How Do Non-Profits Use Social Media?

Social media keeps us all connected every second of every day. Through Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, posts, pictures, and text, messages can reach a wide audience in a matter of seconds. This is crucial to all kinds of business, especially non-profits.

On social media, the main goal for non-profit companies is to create a strong sense of community and engagement. Since the community can span from clients and future clients to people looking to donate or create partnerships, being able to create a sense of community with all these groups can seem difficult; however, this can be achieved easily by creating shareable and interactive content. For example, adding questions to captions that can be answered in the comments helps to engage the viewer. By having social users participate, they are more likely to retain the information in the post instead of blindly scrolling past. Another way to keep all audiences active is by creating balanced content that speaks to specific groups within your target audience. This seems to be counterproductive; however, it gives the users more direct and influential content even though the content might not always be directed to them.

Another important aspect that social media adds for non-profits is easy fundraising opportunities. Specifically, Facebook has the option to add a donate button. This makes it as simple as possible for interested parties to donate to a cause. Instagram Stories as well as tweets to links also help fuel fundraising campaigns and create traffic to non-profit sites.  Creating fun “games” can help increase donations and allow for more engagement from the community. Being as creative as possible with these specific elements helps strengthen retention rates.

Lastly, social media allows non-profit organizations to promote awareness of their brand message, efforts, goals, and overall story. Sharing, retweeting, and “liking” content helps spread important information and key points of an organization’s mission. Every social platform has a way to spread content that allows more eyes to see and more people to possibly engage with the content whether they are followers or not.

Article by Brianna Yacovelli
Channel Communications Intern