Creating a social media strategy that actually works for your non-profit

Your non-profit requires a master plan for creating, posting, and evaluating its social media content.
This plan is known as a social media strategy.

A proper and comprehensive social media strategy includes the guidelines for social media content, frequency of posting, engagement strategies, marketing campaigns, and so on.

Consider the following guidelines to create a social media strategy that works for your non-profit.

Know your audience

As a non-profit, you should have a target audience. So, before everything else, you must identify who that the target audience is – consider creating avatars and personas. You can start it by identifying the key demographics such as gender, occupation, age, income, and interests.

In addition to demographics, you should also want to consider psychographics in your avatars and personas. For more insight into psychographics, listen to podcast episode #16, where I talk about how non-profits and charities can use psychographics.

Start to blog

A successful social media
campaign demands fresh content

You must pay attention to and create new, relevant, and interesting content. Moreover, you should create such content consistently. The best approach is to create a list of topics that relate to the areas your non-profit addresses. Then, you should refine that list and choose the best ones. The topics should be able to explain your non-profit’s purpose, key problems it intends to address, and answer the problems the audience might have. You should aim to post at least one blog post every week.

At Wow Digital, we run our Content Accelerator Program™ with our clients to plan out their content for the year, the platforms they should use, and even work with them to produce the articles so they can focus on their other priorities. Interested in learning more? Book a free consult with David.

Focus on creating educational content

Your audience might have plenty of questions related to the niche of your non-profit. Consider those questions as an opportunity to show your expertise. Address all those questions with professionally crafted content including videos, infographics, and downloadable content as well. That approach might help you to stand out as a thought leader.

Target a couple of mainstream social channels first

When you start, you might not be able to use all the social channels that are available. Even if you do, you will find it difficult to maintain the quality of the content.

You need to identify where your audience hangs out, and start with the channel they’re using.

Not sure when they hang out, target a couple of mainstream social channels and establish your authority on these channels.

Prepare your schedule

There is no one-size-fits-all schedule when it comes to social media strategies. You should create a schedule that works for your non-profit. This should include an engagement schedule along with consistent posting.

Consider the number of team members you have and the capacity they can handle. Then, prepare a weekly schedule and assign the work.

Make sure that you are consistent with the day you publish content on, so people who follow you will know when to expect new content.

Measure the outcome

It’s important to measure the performance of your social media content.

You can start by measuring the amount of traffic the respective social accounts bring to your non-profit’s website.

Take a note of the posts to which your audience responds. Also, consider the trends related to your respective niche. Try to get a general idea about the average traffic and the performance of each post. Then, you should set goals for all the key metrics and measure how well it works.

Also, you must be sure to choose the metrics that can be gathered easily. Avoid metrics that are too complex and time-consuming.

Make the necessary
adjustments

Your social media strategy won’t work overnight. It will take some time to build a substantial following and establish your brand.

You can consider experimenting with a combination of channels and change as needed and if necessary. For instance, you can post content more frequently, add more video content and increase engagement through the information you have gathered.

These are some of the important elements that will help you build an effective social media strategy for your non-profit.