At its core, social media remains a fantastic free tool that charities can leverage to grow volunteers, donations, and ultimately impact. With so many platforms out there, it can be overwhelming to know which ones to use and how to go about using them effectively.
Keep reading, and you’ll find a simple checklist charitable organizations can use to help you manage your social media accounts.
5 Tips for Charity Social Media Success
1. Choose 1-2 social channels to focus on, ignore the rest
There’s a reason social media coordinators and agencies exist; managing multiple social media accounts is practically a full-time job. Picking one or two accounts to focus on will help make things more manageable and less time-consuming in the long run.
Be mindful of your charity’s audience when choosing which social channels you want to stick to. For example, Facebook tends to appeal to a 40+ year-old audience, Instagram remains largely 20-40s, and apps like TikTok capture the much younger 12 to 30-year-olds. Some of these apps also require a different skill set. If you have no skills in video editing or don’t have the time to learn, stay away from video-only apps like TikTok, no matter how trendy they seem.
2. Find an app or platform to help your organization create content effortlessly
For static posts, Canva is often considered the go-to; for video content, apps like Capcut are the most recommended. Both these platforms are free (though premium accounts unlock more features) and have easy-to-use templates to help get you started. There are, of course, dozens more applications out there, so I recommend a quick Google search to seek out other options that may suit you better.
Many of these apps, like Canva, have mini brand books that will also help you maintain your brand voice throughout all the content you create. I‘d choose one or two fonts and a few colours, preferably those that match your logo or brand guidelines already, and make sure you use these fonts and colours the same throughout all your posts. This consistency will help your audience recognize your content instantly while they are scrolling.
3. Batch create your content to make social media less work
Full-time content creators and coordinators save themselves endless time and work by creating most of their content in one or two days every month. Don’t feel hopeless if you can’t reasonably dedicate one day, but do try creating as much content for your accounts as possible in one go. This will help you streamline the processes (be it filming videos, editing photos, or writing captions) and make the whole endeavor less time-consuming.
Many creators keep an ongoing list of content ideas throughout the month in one place, so that on the day of, they can quickly get to creating without having to do too much brainstorming. Consider recycling some of your content for multiple platforms to help decrease your workload. Never hesitate to leverage some of your volunteers for this step, especially those who are familiar with social media platforms.
4. Establish a routine for posting consistently and beat the algorithm
The algorithms on these apps track how frequently users post and how much they interact with others, and in turn, favour those who do the most. Don’t worry if you can’t manage posting every day (as is often the recommended frequency); as long as you can post a few times a week, these apps will reward you for that consistency.
Posting erratically or infrequently is what you need to avoid, as the algorithms will likely deprioritize your content going forward.
5. Engage with your community on social media to grow your audience
Engaging with other accounts is also a must; these are social media apps after all, and they want you to engage with others in the community and be ‘social’.
A good trick is to ensure that a few minutes before or right after you post your content to one of your accounts, you open the app and like/comment/share other posts. It can be from people you follow and those you don’t, but this engagement will help bring people to your new post and, in turn, favour your content with the algorithm.
Trends in design also come and go, and these social media platforms often introduce new features and changes to their algorithms’ priorities. Don’t feel pressured to jump on these trends or new features just for the sake of it, especially if it feels unsustainable in the long term.
Keeping your organization’s presence on these platforms consistent and engaging regularly with them will yield you more rewards.
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Rebecca Lacroix is a Product Designer at CanadaHelps, Canada’s largest online fundraising and donation platform that has raised more than $3 billion for charities over the last 25 years. Rebecca has been working with charities and nonprofits for over 6 years to deliver them expert branding identity, design strategy, and marketing services. Learn more at CanadaHelps.org.