As we gear up for Twive and Receive next week, nonprofits have been asking me for “recipes” on how to build up excitement and engage their community to take action—donating and spreading the word—next Thursday.
Here are a few tips on how to start talking to your online community, and building momentum for the big giving day. Try some of these out and see if it works!
- — Determine what your main call-to-action is for your supporters. For a giving day or campaign, it could be to donate and ask friends to donate as well.
- — Find compelling pictures to include in your posts, and always link back to your fundraising page.
- — Post a few times a day and start between 9 and 10AM (which is one of the times many users are logged on).
- — Make sure your message is clear and concise. Don’t write paragraphs of information; I like to keep my Facebook posts as short as a Tweet (140 characters max).
- — Schedule some Tweets with links to your fundraising page ahead of time. Choose exciting phrases like “Show your support on June 14th!” and “Be part of the movement!”
- — Use platforms like HootSuite to gather information on which Tweets got the most clicks; and learn from them to improve your strategy.
- — Do keyword searches relevant to your organization’s mission, like “animal rights” or “environment,” to meet new people who are passionate about your cause. Engage in conversations with them when you have relevant information to share (that’s not always about your organization).
- — Follow people back and ReTweet other posts so those people can take notice of you. Engage them this way.
- — Pin posts with compelling images related to your cause. Try pinning resources from other places—not just from your organization—to help you build relationships with other people in your area.
- — Comment, like, and repin other people’s posts. And if you get a comment, like, or repin from your posts, thank them!
Google Analytics
- — In everything you do, measure! See what works, what doesn’t work, and adjust accordingly. Metrics are your friends!
If you’d like more tips on how to use social media to promote your fundraiser, check out our last free Twive webinar this Thursday at 2PM EST. Register here!
I tried to set up Google Analytics for our Twive page (I use it for my personal website, so I have some experience with it), but since I don’t have access to the page’s code I couldn’t get it linked! Any advice on that? Since we are fairly new to using social media for fundraising we are really interesting in figuring out what works at drawing people int.
Unfortunately, you can’t add Google Analytics code onto your fundraising page just yet. But you should definitely track your website, Facebook, Twitter, and any other social networks you’re using. If you’re linking to your fundraising page, you should be able to see how many clicks you got on that link. Hope this helps!