Rally your rowers: 10 steps to engage your nonprofit social media
You’ve been tasked with social media for your nonprofit….lol.
My guess is someone in leadership knows that your organization should be showing up online because that’s where the juice is - awareness, which leads to memberships, donors, patrons, participants, sponsors, relationships, grant opportunities…allll the things.
And because anyone can do social media (which I believe wholeheartedly), they handed you your own phone (ha) and said “go do social media for us.” Cool. cool cool cool cool cool. Cool. Cool.
Maybe you know enough to throw up a post here and there, or maybe you’ve really got it figured out. Wherever you are in that part of the journey doesn’t really matter.
What matters is who will hear it.
So the first step to rally your community is to understand that you’re making content for them. Not what you think is awesome about your organization - although that can inform your content, it should not drive it.
Got that? Ok. Moving on.
[if this concept doesn’t hit, you need to read this before you go on - go and do that - then come back].
The next part is also really important to understand.
If it looks like I'm grimacing, it's because I am a little bit. Photo by Jonathan Asher Photography
Engagement to a nonprofit (you) means: having volunteers, board members who do work, constituents that give time and money, sponsors that trade goods and services…the list goes on. This varies depending on your creative niche, but broadly functions the same.
Engagement to a social media person (me, or you the new social media manager) means: getting people to like, comment, share, click on your website, weigh in, give online, etc.
When you are tasked with social media, or you the nonprofit tasks someone with social media, those are the asks for online engagement. Nothing bakes my cookies more when an organization asks me to improve engagement on social media, then ignores the objective success when I show them the upward line from the analytics - a line that often surpasses thousands or hundreds of thousands in reach and engagement.
Because it means nothing to them until it translates to people, sales…in-person community.
The ultimate goal should be to move people from the online community into your in-person constituency. When that doesn’t happen, your social media efforts stall, you check out of your channels because “things aren’t working” and they go dormant until the next poor volunteer gets assigned with whipping up posts on the fly, livestreaming your event, and a whole lot of things that are probably unnecessary if you just located your audiences online, engaged them there, and eventually brought them into your real-body-life circle [and showed how this was born of social media to the leaders that will listen].
Action item: if you haven’t put a “how did you hear about us” tick box on any of your intake forms - and included social media - you are missing a major opportunity for awareness. Ok moving on.
No matter what content you post, it is for naught if people are not sharing, liking, commenting, or engaging online. Social media is still free. It is still accessible to the masses. It takes time, but they are advertising platforms...made up of people and their data. You should be using it to your advantage.
A lot of organizations want to help. But then get overwhelmed when they don’t know how to locate a link sticker on an instagram post. That task is too intricate. But they may be able to follow your page and comment on your latest facebook post.
Your version of help might be coming up with ideas for social media - that task is too overwhelming for the masses. But they may be able to tag you when they take a picture and post it online.
You might really need people to mark “attending” in a facebook event and then share it. For your community, that dig takes a conscious effort to remember to do it, and gets lost in the sea of life.
So how tf do you do this? How do you gain momentum online when people won’t help in a way that you really need?
Here’s how:
FIND YOUR NONPROFIT SOCIAL MEDIA ROWFOLK
You need to see the snowball, but first you need to do a little bit of training the algorithm. I want you to gather 5 people. Call it your social media ship. You are at the helm, these are your rowers. These people should, bare minimum, know how to do these things on social media:
Like and follow the organization
Share your org’s posts - to their own feed or story
Comment on your org’s post - as themselves
Tag other people - from their personal profile
Are on social media once a day, or at least 3x / week
If they don’t meet that criteria, they’re not your rowers. Your rowers are the people that show up online as themselves consistently. Find them, and have them help you.
It has to be these people, not “sporadic sally” who pops in once a month to your org’s socials to drop an dance emoji. NOT fly-by-night Fred who RSVPs to the facebook event, but doesn’t invite 10 other people who might also want to come witness your hard work. These people have their own gifts and can be plugged into your organization elsewhere, not on social media. You need the rowers.
Hint: your rowers may be right in front of your nose. Go to your socials and look at the last 5 posts you made, and see who liked it or commented. Does anyone appear more than once? They might be a rower.
Once you’ve found them, give them this strategic engagement plan to do for your organization every time they are online, in this exact order, preferably daily.
This is optimized for Facebook and Instagram.
ENGAGE YOUR NONPROFIT SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY: A DAILY 10 STEP PLAN
LIKE and FOLLOW your organization’s page. These are two separate things. Do both if your profiles allow.
Add your org to your favorites [FB mobile: 3 dots on any post, add org to favorites / prioritize their posts in your feed]
Turn on notifications [IG: from profile, click the bell icon and toggle which notifications you want to see]
When your organization posts, look for a call to action (CTA). Does the post call you to like, comment, follow, share? If so, do that action specifically.
When your organization posts and there is no CTA, then like, comment or share.
Look for comments on your organization’s recent posts and react or respond to them if they are relevant.
Share your organization’s posts that are relevant to you to your personal STORY. Share directly from the original post!
Share your organization’s posts that are relevant to you to your personal PROFILE (FB). Share directly from the original post!
If your organization tags you in any posts, accept the tag and engage on the post by reacting, liking, or commenting.
Leave a review of your organization on Facebook or do a short video testimonial and tag your org. A few heartfelt sentences is great.
In order for this to pick up steam, it should ideally be done every day, or at least every time the organization posts. That's why your rowers have to be active on social media (imagine that - in order for social media to work you have to ........be...on...it.)
Some social media managers might look at this plan and call it an engagement pod, which marketers hate because they don’t translate to authentic engagement. Engagement pods are for people who are not invested IRL. The delineation here is that your rowers are your target audience, because of the nature of nonprofit communities. You’re trying to train the algorithm, but not trick it.
I’ve seen this strategy work insanely well for organizations with stalled social media channels - because their communities already existed, and all they did was draw from them to boost awareness. They just needed to be told what to do to help. Everyone won.
I made a handy printable of this engagement strategy - in an 8.5x11 black and white so you can print 5 for your social media ship, or your board, and save your color ink resources for your gorgeous programs and print media. Enjoy.
If this helped you in ANY way, send me a shoutout on social media - tag me in your posts so I can see what you’re up to and signal your ship from afar!
Cheers,
Robin Anderson
