How can you make the most of social media during your fundraising appeals? Here’s six quick tips to get you started.
1. Live Video
Facebook’s Live Video is new and exciting. It gives you the perfect opportunity to share something time sensitive or exciting with your audience – such as a tally update or matching grant. Right now, a significant percentage of your online page “likers” will be notified when you go live, giving you enhanced reach. As with anything, the novelty and effectiveness will soon wear off so it’s best to get use out of this sooner rather than later.
2. Target Ads at Existing Donors
Did you know you can target Sponsored messages at your existing audience on Facebook, using only their email address? You can!
This is the perfect way to capture the attention of your donors on an ongoing basis over your campaign. Add all you donors’ email addresses into you Custom Audience and watch Facebook slowly deliver your messages to these people (for a small fee, of course). You can perform donor segmentation using your usual methodology and tools, and simply provide the generated email lists to Facebook to target.
For bonus points, add a Conversion Pixel to your donation page to ensure you don’t continue to target donors after they’ve given (or give them a “thank you” message instead).
3. Do More Than Just Ask
Donors will tire of you asking for money all the time. Ensure you continue to share social proof and other engaging, shareable content. If you have success with this content, it will increase the overall reach across your social media channels. It will also place your brand front-of-mind for your donors. Consider all the different ways you can use
4. Get Donors to Ask Their Friends
Consider using your donation “thank you” page to ask your donors to share you message with their own friends. This can dramatically increase your reach. Your donors are possibly some of your biggest advocates, and if they’ve just parted with their hard-earned cash then there’s a decent chance they’ll be willing to encourage their friend to support you too. Referrals are one of the best sources of new business in the corporate world, not just not-for-profits.
5. Cultivate an Audience All Year Round
Most importantly, make sure you cultivate your audience all year round. You don’t stand much of a chance at making your way through the current social media feed algorithms if you just start asking for money in June without first cultivating your social media audience.
6. Seek Endorsements
Digital endorsements can really increase your social reach. Speak to any high-profile supporters you may have, and ask them to share a personalised message with their own followers.