Nonprofit Social Strategy

There was a time when we used to think social media was an "add-on" to our organization's marketing and fundraising strategy. We planned a cohesive marketing and fundraising strategy, then handed that off to the kid in the corner to "make it social media friendly."

Those days are long gone. Social media is, for most organizations, now a central component of their marketing and fundraising programs. But "doing social" shouldn't be a goal unto itself. And social media should never stand apart from your overall marketing and fundraising strategies.

I sat down recently with Julia Campbell , Founder of JC Social Marketing , to talk social media strategy for nonprofits. Julia is one of the top experts in this space, and brought great insights to our conversation .

Here are some of the key insights from our conversation about nonprofit social media:

1. Start with strategy, NOT with tactics. Instead of focusing on which social platform you should be on, what kind of posts you should be creating, etc., begin with your goals in mind. What do you want to accomplish across your organization? Once you fully understand that, you'll be able to see more clearly how each of your social channels fit into your ability to accomplish those goals.
2. Don't try to be all things to all people. If your audiences is primarily 65+ years old, you likely don't need a TikTok strategy. Why? Because your audiences isn't on that platform! Instead, you should likely be focused on Facebook, where you're more likely to find an audience that aligns with your own. However, if your audience is primarily high school and college-age adults, then TikTok and Snap Chat are probably going to be key platforms for your work.
3. Each social platform has a unique value and potential. You should have an overarching social media strategy that aligns with your broader organizational strategy. But to be successful, you'll also need a strategy for each social platform that allows you to get the most out of each specific platform.
4. Social media isn't an afterthought that can be relegated to your interns. If you want to be successful in this space, you need to professionalize your social team. And yes, I just said TEAM. That means you likely can't get the most value in social media if you just have one person doing everything. It's highly unlikely that you will find someone who is equally great at social strategy, creative, copywriting, content development, analysis, etc. This is an area where you will need to build capacity over time, and understand that social media isn't a "free" marketing channel.
5. Don't build your empire on rented land. Social media is a great tool for building audience awareness, engaging with current and potential supporters, and creating brand preference. However, the big risk in social is that you don't own the platform. Social media companies can change everything in an instant. If you are building your marketing and fundraising capacity around social media platforms, that's a huge mistake. You need to think about how you use social media to drive people to engage with your organization via email and your own website, where you actually own the land, if you will. As a side note, email is also still the most valuable digital fundraising tool available to you. You can generate significantly more revenue via email than you can in social. AND, your email audience can't be taken away from you in an instance without your consent.
6. Many organizations make the mistake of creating too much content and not promoting it well. The goal isn't to create a high volume of content. The goal should be to create GREAT content, and leverage that content across your various social platforms to get the most value possible out of it. If you focus less on the promotion strategy and more on developing great content to start with, the result will be that you've created a piece of content that people actually want to interact with, and then you can leverage it in a half dozen different ways and get significantly more value out of that work.

You can more on these topics and many more in my conversation with Julia Campbell .