How to Use Social Media to Promote Your Cause
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Social media is a powerful tool for connecting with current and past supporters, prospective donors, and the broader community. It’s an effective way to increase awareness of your cause and its activities, engage with your audience, and drive support. Here’s how you can use social media to promote your cause effectively.
Getting Started
Create a Social Media Plan
Integrate social media into your communications toolkit, along with email, newsletters, and your website. A well-crafted social media plan will help you determine your objectives, choose the right platforms, and decide what messages to share with your online community.
Step 1: Setting Goals
Define what you want to achieve through social media and set specific, measurable goals to track your progress. When creating or sharing a post, always ask yourself, “Will this help us reach our goals?”
Examples of Goals:
- Increase Engagement: Boost the average number of reactions and shares per post by 5% within a year.
- Grow Followers: Expand your social media following by 10% by inviting email contacts and friends to follow your pages and promoting your social media presence through newsletters and your website.
- Enhance Reach: Increase your reach by 10% by creating at least three new posts each week.
- Boost Event Attendance: Increase attendance at events by 10% by creating and promoting Facebook events for upcoming meetings and activities.
- Generate Inquiries: Increase new participant inquiries by 10% through targeted Facebook ads.
Step 2: Choosing Your Platform
You don’t need to be on every social media platform. Start small and focus your efforts on the platforms that best suit your audience and goals.
Considerations for Choosing a Platform:
- Community Usage: Research which platforms are most popular in your community.
- Audience: Identify where your target audience spends their time online.
- Management: Determine who will manage your social media presence and how much time they can commit.
Once you choose a platform, set up your account and ensure it is branded correctly with your organization’s logo and colors.
Step 3: Deciding What to Communicate
Share a mix of local, cause-focused content and relevant stories from broader sources. Highlight your organization in action, showcasing how you help the community, network, and socialize.
Examples of Content:
- Event Reminders: Post status updates about upcoming events on Facebook.
- Guest Speaker Highlights: Write blog posts about guest speakers and share them on Instagram.
- Service Project Announcements: Post on Twitter about your next service project, including a call to action and a URL.
- Behind-the-Scenes Videos: Create and share behind-the-scenes videos or interviews featuring your members and community partners.
Knowing Your Audience
Understanding your audience is key to effective communication. Learn about your fans and followers to discover what content resonates with them. Engage with your audience by commenting on their posts and responding to their messages.
Audience Categories:
- Cause Participants: Volunteers and beneficiaries of your cause.
- Potential Donors: Individuals and organizations interested in supporting your cause.
- Young Professionals: Emerging leaders and young professionals who might be interested in your mission.
- Community Members: Local community members who benefit from your activities or might get involved.
Creating a Content Calendar
A content calendar helps keep your social media content organized, fresh, and timely. Coordinate your content across all your communication channels, including email, social media, websites, and newsletters.
Content Calendar Tips:
- Special Events: Include special events relevant to your cause, such as awareness days or fundraising events.
- Daily Management: Dedicate time each day to find and post content, monitor your pages for questions and comments, and engage with your followers by commenting on and sharing relevant posts.
Conclusion
Social media is a valuable asset for promoting your cause. By setting clear goals, choosing the right platforms, sharing compelling content, and engaging with your audience, you can effectively raise awareness and support for your mission. A well-thought-out social media strategy will help you connect with your community, tell your story, and inspire action.
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Frequently Asked Questions
A shopper starts shopping online by first going to iGive.com.
The shopper, your supporter, identifies your cause as the one they support. If your cause is not already on our list of causes either they or you can add it. This tells us where to send the donation. This only has to be done once unless the shopper wants to stop or change causes.
The shopper then identifies the merchant where they want to shop that day from our categorized list of over 1700 merchants. Once they click on that merchant, they are finished for the day with iGive and taken directly to the merchant’s website. If they have shopped there before, they begin shopping. If it is their first time shopping at this merchant’s website, they will have to follow the merchant’s instructions for registering there by providing their name, delivery address, payment method, email address, and perhaps some other information depending on the merchant.
When they are finished shopping, they check out as usual. They are done and only have to wait for their order to be sent to them.
Meanwhile, back at iGive, a message is received from the merchant which documents the transaction. Periodically the merchant adds up what they owe iGive in the way of commission and sends iGive the money. This sometimes takes a month or more after the shopping trip because the merchants want to take into account returns, exchanges or other modifications to the total amount they collect.
iGive then adds up all of the commissions that they have received that are designated to be shared with your cause and sends you the accumulated portion for your cause. This is usually added up on a monthly basis for the period since the last donation to your cause.
There is no cost to the shopper or to your cause.
iGive works with all types of causes — big or small, local or national, and regardless of whether they are a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit or not.
Merchants pay iGive a commission from the shopper’s purchase because iGive referred the customer to them. They want customers to shop at their store, and shoppers with iGive want to shop at stores that support their cause. iGive utilizes that commission to facilitate a donation to your cause on behalf of the shopper.
The money sent to your cause is the incentive iGive offers shoppers to use iGive.com as the entry to online shopping at our 1700+ affiliated stores.
This is different from when a cashier asks if the shopper wants to round up or add a dollar to donate when the shopper checks out — in that case, the shopper is paying slightly more to donate to the store’s chosen cause—not the shopper’s. With iGive, the shopper pays the same amount they would if they didn’t use iGive. Your cause receives a donation from iGive for all of your supporters who use iGive.
The amount the cause receives depends on how many of your supporters use iGive and the amount of money they spend shopping online. You can increase the amount of the donation by encouraging your supporters to use iGive.com when shopping online. Your cause does not pay iGive anything.
iGive has a wide range of participating stores. These are listed at iGive.com either by category of merchandise or a comprehensive list of all merchant affiliates. This includes popular online retailers in categories such as clothing, electronics, travel, and more. See the list of affiliated stores here.