How zero-click content can help you reach new supporters

If your focus has been exclusively on asking for donations via your organic and paid social media, you might have overlooked the important role that zero-click content plays. Here's why you should think about including it in your marketing strategy.

Zero-click content is content that doesn't seek to drive your audience to your website (or anywhere else) to find out more. It's content that offers up a titbit of information, a fact or a story in its entirety, leaving the reader with value or a message but with very minimal effort having been expended on their part. Not taking people off the social channel you're using is key here - if the viewer started on Facebook, for instance, they must remain on Facebook throughout the interaction.

In practice, this can be any format of social media content, it just shouldn't ask the viewer to do anything other than watch or read it. In terms of paid social media, these are the ads you run top-of-funnel to start introducing yourself to new audiences and building up pots of people to retarget.

What use is that? you may ask, no-one will donate without getting to my website. I should send them there straight away!

Well, zero-click content serves a couple of purposes:

• It increases brand awareness, which is especially important if you're looking to reach new audiences. There are instances where people who've never engaged with you previously will donate - like disaster relief campaigns where a broad awareness of the situation already exists - but in general the public need to get to know, like and trust you before they will feel compelled to support you financially. Feeding them little snippets of what you do and why it matters so much gently starts that know, like, trust process.

• It keeps you front of mind. Even your most ardent supporters have busy, distracting lives. Regularly seeing updates from your non profit without needing to click anywhere to find out more is a low-impact way of reminding them why they care.

• It increases your reach. As you can see from this breakdown from SparkToro, 82% of the major web platforms have algorithms that favour native content - which means that they are likely to show your content to more people if you're not trying to take those people away from their platforms, and therefore from consuming more content.

So, if your goal for 2023 is reaching new audiences and converting them into supporters, zero-click content has its part to play in both your organic and paid media strategies.

Who owns my audiences: what non profits can learn from Instagram's day off

At the end of October, Instagram had one hell of a bad day, and so did the millions of people around the world who were suddenly locked out of their Instagram accounts, without warning and for no good reason. For the most part, the issue has been resolved but it's a really good reminder of why non profits (and all brands) need to be aware of where their audiences are and who owns what.

In short, your social channels are not yours. The followers you have engaging with those accounts and sharing your content with their networks are not yours. If Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn stop functioning, you will have no access to the audiences you have painstakingly built up there - and that's just three channels, you may have more.

The data you can hold on to looks like:

• your email or newsletter list

• your database of existing donors and volunteers

• your database of people who have signed up for events and fundraisers.

Assuming these are all GDPR compliant, these lists are your warm audiences outside of your social channels and website. They are the ones you can talk to directly and build relationships with outside of the apps, via your newsletter or regular emails.

So look at your newsletter not only as an excellent awareness and donation-generating vehicle but as your back up should you lose your social channels.

So far, so logical - but how do I build my email list? Here are three ways you can get started:

• Tell your social followers what they will gain, learn or have access to from subscribing to your newsletter, and then invite them to subscribe. Include a link to your sign up page in your bio. It sounds obvious, but they won't know you even have a newsletter unless you tell them, and give them a reason to sign up. Remember that only a small number of your audience will see each post, so it's perfectly ok to include this as a call to action regularly.

• Focus your paid ad campaigns on list building by running lead generation campaigns that ask for sign ups. Again, make it clear what someone will learn from regularly seeing your organisation pop up in their inbox so they consider it as a benefit to them.

• Add signing up to your newsletter as an option on any part of your website where people have to enter their information - so your donation page and any online forms you have in place to make enquiries or download information. Or consider a newsletter sign up form as a pop up on your homepage. Make it easy to sign up and don't ask for any unnecessary information that makes filling in details a chore.

Establishing a non-social channel way to communicate with your supporters and prospective supporters will help you to future-proof your income generation, so consider taking these steps now so you have peace of mind.

How to make your audiences feel emotionally connected without showing your beneficiaries on social media

Emotion drives action. If you can build an emotional connection between your audience and your beneficiaries, you're well on your way to enlisting the support you need - from donations, to volunteers, to spreading the word about your great work.

One of the best ways of creating that emotional connection is by helping your audience put themselves in the shoes of your beneficiaries so they start to understand and empathise with them. How? By telling the stories of those beneficiaries. By showing the trajectory from the 'before' to the 'after' via your support - how you changed their lives and what that meant to them, or how the potential outcomes of your research gives them hope.

