Social Media

Social media is an awesome relationship-building tool. And all fundraising, ultimately, is about engaging and building relationships. But … good relationships — the ones that are sustained over time — are based on give and take. On quid pro quo. If you want to get gifts, you’ve got to give them. Be useful. Be relevant. Be interesting. Be responsive. Don’t be all about you. Don’t be boring. Don’t be absent. Don’t be inconsistent. Don’t just nonchalantly splatter stuff out there!

Without a plan, you’re not going to generate donor investments. Here’s what you must do.

It's easy to overlook some small aspects of Twitter. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of simple things you can do to help increase interaction on your nonprofit's Twitter account, according to Julia Claire Campbell of JC Social Marketing: 1. Completely fill out your bio. 2. Visually enhance your page. 3. Research hashtags. 4. Follow more people. 5. Try promoted tweets. 6. Tweet pictures. 7. Tweet timely. 8. Interact directly with followers. 9. Use advanced search. 10. Entice your followers to interact.

Instagram’s current tool set makes it very challenging for nonprofits to convert their Instagram followers into donors. Over time through powerful visual storytelling, a nonprofit can build a strong brand and grow its Instagram following, but without the ability to link to a donate page inside of Instagram, it’s difficult to inspire your Instagram followers to do more than simply like and comment on your photos. However, provided your nonprofit has the graphic design skills necessary to embed text and graphics upon images, you can use Instagram for fundraising.

Would you like to drive more Facebook traffic to your website? Is quality Facebook traffic important to your business? Use these five steps to help you get more Facebook traffic to your website: 1. Have a steady stream of shareable content on your website. 2. Make it easy to share your content to Facebook on your website. 3. Optimize your Facebook posts. 4. Optimize other places on Facebook to add links to your website. 5. Advertise.

Some might doubt charities can learn much from how companies market themselves, particularly during the Super Bowl, considering they have such lucrative budgets. A Super Bowl advertiser spends around $4 million to air a 30-second spot. But even these big brands don’t spend this kind of money without a marketing strategy that demands ROI.

Two of the biggest marketing trends are crowdsourcing and gamification. They’ve been tried and tested and are ready for charities to adopt.

What makes a good fundraising story? Like a good movie, it’s not the challenge or threat, or the vision and end goal that provide the excitement, though they are essential ingredients. What provides the excitement is the journey; the tension of the underdog hero battling the villain and facing adversity; the uncertainty of not knowing if the hero will win; the emotional energy of wanting the hero to succeed. Even better, it’s the knowing that whether the hero wins or not is down to you.

Now that we’ve been through an end-of-year campaign and a major disaster (Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines), what do Facebook advertising results look like? Short answer: small but promising.

Are you frustrated with Facebook’s frequent changes to the news feed algorithm? Do you feel like you’re being forced to buy ads to reach your audience? While Facebook change is the rule rather than the exception, this article gives you 18 ways you can improve your Facebook news feed performance — and gain the upper hand.

Here is a follow-up by Ritu Sharma of Social Media for Nonprofits and Laura Huddle of Eventbrite to a handful of questions submitted by participants during the Jan. 14 webinar "Leveraging Social Media for Nonprofit Events." To view the presentation or listen to the recording of the webinar, please click here.

Snapchat seems to be gaining significant traction with all the right influencers and marketers. Staying relevant on social-media trends is critical to relaying your message to new audiences. Here are a few ways nonprofits can use Snapchat as a unique medium to share and engage with the millions of users already on this platform: go behind the scenes for insider marketing, events, volunteer engagement, storytelling, one-on-one communication, instant donor gratification and mobile-only offers.