Social media marketing for nonprofits is essential these days in spite of budget or human resource constraints.
Nonprofits can and probably should create social media marketing campaigns around select holidays. A recent Search Engine Journal article outlines best practice for holiday-oriented social media marketing:
1. Set a time frame - How far in advance to start a campaign is somewhat open, but the author recommends four weeks. If you start four weeks before Memorial Day, for example, this means you need a plan in place before then.
2. Create a schedule - Decide what to Tweet or Instagram and when. Plan ahead for Facebook posts, both content and timing.
3. Make things easy for people - Whether you want donations, shares, petition signatures or something else, check your links and Web pages to be sure whatever you want is easy for people to do.
4. Select and test post formats - Many Facebook, Google, and other formats might do the trick. Select a combination of posts, blogs, Facebook status updates and so forth.
5. Let people know about the campaign - This is why you need to start planning a campaign well ahead of time. If you plan to run a Memorial Day campaign, make sure people know what's coming and why you are doing that before Day One.
6. Track and measure results - You track donations, maybe shares on Facebook, but do you make full use of Google analytics to monitor audience response to your posts? Do you check Facebook and Twitter once of twice a day?
7. Share the results - After the holidays create several posts that share the results of your holiday campaign.
Study the Social Impact Journal and follow those steps closely.
If your nonprofit is working on a social media marketing plan contact us to find out how we can help you.