But sometimes it's just not appropriate to show your beneficiaries on your socials. And if it makes you uncomfortable or it's just not possible then you need to find alternative ways of connecting with your audience. Here are a few ways you can still build that connection without showing faces and naming names:

• Interview your service teams - these are the people on the ground and they see a LOT. Ask them about their most memorable moments working for your non profit, and what they love the most about their jobs. Video content is great for this, but quotes can also work - both help your audience to see what the reality of the illness/issue you work with is, and give them someone to root for. The British Heart Foundation did this recently with the team of scientists working on their Heart Healing Patch - take a look here to see how effective it can be to talk about the people doing the work day-in, day-out.

• Break your stats down into relatable chunks, tailored to your target demographic. For instance, if you're talking to people in their 30s, rather than saying X% of people in the UK will suffer from Y at some point in their life (which feels big and vague) break it down into X% of women in their 30s will suffer from Y. Those stats feel much more relatable, and it's much easier to understand how a diagnosis or impairment would affect the balls that demographic are already juggling.

• Focus on aspects of your beneficiaries' experience that help to tell their story without showing them as people. This post from Simon on the Streets is a great example - it breaks the big issue of homelessness down into the experience of one individual and the living conditions they faced.

In all cases, your focus on storytelling can remain but you can tweak the way you tell the story to avoid having to show faces, if that's not right for you.

How to talk to all your non profit stakeholders at the same time on social media

If you're a non profit you're undoubtedly trying to talk to all different kinds of people all the time. People who would benefit from your support, people who are potentially interesting in supporting you, people who already support you, people in charge of funding decisions. It's A LOT. 

Add to that trying to talk to all those people on one social channel and including all the information that would be relevant to each group and you get a big ol' mess. In trying to be interesting to everyone, you become interesting to no-one.

If this is you, and you're pulling your hair out and the powers that be don't understand why your engagement is stagnant even though you keep posting, it's time to pause, step back and regroup. And think about how you can talk to each group individually based on where they spend their time. Because it's hugely unlikely that all your different groups are predominantly on the one channel you're trying to talk to them on, which you might even have chosen arbitrarily because you knew your team just had to get started somewhere. 

Break your audience down into groups.

For instance - let's say you're a non profit working with young adults. 

Your funders are professionals working for funding bodies. They may be on Tiktok for dance inspiration or the hot chip challenge, but when they have their work-heads on, is it not more likely that they are on LinkedIn? Look at your contacts' profiles, their activity and the activity of the funding body itself - if they are active on the channel then you should be too. Focus your content on the areas that matter the most to your existing and potential funders - how you are using your funds, what you're achieving, how you are making a difference, who you are partnering with and to what end etc

Your beneficiaries are young adults. Of course there are exceptions, but they are more likely to be on Tiktok as their channel of choice. Some may be on older or more professionally-focused channels too, but you're not talking to them as professionals, you are talking to them as people in their free time, so you need to be where they choose to hang out in that time. Focus your content on how your beneficiaries feel during and after receiving your support for maximum engagement.

Your existing and prospective supporters. It's so important to get to grips with who these people are and what they have in common. Unless they are extremely young, Facebook and Instagram are most likely your target channels for this group because again, you are talking to them in their spare time, not as professionals. Focus on storytelling here - who are you helping, the difference you are making and why people should support you. Testing the same content across both channels and comparing the data will help you gauge where you get the most engagement (by that I mean likes, comments, shares and page follows) and what content works best for you. From there you can either focus on one, or if engagement is similar, continue with both.

The great news? Once you understand where your people are and break down your subject matter into what's relevant to each group, it becomes significantly easier to create content. And you don't need to reinvent the wheel each time you sit down to create content - the same piece of information can be tweaked to make it relevant to each group. Finally, when it comes to paid ads, you're already clear on what works for which group and where, which saves you time and money in the long-run. Win win!

How do I get more Facebook followers for my non profit?

How many followers do you have? How many followers do you want?

Many of the marketing managers and fundraisers I talk to place huge importance on this metric. A big number sounds important right?

Let me say upfront that it's not as important as it sounds - it's better to have a small, engaged audience of people who spread the word about what you do and donate to support you, than hundreds of thousands of people who scroll on past.

