Social media has taken the world by storm and is not going anywhere anytime soon. Many people use social media to vent and others to stay up to date with what is happening with the world. Nonprofits and charities have started to get into the social media game as we have seen unlike any other time in the past few years. We will delve into the different ways that social media can help drive charitable donations and how nonprofits can get into the social media game.
Twitter can garner attention in a quick fashion depending on who is retweeting your content. All that it takes is a couple of retweets from people with high follower counts to get the ball rolling. Studies have been done by varied companies showed an interesting look on how gender plays a role in the ways people engage in social media versus donating. Men tended to tweet more about charities that needed help with a 56% to the females 44%. When it came to actually donating, women tweeted about making a donation with 75% and males 27%. Nearly three quarters of the people who made a donation also asked their followers to make one. This shows that Twitter can be a great tool for the social good rather than just seeing what crazy tweet a celebrity sent out and later took down because of backlash.
Facebook is another great place to raise social awareness for a cause. Facebook users tend to click through to articles and these articles can be promoted for your charity. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge took social media and especially Facebook by storm. Many people challenged their friends and family to do the challenge and surprisingly many followed through with the donations. This shows the ability of a cause going viral as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised of $100 million for the research of ALS.
The #Movember is another cause that raises awareness for male health issues. This involves the growing of moustaches and also people go with the no shave November as well. This is something that does not garner quite the attention of the Ice Bucket challenge but has the same viral marketing as the participants are the marketers.
Things To Know
Having a great cause is one thing, being able to market this and use social media to its full potential is another. Here are a couple tips to keep you on top of your game.
- Know Your Audience. Knowing what social media channel that your most targeted demographic for the cause is paramount. Knowing a younger crowd uses Instagram and your targeted audience is more in tune with Facebook could save you time and money marketing your charity.
- Engage Your Supporters. Many supporters of charities like to be engaged with the foundation that they are donating to rather than preached to about something they already support. On every channel of social media there should be a designated person to answer questions and generally just keep the audience engaged.
- Sponsor Some Content. Giving your charity or cause the largest amount of exposure is the most important thing that you can do. Sponsoring some tweets or Facebook content is a great way to reach a larger number of people. Testing out each channel to see which one brings in the most donations is a great way to cut your costs in the future. If you want to increase your reach even further, you can buy Instagram followers to increase the traffic going to your cause’s site.
As you can see, social media is not only for the self-involved but can also do great things as far as helping others. The sky is the limit once your cause has gone viral although many causes will not. Even without a viral cause, you can increase your reach to people with social media and it will be in the interest of the social good.
Friends Read Free