Your marketing resources and budgets are likely stretched pretty thin as a nonprofit organization. Social media marketing allows you to easily and affordably promote your organization to build an engaged audience, meet future fundraising goals, and ultimately increase the attendance of your events. We realize that keeping up with social media can be stressful, but it doesn’t have to be!
Social media marketing for nonprofits isn’t a popularity contest. Sure, growing the number of followers you have is always a good idea, but having an engaged audience is even more impactful. Social media engagement occurs when people interact with your social media accounts through comments, likes, and shares. Here are three simple things you should be doing to keep your audiences engaged on social media:
1. Create a Content Calendar and Plan Your Posts Weekly
Create a basic social media calendar to make content planning more manageable and ensure you’re posting regularly. When planning, anticipate essential events for your organization like Giving Tuesday, special anniversaries, and holidays.
Your calendar doesn’t need to include everything, though. It’s important to make sure your social media strategy remains flexible to ensure your posts are timely and relevant. An easy way to do this is by planning your posts on a weekly cadence. Your social media calendar will guarantee you aren’t missing any key events or holidays, but planning your posts weekly leaves room to add last-minute posts as needed. For example, you might need to announce an exciting new donation match or a flash sale on tickets to your undersold performance.
2. Find New Content Sources
Need some inspiration for your org’s social media content? The best way to get inspiration is to see examples and borrow content from other sources. Try browsing accounts that relate to your nonprofit or share up-to-date industry content. For example, at NeverDark, we update our feeds about the arts business, dance, opera, music, and theater to ensure you always have fresh content to share. (To see them, visit our home page and scroll to the bottom. Then click the topic you’re interested in to reveal the latest stories.) Don’t forget, it’s okay to recycle or refresh older content, too.
3. Post More Interactive Content
Interactive content are posts that your audience actively engages with rather than passively watching and reading. There are a lot of interactive content types, but a few examples are polls, Q&As, and surveys. Incorporating this type of content is a quick way to boost engagement rates and reach your social media goals.
As you continue to refine your social media strategy, keep your audience engagement top-of-mind. Want to learn more content marketing tips? Check out our recent post about how content marketing can benefit your nonprofit.