That being said, if you rely on your organic social media to bring in donations, part of your strategy should be focused on growing your audience of interested people. If no-one knows about you, no-one can support you. That means:

• engaging with other relevant accounts

• having conversations in the comments and DMs

• using relevant hashtags

• posting interesting, relatable content that your audience will want to share.

Remember - it's ok to ask your audience to follow you in some of your posts. Those who aren't already following you are interested enough to read your post so a little call to action can nudge them into committing to a follow, and from there you can nurture them with your drip-drip of emotionally connecting content.

You can also use paid ads to boost your numbers. Paid social will significantly increase your ability to reach and speak to new audiences, so when you plan your ads make sure you are giving people a flavour of what you do and why they should follow you to find out more. If you have audience targeting in place that you know works well for you you may not even need to warm the audience up first - but test and see what works for you.

Paid social also allows you to retarget existing audiences, like your past donors, website visitors and newsletter subscribers. The benefit of this is that bringing these people into your social audiences gives you more opportunities to talk to them, and helps keep you front of mind.

One more reminder - these numbers only matter if increased followers means increased volunteers / donations / enquiries coming in. Nurturing the followers you have is just as important as growing those numbers, if not more, so make sure you're posting consistently and engaging the followers you already have.

How to make it easier for new supporters to find you

Is your non-profit thinking digital first? If you're thinking "huh? Are you talking about my website?" keep reading...

Thinking digital first boils down to two elements:

• Are you aware of where your audience is spending time, and meeting them there?

• Are you nurturing you people in the online space?

Let's break these down.

Firstly, looking at where your ideal supporter spends time and going to meet them there.

We know that we all spend way too much time on our phones. We know that we use our mobile phones for research, shopping, admin and entertainment more than we use them for calls. In fact, a lot of us avoid making calls altogether!

We also know that within that phone use, social media app use is extremely high - on average Facebook users visit their account 8 times a day, and 88% of those Facebook users are accessing the app on their phones. To give you a sense of numbers - there are approximately 1.9 billion daily active Facebook users around the world.* It would be extremely unlikely if none of your ideal supporters were amongst that number!

And while this much phone use can sometimes feel noisy and overwhelming, it also means that charities, like all other brands, need to have a digital presence - and a social media presence - if they want to be able to reach people where we know those people already are.

The benefit to you? If you know where to find the audiences that are likely to be interested in what you do, being active in that space will significantly increase the ease with which you can build an engaged audience around your charity and encourage them to support you. It gives you direction and a clear purpose, and it's much easier to delegate to your team if you have a firm idea of who you are looking to engage and where.

It's also significantly easier to run paid ad campaigns if you're clear on where your audience is and what they respond well to, and you already have an engaged community, as the ads will build on what you already have in place and Meta tends to smile on those advertisers who are actively engaging on the platform.

So, you have a social media presence, what now?

Based on the understanding that your audience are on social media (and it's of course worth testing different channels to see where you get the most engagement), thinking digital first also means considering your acquisition journey as a series of touch-points within the digital space that will encourage people to get to know, like and trust you.

This doesn't need to be hugely complicated, but it means thinking about how people can find you online, how you keep them informed and engaged, and how you can make it really easy to donate. Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you posting regularly on your channels so you stay front of mind, and seeing good engagement?

• Are you driving people to your website to find out more about specific topics?

• Is your website designed for mobile, so it looks great and is easy to navigate when they click through on their phone from your social media?

• Is it really easy to donate on your website?

• Are you engaging your audience outside of social media with a newsletter, or with an email sequence?

• Are you running paid ads to increase your reach?

If you answered yes to all of these and you're feeling the benefits - fantastic, keep doing what you're doing.

If you're not, look at where you can make tweaks to improve your digital presence based on these questions. It's not always about dramatic, time consuming change, but small incremental improvements that will make it easier for people to find and support you, and make your life easier in the process.

*https://www.websiterating.com/research/facebook-statistics/

Why is social media important for non profits?

In short; non profits that aren't engaging with social media are missing a huge opportunity.

It's easy to think of social media as a beast you need to keep feeding, that doesn't give you the instant results you crave at a time when you and your team are feeling squeezed. I hear you. Here's why you should keep going (or get started!) - and how to keep it manageable so you don't burn out and lose your momentum.

