Speaker 1: In today's age, we all know that social media marketing is important. It plays an integral part to any organization's strategy to attract, engage, convert, and retain people. In fact, nonprofit marketing and fundraising go hand in hand. The more active you are on social media, the more people will know about your organization. And the more people that know about your organization, the more effective your fundraising will be. The trick is to use it effectively, which can prove to be more difficult than it seems. That's why in today's video, we're going to go through the six essential social media strategies for your nonprofit. I'm Maddie with Antidote, and let's jump into it. So first up, let's acknowledge what social media is. More often than not, it's an ever-scrolling, never-ending feed where people are deciding what to view in a fraction of a second. So if you manage to stop someone from scrolling with some amazing content, you want to make sure that your brand is as recognizable as possible. This is where the importance of your nonprofit's visual identity comes into play. Now, for those who are wondering, your nonprofit's visual identity is a part of your brand, and it includes your wordmark or logo mark, brand colors, and mission statement or slogan. And if you're wondering how to implement all of this into your posts, an easy way to do it is add a tasteful watermark on a small portion of your social media graphics. For example, an infographic that explains the recent success of your nonprofit is an interesting and shareable piece of content that could reach thousands of people. So if your nonprofit's branding is not on that infographic, you're missing out on free advertising for your organization. Be sure to use your brand's visual identity consistently across all your social media graphics and headers to create awareness day after day and week after week. A successful social media marketing strategy requires careful planning and timely execution. One of the best ways to do this is to utilize a social media calendar. There are many calendar templates online that you can find for your organization. For Antidote, we use a variation of HubSpot's social media calendar template. You can check out their template in the description below. After choosing the right social media calendar for your organization, the next step is to figure out how many times you want to post on social media. It's recommended to post at least once a day, but figure out what works best for your organization. The key thing is to be consistent with your posting. Whether you plan to post once a day or three times a week, stick with it and post consistently. Planning out your posts ahead of schedule will save you a lot of time and help you stay productive to focus on other tasks. A good way to go about this is to consider planning out your social media content for the entire month at the beginning of that month. Similar to your nonprofit's visual identity is your brand voice. If you're not sure what that is, you can think of it this way. Your nonprofit's brand voice is its tone and personality, which directly affects what you say and how you say it. Likewise, your brand voice is going to determine what your audience understands about you and how it makes them feel, which will move them to action. So take a minute to think it through and identify two or three keywords that you can use as your North Star to that voice. Ask yourself this, is my nonprofit's voice warm and happy or youthful and sassy? How about excited, serious, urgent, hopeful, approachable, or faith-oriented? To give you a specific example here, if your nonprofit is saving animals from being euthanized at a local shelter, your brand voice will most likely be warm and urgent. Do you see how that works? So use your brand voice consistently to draw emotion and create familiarity with your audience. It will be the very thing that your audience connects with because it moves them. A common mistake to be aware of on social media is to use too many words to say something. Social media as a medium is meant for quick, short, but valuable communication. The goal is to leverage short social media posts to draw an emotion, inform, and call to action. So if you have something to celebrate, find the most punchy way to express it in your brand voice. Do you need urgent support? Well, then earnestly ask for help and briefly explain what's at stake. Social media audiences want to engage with your organization through viewing, responding, and sharing, but they don't want to spend too much time dwelling on it. After all, social media is designed to consume content quickly, and your nonprofit is only one account of many that they're following on social media. So use emotion and brand voice with as few words as possible to increase engagement and convergence on your nonprofit's social media accounts. An easy but often overlooked social media tactic for nonprofits is to simply engage your audience. As a nonprofit, your organization is people-focused, so use this to your advantage. Some easy ways to engage your audience include interacting with posts that mention your organization. This could be in the form of liking, commenting, and sharing their posts. Interacting with posts of passionate people in your particular nonprofit-focused community. And finally, partnering with like-minded organizations. This can be done with social media content swaps, co-giveaways and fundraisers, or social media takeovers. Another way to engage with your audience is with calls to action. This can be challenging because there's a common misconception that if people just know what my organization is doing, what we stand for, and what we need, then they will act. But more often than not, it doesn't end up turning out that way. As mentioned earlier, this is probably because your nonprofit's voice on social media is one of many, so it's essential that you're clear on what you're asking your audience to do. Now, when writing calls to action, make sure that the level of difficulty varies. I'll give you some examples. Sign up for our newsletter, download our annual report, make a first-time gift, share our new initiatives page, become a monthly supporter, or sign up to volunteer. So again, gauge the level of difficulty when making the call. Something else to keep in mind is that using consistent calls to action does not necessarily mean that they have to be frequent. You can use some good judgment here to determine how often you should ask your audience to take action. But we recommend a consistent weekly or monthly ask since it's a reasonable and sustainable frequency to achieve your nonprofit's goals of gaining donors, volunteers, and supporters. The final strategy for nonprofits on social media is to simply have fun. It's been said over and over again, but it bears repeating. Social media is social. A great way to make nonprofit social media fun is to consistently comment on your audience's posts and start conversations. As previously mentioned, your nonprofit organization is people-focused, and people will love the attention and care that you provide through engaging your audience. If you're struggling to have fun consistently, consider partnering with another team member to help you out. We know that social media management can create burnout like any other public-facing role, so be sure to have a healthy pace to your posting and remember the why. What this really comes down to is to serving an audience with relevant content that will help them. This is done in hopes to garner more support and eventually converting that audience into donors while building a community around your great cause. So don't lose sight and don't forget to take a break from your phone every once in a while. With these six strategies, we know your social media account will be a success. We know your social media account will be much more impactful for your organization's cause. And if you found them helpful, comment below on which strategies you're planning to use. We can't wait to see what you post. And if you're looking for tactics on nonprofit fundraising, you can check out the video below. The link is in our description. Thanks for watching. Again, be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the notification button for more videos like these. Also, let us know in the comments what you would like for us to cover next. I'm Addy with Antidote, and we'll see you next time.