How to boost your fundraising campaign with social media

Do you find it difficult to run your fundraising campaigns online? Does the donation drive run stale? If that’s the case, then you just need a little shower of ideas. Here we have ten awesome social media tips to get the ground running. Incorporate these into your daily and monthly marketing campaigns and expect to see interactions rise. Remember, social media users want variety in your content. It might be because your ideas are overused and a fresh recourse might water the soil.

 1.  User-Generated Content

 Much of social media branding campaigns put emphasis on the brands. This time we share the spotlight on the audience or the donors. User-generated content is content that is created by the followers of the brand.

 One effective way to encourage user-generated content is to host contests or challenges. It could be a design contest or a funny-video challenge. Either way, content creation now rests on other people thereby promoting your brand without effort on your end.

 2.  Shareable Donation pages/ links

 Your donation pages are the lifeblood of your fundraising campaigns. Without it, there’s no point in content creation, marketing, and advertising at all. So make sure that apart from having a readable donation page, make it also shareable. Make the links easier to type in. Upload this link anywhere — on Facebook covers, on website footers, on Instagram stories, on every post, hashtags, advertisement, flyer, and product merchandise.

 3.  Live events/ interviews/ content

 While edited videos have their place in the marketing world, live videos are slowly becoming a fan favorite among content consumers and creators. To attract more engagements and donors, it’s vital to incorporate some live shows into your usual content calendars. And there are so many ideas to do it. You could live stream an event show awarding big donors, or you could do a live show of an interview with an expert, an industry specialist, or your own staff.

4. Track your donors' metrics to provide accurate content

 Provide more accurate consumable content for your viewers. Know some key metrics and demographics such as what time they log on, their location, their likes, their age, etc. This way, not only will you have a clear picture of your audience, but you can also give them something they are likely to engage with.

 5.  Send thank you posts or content

 Follow up with your donors with thank you posts, acknowledgments of their payments, and confirmation of how the money will help the beneficiaries. Send this content through personal messaging apps such as Messenger, Instagram, or emails, smartcookie etc.

 Make your letters and messages more personalized by including the name, date of donation, and location of the donor. Personalized content is way better than generic and impersonal content. This will make the donor feel connected to the cause.

 6.  Install google alerts

 If you want to get a better heads up of your donors, their interests, or your topics, use Google’s power. Install and maximize Google alerts on certain topics related to your drive such as fundraising, NGO, and donation drive. Feel free to include location, demographics, and other filters so it can provide more accurate results.

 That’s how you be the early bird that gets the worm. The first brands that launch a content campaign on some topics get a bigger share of the market. Even in fundraising, if some topics get the hype, and that topic concerns you, it’s just right to land on the game.

 For instance, forest fire took hold of the internet last year. And if you seek to raise funds for the wildlife, it would be better to remind everyone that forest fires kill a percentage of wild animals. This kind of post on urgent matters brings the urgency to a deeper level, thereby converting more donors.

 7.  Share behind the scenes and staff

 It’s a good idea to show the workings of your brand. What happens behind closed doors and behind the scenes will ultimately make your donors more invested in your goals. With live, you are able to share the event itself, and you can share how you plan on some events.

 Take your humans or your staff to the forefront of your content creation. Make their effort and experience noticed by your followers. Interview one of your staff and ask them questions like what brought them to your NGO and what drives them to continue working on the organization. In other words, are the goals of the organization in line with their career goals?

 8.  Save the date

 Lots of ways to market your brand online. Another tried and tested idea to garner interest is to publish save the dates where you feature conferences, major donation drives, charity concerts,  interviews, tree planting, and other major events and happenings within the organization.

 This propels people to take action and even plan the dates ahead. This will lead to more visits, engagements, and interactions with the posts and the specific date. Remember that the goal of every social media post is to garner interest among netizens. Take your dates and make them viral-worthy. Introduce hype among your followers and increase interest from current and future donors.

 9.  Share your history using On this day hashtags and the likes

 If your brand or organization is big and complicated, taking your audience down a memory lane is absolutely essential to building up your following. Take them to the time your organization was built. Introduce the person who founded it. Communicate their goals and ambitions then. Let your history form a good image among followers and potential donors.

 Plus, internet peeps love history. They love facts over when something was built, who built it, and its continued success. Even regardless of the size of the organization, say your brand was just built a year ago, you can share your milestones like anniversaries, achievements, money accumulated, people helped, and other vital statistics.

 10. Interview experts in your fields and use their quotes for content

 Conduct interviews with experts like scientists, meteorologists, social workers, lawyers, child adoption experts, labor leaders, and more. Shed light on stunning or disturbing facts surrounding your topics and bring in more curious people and enlightened netizens to your online stage.

 11. Partner up with other fundraisers that share your brand values

 Partnering up with other fundraisers and NGOs can help you a lot. First, you both share and attract each other’s following on social media. It lets you tap in their online resources and vice versa. Another thing is that it promotes your values and your goals even more by doing activities with other brands that have the same values.

 Wrapping Up

 The work doesn’t stop once you have set up your social media pages, created your logo online, and updated your organization's details. True social media success even in the world of online fundraising, NGOs, charities, and donation drives comes from continued engagement with your followers and would-be donors.

 Lure them in with this often-unused social media content. And it doesn’t take many resources to do them. Lots of designs can be accessed online for free. What you need is just a camera and a story to tell.