• Social media allows you to interact with people where they are already spending time. Did you know that, on average, Facebook users check their account 8 times a day?* That's 8 opportunities each day to tell them about what you do!

• Your social channels can help you build a community around you of people who are interested in what you do. These are prospective donors, volunteers, event participants and people who will share your message with others. All of these people are invaluable to a non profit - and they are out there, waiting to find out more about you.

• Regular posting helps you stay front of mind with your audience and nurtures them through the process of getting to know, like and trust you.

• You are ultimately humanising your organisation - both in terms of the people who work there and the people you help. Real people are much easier to identify with than mission statements.

• You are starting conversations with people who want to know more. It's a much easier ask for someone to send a DM on Instagram or ask a question in the comments on a post than it is for them to call an information line or look for the answer on your website.

• If you think of your social media as the top of a funnel, your posting and engagement is constantly filling the pot of people who you will then take on a journey from stranger to supporter by other means - likely a combination of paid ads, email sequence or newsletter.

• You are showing the channel's algorithm that people are finding your content interesting, which in turn will give you better reach both for your organic content and your paid ads.

• Social media is another vehicle for telling people how they can support you - make sure your donation link and/or newsletter sign up link are on your bio, and you talk about these within your content!

That's all very well, but how do you stay consistent with your activities without feeling overwhelmed?

Firstly, don't try to be on all the channels. Pick 2-3 to get started with based on who you want to talk to, and where you know they already spend time, and focus on those. If you feel drawn to test other channels by all means do that, but don't feel like you need to jump on every trend. You don't need to dance to make an impact.

Your goal is to build a community and engage rather than broadcast and retreat, so decide the number of times you want to post a week and stick to it. It doesn't need to be every day if that's not feasible - consistent posting 3 times a week is better than a few weeks of intense activity and then nothing because it all got a bit much.

Your key metric is engagement - yours with other accounts, and your prospective supporters with you. Set aside time within your team to spend time engaging, rather than just 'posting and ghosting'.

Ask for help - if you have no idea what you should be talking about on your social channels, or you struggle to find the time for content creation, talk to a specialist (like me!) who can put together a strategy for you, or take your social media off your hands.

If you have any questions on organic or paid social media, do drop me an email on alex@socialclimber.london. I'd love to hear from you!

*Source: https://www.websiterating.com/research/facebook-statistics/

How to keep donations coming in during a crisis

If you're neck-deep in doom headlines and worrying about how the current economic situation will affect your numbers, here's a beacon of light.

It's far easier to raise a donation from an existing supporter than it is to find a new person, nurture them, convert them into a supporter and then ask them for money.

It's the same across the board - if you want to increase your e-commerce sales, talk to your existing customer base before you talk to new audiences. If you want to drum up new leads for your service business, look at raising repeat business from your existing customer base before you look at marketing to new people.

People who already know, like and trust you will be much more open to your message than someone who's never heard of you, especially when people are being bombarded with inflation / cost of living / energy crisis messages all day long, and are feeling the fear.

Ok, but how do I do that? By looking at where your supporters are, and talking to them there. This most likely looks like:

• Your social media channels. Where are you most active and where are you getting the most engagement? (This should be the same place!) Your existing followers are already familiar with your mission. Tell them what your next big campaign is aiming to do. Make it very clear how to help you achieve your goal. Make it incredibly easy for them to donate - either with a specific landing page, or with a clear user journey on your website. Remember that only a tiny fraction of your following will see each post, so don't be afraid to ask for support regularly.

• Your email list. This audience have already signed up to find out more about your organisation and what you're working on. Reach out to them, tell the personal stories of the people you help, and let them know how they can support you, again with an easy mechanism to do so.

• Your paid social. Yes, paid social is a brilliant way to reach new people, but did you know it's also a great way to reach people who are already connected to you? This includes your followers and/or engagers across your social channels, your email list and your website visitors - as well as specifically the people who have donated before. Alongside your organic activity, all these groups can be shown specific ads reminding them of all the brilliant work you do and asking for support, which keeps you front of mind and gives them another opportunity to engage with and support you.

We know that a lot of people will be re-looking at their budgets and tightening their belts as the cold weather starts. But there are still opportunities out there, and people who want to support you. So go to them, and make it really easy for them to do that.