6 Tips for Using Social Media for Fund Development
Social media. Love it or hate it, I doubt it will go away anytime soon (until something else replaces it!).
As a development professional, you can strategically use social media to augment your traditional fundraising methods to identify donors, solicit contributions, and educate the community about your programs and mission.
But using social media for development purposes differs from how you would use it as an individual for your own personal reasons.
How can you best leverage the power of social media to augment your fund development efforts and prevent it from becoming a time suck? These six tips will get you started.
1. Know your audience and go where they already hang out. Trying to engage younger donors? Then maybe you want to post on Tic Toc. Baby Boomers? Try Facebook. You can easily access information on the demographics of their users. Google it and match your needs to their audience.
2. Create engaging content. Just because you post on a social media platform instead of in a newsletter does not change your need to provide information of value to them. In fact, it magnifies that need because of all the other “noise” on the channel and the fact that they have to seek it out. What interests your audience, not just about you, but about your mission and area of expertise? Give them more of that kind of information and less information about you directly.
3. Share content. You should post 3 things from others with content of interest to your audience for every post that talks directly about your organization. If you work with children, post about family-friendly vacations, at home crafts, or children’s book reviews. A health organization? Post information about staying safe, preventing sunburn, or identifying allergies. By sharing posts, you also save time from creating something new, and when you tag the originator, you get their audience to see your posts too.
4. Think in terms of campaigns not just asks. Just randomly throwing up a “please give” post will not generate much money. Instead, use the basics of good campaigns to (1) develop a compelling case for support, (2) solicit and publicize leadership donations, (3) engage people to share your content among their audiences, and (4) make it timebound to create urgency.
5. Ask! Remember that social media has the first name “social,” so you engage your audience, do not just have them as passive readers of your content. Periodically include calls to action – please donate, volunteer, share with your friends. Ask questions to get them “talking” and engaging with you: Who was your favorite teacher? Share your favorite recipe, summertime activity. And then answer them to keep the conversation going!
6. Think strategically. Unless you have unlimited time and resources (and who does!), focus your time on the content and the channel(s) that resonates the most with your audience and achieves your goals. To do so, you need to (1) have clear goals and (2) measure your progress toward those goals. Look too at the cost-benefit analysis of your social media program to see if it makes business sense to continue.