Get Social: A Simple Guide to Improve Your Social Media

We get a lot of questions about using social media to promote planned giving.

“How should we be using it?”

“What’s the real opportunity?”

We know that fundraising is all about doing more with less. To help you reach your social potential with ease, we’ve compiled some social media do’s and don’ts.

Don’t:

Create a separate Facebook page for your legacy society. You immediately shrink the number of views of your content (as opposed to posting from your organization’s main Facebook page). Not to mention you create a lot more work for yourself!

Blatantly promote your planned giving program. Please do not post, “Check out our planned giving page!” The only people who would click on that would be fellow development officers.

Forget the holidays. Post holiday greetings and don’t neglect dates important to your organization: anniversaries, special events, or back-to-school.

Do:

Use video first. More than ever, video is taking control of our timelines. Many of us are visual learners. Meaning we engage better with video and photo representations of your work.

Tell stories. Social media is all about storytelling! Never forget the basics.

Partner with your in-house marketing person/team. Your job is to raise money and visit with donors, not to update social media. Use the resources you have.

BONUS TIP:

Celebrate cause awareness and giving days (#GivingTuesday) to gain exposure and bring real-time relevance to your mission.

Ultimately, what makes social media so powerful is access to a large community of like-minded individuals who care about your everyday work. It can be the easiest way to connect with your supporters and drive them to your planned giving website, if you keep it simple and stick to these do’s and don’ts.

We want to know what has worked for your nonprofit’s social media—and what hasn’t. Share your social suggestions with us in the comments.