Nine social media best practices for non-profits
Social media platforms are an effective way for non-profit organizations to tell their story, show impact, engage with supporters and drive donations.
But to truly be successful, your social media effort can’t be a side venture or an after-thought. It needs to be planned and well-curated. A focused social media strategy allows you to ensure that you’re using your desired platforms to reach your overall goals. By creating relevant, compelling, and purposeful content that’s both donor-centred and community-centred, you’ll position your organization as a local thought leader in your area of focus, while also working towards creating greater awareness both nationally and globally.
Here are nine social media best practices to help every non-profit reach their social media goals.
Make sure all posts are consistent with your mission statement. Before each post is published, ask yourself: Does this post align with our mission statement?
Ensure that every post has a strong, eye-catching, bright photo. It’s the photo that will always catch a user’s eye first. Even if you have a great story to tell in the caption, if you don’t lead with a strong photo to capture your user’s attention, your post won’t achieve the success you’re hoping for.
Quality not quantity. Social media algorithms favour quality posts with high engagement, so take the time to create strong, relevant posts, rather than lots of rushed posts. A good thing to remember: The best posting frequency is the posting frequency that you can keep up with as consistently as possible, as the algorithm favours consistent posting.
Always include concise, context-providing copy. All posts should include a short text written by your organization to engage your followers and allow them to share and promote your thoughts.
Share “thumb-stopping” content. When you’re scrolling social media, what kinds of posts make your thumb stop? This is what you want to achieve from your followers. One of the best ways to do this is to vary your post types.
More positivity, less negativity: Studies show that “happy” content gets shared much faster and wider than “sad” content. That’s not to say that your organization should never share posts that would incite sadness or anger, but aim for the majority of posts to be inspiring, heartwarming, interesting, or exciting.
Always tag relevant pages. When mentioning another person or organization, always tag their social account (if they’re on the platform, of course). This encourages the other page to share, retweet or like the post as well, and thus increase your reach.
Reply to and “like” responses. Acknowledging comments and shares of your posts is a great way to encourage more engagement.
Always include a CTA and/or link with an image post. Make it very obvious to the reader what you want them to do after they read your post, whether it’s to make a donation, click on a link for more information, etc.