Nearly 95 percent of South Africa’s population has access to the internet through their smartphones, and 25 million people are on social media.
This is a massive number, making social media the best tool for organisations with limited budgets to reach a larger audience in a fast and cost-effective way.
Organisations can use social media to tell their stories, engage with followers, increase brand awareness and promote fundraising initiatives.
Here are a few things to consider before choosing social media platforms to use for your organisation and tips on how to make a success of your time on these platforms.
Have Clear Strategy and Goals
Ask yourself the following questions.
- Why is my organisation on this social media platform?
- What do I hope to achieve through the chosen platform?
- What is the deadline for these goals?
Once you have established your answer to these questions, you will be able to put together a clear strategy to help you reach your goals.
Find Your Audience
Based on your strategy and goals, you must identify your audience. For example, if your main goal is to raise money and create brand awareness, your audience should include a lot of businesses and the tone you use in your posts must remain consistently professional.
Figure Out Your Capacity and Resources
Resources are often scarce in a nonprofit space and as a result one person usually does everything. Before you commit to a complicated social media plan, ask yourself if you have the budget and someone whose role is to create content for your platforms and respond to messages?
Plan Ahead
Put together a social media plan. This does not have to be complicated. Simply identify important industry dates, events, training you might have or attend during the year and important information you might like to communicate to your audience. Once you have done this, decide when you would like to communicate this information and put a date next to it.
Quality Over Quantity
Regardless of how much budget, capacity and important dates you have on your plan, less is more. Your posts should inform and inspire without spamming your audience. Keep your updates to an average of three strong posts per week.
Utilize your Stories for posts that are not as strong.
Be Professional
Proofread your posts and make sure there are no spelling mistakes. Most importantly, do not swear or become political in your posts. You must keep your opinions as an individual separate from your organisation.
Use Visuals
Use strong and clear visuals that speak directly to the post. In an era of smartphones with quality cameras, people on social media are attracted to quality pictures that are not blurry. Rather post one good photo than 10 blurry photos.
Post Valuable Content
The reality is that most nonprofit organisations need funding and raising funds will be the main goal for using social media. To achieve this sustainably, you must remember to 80% Tell and 20% Sell.
What this means is, 80% of your content should show what you do and the impact you make, while only 20% should be selling or asking for donations.
Analyse and Adapt
For your social media to grow and to determine whether the work you are putting in is yielding results, you must measure what you do and use the results to either adapt or leave things as they are. How often you do this will depend on the deadline of your goals.
Ethical Communication
Every individual has a right to dignity and respect. There are certain policies and procedures that we must all adhere to. Things to consider as a nonprofit organisation are the child protection act, tone and language, and a dignified approach to posting.
