Social Media Ideas for Non-Profits

Are you a non-profit looking to spread your mission and expand your reach through social media? Are you looking for fresh ideas to create a social media calendar with? Social media can be an important tool to connect with your ideal audience, and typically only costs time. We’ve compiled some ideas below to generate social media content.

Set a Goal for Your Non-Profit for Social Media

Before you start posting content for your non-profit, consider what your goal is for using social media. This can shift and change, but it’s a good idea to have a purpose that the content you create will be centered on. Consider these ideas:

Create brand awareness
Promote upcoming events
Gain volunteers
Fundraise
Retain donors
Educate your audience
Community engagement

Measure What is Working on Social Media

If you already have been posting consistently on social media, now may be a great time to analyze what you have already been doing. Take a scroll through your feed and see what posts get the most likes, comments, and shares versus which posts get the least. Do you notice anything common between the posts that do well? Is there a particular time of day that gets more engagement on your page? Is there a topic your audience has a particular interest in?

Learn Your Target Audience

Like with all marketing strategies, a good social media strategy is built with an audience in mind. Knowing who you want to reach can help you choose the right platforms to post on, like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok. Ask yourself what the typical age range is for your ideal audience, and then compare that to statistics on the users of popular social media platforms. Is the audience you are trying to reach local, national, global, or somewhere in between? What kind of content is your audience interested in consuming?

Ideas to Create Social Media Posts for your Non-Profit

Stumped for what to post or looking to freshen things up? Here are some ideas.

Showcase your volunteers – Share quotes from them about why the mission is important to them
Share a testimonial – You can turn text into a colorful graphic to make it more eye-catching to scrollers
Answer a common question you get – Either through a caption or a quick video
Do a video tour of your facility
Share facts about your founder or a quote from them
Promote an upcoming event or fundraiser – Use countdowns or show the venue space
Showcase a success story
Press coverage your organization has gotten
Post a quote – look for inspirational quotes that align with your mission or those you serve
Convert a statistic into an eye-catching graphic
Thank your donors
Behind the scenes videos
Ask your audience a question – create a poll or ask for suggestions

Increasing Followers on Social Media for Non-Profits

If your non-profit is looking to gain more followers on your social media pages, consider these options.

Add icons with links to your social media pages on your non-profit’s website
Tag community partners in your posts when appropriate
Consistently post
Consider doing a giveaway or contest
Interact with your audience by responding to direct messages and comments

Should Your Non-Profit Have a Social Media Policy?

As a non-profit, you may want to enlist as many people as you can to help you generate content that highlights your mission. Before you turn over the reins to your social media pages, consider that content posted can reach a large audience very quickly. You should consider implementing a social media policy for your volunteers and anyone who has access to post on your social media pages. Your social media policy can address:

Who is allowed to speak/post on behalf of the organization
What the policy is for responding to comments
Who can create social media pages on platforms for the organization
Any legal or privacy considerations such as photo releases or protected information

Social Media Success Benchmarks

How do you know if your social media campaign was successful? After you have been creating and sharing content for a set amount of time, you can begin collecting data to measure against your goals. If your goal was to recruit more volunteers, measure the number of inquiries or applications you have received since the beginning of the campaign to a similar time frame. If you wanted to drive more traffic to your website, use a third party tool like Google Analytics to see where your website traffic is coming from (you should set this up before the campaign). If your goal was brand awareness, you can tally to see how many accounts your post reached.

What Insurance Should a Non-Profit Have?

While you are growing the impact of your non-profit, don’t forget to make sure that it has proper insurance coverage. While the missions of non-profits vary, typically they work with vulnerable populations such as children and the elderly that come with additional considerations. To see what coverages your non-profit should consider, you can read more here or you can reach out to our team today. At Cross Insurance, we work with many different insurance carriers to give our clients options.

Recap

Non-profits can utilize social media for many different purposes, including community engagement, recruiting volunteers, and more. Setting a goal for your social media can help you define why you are using the platform. You may consider drafting a social media policy to address how certain situations should be handled. As your non-profit grows, you should review your insurance policy to see if you have appropriate coverage.

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This article is for general informational purposes only and is not to be relied upon or used for any particular purpose. Cross Insurance shall not be held responsible in any way for, and specifically disclaims any liability arising out of or in any way connected to, reliance on or use of any of the information contained in this article. The information contained or referenced in this article is not intended to constitute and should not be considered legal, insurance, accounting or other professional advice, nor shall it serve as a substitute for the recipient obtaining such advice. The views expressed in this article are that of its author and do not necessarily represent the views of Cross Financial Corp. and its subsidiaries and affiliates (“Cross Insurance”) or Cross Insurance’s management or shareholders.