Post Regularly
Keep supporters informed about your organization’s activities and news related to your cause. Posting regularly will keep people informed, which can help maintain supporter confidence in your work. If you’re new to creating content for social media, aim for a post 2–3 times per week. Eventually, you’ll want to post daily to maintain a presence in you followers’ News Feeds.
Posts can be simple and short. Use a variety of post types (ex: photos, videos, text), subjects (ex: news, quotes, calls to action, updates on peer organizations), and original and shared content (ex: links to articles, individual’s posts). For ideas on what to post, check out Grab People’s Attention.
Invite Conversation
Facebook is a two-way communication channel between you and your supporters. You can use posts, Messenger, groups, tags, comments and events to generate dialogue with supporters and connect them more deeply with your organization. Some ideas for inviting conversation:
- Post in a tone that encourages supporters to offer feedback by commenting.
- Share personal stories from your staff, supporters and beneficiaries that may inspire people to share their own.
- Create posts that give people who like your Page a reason to refer to them in their online conversations with friends-by being surprising, thought-provoking or relevant to a current event.
- If posting on a difficult issue, acknowledge the sensitivity and ask your supporters how they would talk about it.
Be Responsive
People appreciate being heard. When you reply to posts and comments quickly, you’ll notice supporters are more responsive, too. Use the Messages and Notifications tabs in the
Page Admin Tools to quickly access and follow up with all the people who interact with your Page. Here are some best practices:
- Regularly monitor your Page activity for comments and questions that need attention.
- Respond to post comments in a positive and timely manner.
- Like and comment on the posts of other Pages with similar audience to yours.
- Reach out to the most active people on your Page over Messenger, email or phone to thank them and learn more about their interest in your organization.
Personalize Posts
You can publish different posts to different groups of people who like your Page, to make your message more personal and relevant to those groups. This can take a bit more time, but can be effective at cultivating supporter relationships. Ways to personalize your posts include:
- Post Targeting. Send posts to a specific subset of people who like your Page by choosing the age range, gender, locations, languages or interests of the people who should see the posts.
- Groups. Consider creating a Facebook Group if you want to communicate regularly with a segment of your supporters, like your board, volunteers or brand ambassadors. A group creates a special space where you can distribute information that people need, share news that’s relevant to a closer circle of people and if you choose, discuss private topics by making the group closed or secret. More on Groups.
- Custom Audiences. If you’re using ads, you can use custom audiences to contact people on your email or donor lists on Facebook. These paid posts can add an extra touch into your email or phone communications.
Keep a Calendar
As your posting strategy evolves, you may want to use a calendar to plan out your posts and stay organized. An editorial calendar can help if you have multiple people managing your posts. It can also keep track of relevant special events and holidays so you can post timely content.
A posting calendar can also help you account for people at various levels of engagement with your organization, from people you’d like to reach for the first time to loyal supporters who take actions repeatedly. You may want to balance your posts to support audiences across the “supporter engagement funnel.”
