure that you keep that cadence .

And this is actually really important because the algorithm starts to realize how often that you post .

And so if 1 week you're posting 5 times , and the next week you drop down to 1 , and then the next week you do 3 posts , the algorithm is gonna say this brand , this nonprofit is not very consistent .

So we're not sure where we should put them in the algorithm .

But if you show up the same every week and you're providing great content , you're gonna get seen by more people and have more engagement .

The 6th step to creating a social media strategy for your nonprofit is to create engagement .

Now this is where a lot of nonprofits fall short in the social media game .

I understand that you don't have a lot of time , but if you want to be effective on social media , you need to plan out at least 15 minutes a day , or maybe it's once a week , if that's all you can do , for engagement .

So here are some types of engagement that you can do .

The first is that you can create call to actions in your social media posts .

So oftentimes , a lot of people need to be told to share something or to comment .

And so if you're encouraging people to take those actions , you're gonna see more engagement .

And if people do start to share your content and they do comment , it's really important that you comment back to them in a timely manner .

Because if you're just having 1 way conversations , people are gonna lose interest and feel like you don't have time for them .

So make sure if you're creating call to actions , you also follow-up with the engagement .

Another thing that you can do is you can now interact as a page in Facebook groups .

So if there's relevant groups of maybe potential clients , donors , volunteers , you can join these groups and look at the conversations that are going on and interact with your page .

And people will start to notice that your nonprofit is playing a part in conversations .

Maybe you're providing information that people need or you're providing opportunities for people to get involved .

The key is that you wanna be relevant and you don't wanna spam the groups .

You don't wanna just put out information that you have for people to donate or volunteer .

You wanna actually contribute to those conversations .

2 other things that you can do are you can search Instagram , and you can also search Twitter for relevant hashtags .

So maybe you're a pet rescue , and you wanna look for the hashtag pet rescue Denver or , you know , Denver pets , something to that effect , you can look by hashtag , and you can actually start to comment or to like post of people using those hashtags .

And that's gonna get awareness for your nonprofit .

And if someone goes to your Instagram bio , your Twitter bio , and you're very clear about what your nonprofit does , how people can get involved , you'd be surprised at how many more followers you can get and how much you can increase your engagement .

So if you really want to see results from your social media efforts , you must make time and you must create a strategy for social media engagement .

Let's recap our 6 part framework to create a social media strategy for your nonprofit .

Step 1 is to create your goals .

Step 2 is to identify your target audiences and to create characters .

Step 3 is to create content categories .

Step 4 is to develop your content framework .

Step 5 is to determine your frequency .

And step 6 is to create engagement .

Now if you have any questions on any of the information we covered , feel free to comment below , and we'll get back to you .

And if you wanna learn how to make affordable videos , don't miss next week's video .

Make sure you hit the subscribe button below and click the bell notification so that you can get notified when we release this video .

And finally , if you are interested in donation driven marketing , we're releasing a course .

And if you wanna get notified when that's available , there is a link in the description .

So thanks for watching , and we'll see you next week .