How scrolling IG can help you clarify your own social media strategy

I wrote a few weeks back about how to stay sane on social media as a non profit marketer - and key to that is to remember that you're not in direct competition with every charity out there. If your target audience is significantly different, it's not to your detriment if the charities whose feeds you doom scroll at your lowest moments are smashing it on their socials. And it's really important to recognise if spending too much time looking at another charity's feed is leading to analysis paralysis on your own accounts, or stopping you from posting at all - and being very clear on when you'll let yourself take a look.

But, with healthy boundaries in place, there are a few things to keep an eye out for on when you're having a scroll through your socials, all of which can really help you hone your own social media strategy.

1. What non profits within your niche are doing that's going well. If they are talking to similar people, it's worth knowing how they are talking, what they're sharing and what kind of reaction they're getting. Why? Because if your target audience is responding well to their certain parts of their content, it can help inform the type of topics you cover in future. I'm by no means suggesting duplicating, but if you can see that updates on relevant research, for instance, are generating loads of engagement and interest, it would be worth testing research updates on your audience too.

2. What other non profits are doing that you don't love. In this same vein, sometimes you'll come across content that you don't see value in, types of video content that give you the ick, information you think could have been explained more clearly etc. Knowing what you don't like is just as important as knowing what you do like, because it will help clarify what you want to see on your own channels, and steer you away from falling into the same traps. One thing to be mindful of however - always check what the audience reaction is to the types of content you don't like, because (difficult as this is to accept) what your audience finds valuable is much more relevant to the success of your accounts than what you personally enjoy on social media.

3. What unrelated accounts are doing that you LOVE. Now, not everything you see on Instagram will be transferrable to a non profit account, but there's loads of inspiration to be had from scrolling through unrelated account content. It could be how a brand is using user generated content, or how a video is put together to get a message across really clearly, or how content is broken down into digestible chunks - anything that really makes you pay attention is worth saving in a swipe file and referring back to when you review your strategy and plan your content.

Scrolling with these three points in mind (and in moderation) can really help you clarify your thinking and shape your social media output. I'd love to hear how you get on!

Should my non profit be on LinkedIn?

"LinkedIn is all work, work, work right? Why would I waste time posting there; surely the more outside-work channels are better for reaching my audience?”

There is a common misconception about LinkedIn that its members just talk about their jobs and industries, and that it's really only worthwhile to engage if you're looking to make a career move. This couldn't be further from the truth!

Let's break it down - as a non profit, what are you looking to do on social media? Most likely you are looking to increase your brand awareness by reaching new audiences, nurture your existing community and bring in donations/funding. So, how can LinkedIn help you achieve your goals?

Increasing awareness by reaching new audiences

Let's think about the potential life cycle of a LinkedIn post. Say you're about to launch a new fundraising campaign and you write a post explaining why this campaign is so important to you, tell a story about a beneficiary that inspires you and share some of the creative from the campaign. It takes you 10 minutes to put together because you live and breathe this campaign. You tag your colleagues in it and include relevant hashtags. Each of those colleagues and a few other connections like and comment on the post, which tells the algorithm that it's of interest and it pushes it out to a wider audience. All your colleagues share your post to their feeds and add their own stories, so suddenly you're getting in front of their connections too. Someone on the creative side of the industry likes your campaign creative and shares your post too, and now your content is in front of a whole new audience. Now, that's not to say that every post will get this sort of reach, but I hope this demonstrates the potential for how far your message can extend, for free and with minimal time commitment.

Nurturing your existing community

One of the unique things about LinkedIn is that because people post from their personal profiles you can really get to know the people behind the charities. You get updates on their highs and lows, their joy at releasing new campaigns or hitting goals and the challenges they share. This kind of content really helps people to get an inside view of the workings of your non profit and to understand that there are people on the ground really trying to make a difference. It's a brilliant way of building that know-like-trust relationship with your audience.

The other benefit is that LinkedIn is unique in that you don't need to create a video or graphics, or even include a picture for your post to grab attention. A strong hook, a focus on storytelling and relevant hashtags will get your content much further. This takes a lot of the pressure off when it comes to content creation, which is so important when you're juggling a lot.

Bringing in donations/funding

Reaching new audiences and nurturing them automatically opens up new opportunities to increase the support you receive. And funny enough, when you see a donation request post from an individual (rather than an organisation), it almost feels like less of a big ask, because you feel on some level that you know that person. After all, you see them every week on LinkedIn, so you know not just how passionate they feel about their cause and what they're working on, but also the fact that they're juggling childcare in the school holidays and recently got a new dog. It feels more personal.

So, while I'm not advocating giving up any social channels that are working well for you, don't disregard LinkedIn as a potential source of new audiences - there's a bustling community there of people interested in learning more about those around them. Remember that your focus should be on building familiarity, telling stories and putting human faces to your organisation; these are key if you want to make social media activity work as hard as possible for you.

How to make small budgets work hard

"I have £500 to spend on ads, should I boost some posts or run a campaign, or is it not worth it at all with that budget?"

I got this message this morning and I'm sure the sender wasn't the only person to have this thought in today's squeezed economy, so today's newsletter is all about how to get the most bang for your bucks, when you don't have that many bucks to play with.

Let's address the obvious first - paid social is a 'pay to play' environment, so the more budget you can devote to testing what works best for you and trying new things, the more data you have to work with and the more reach you can get. But, that said, there are lots of opportunities for organisations with smaller budgets to make those budgets work for them. They just need to be that bit more strategic in deciding where to put their hard-earned cash.

If this is the boat you find yourself in, ask yourself these questions to best figure out where your budget would be best spent:

1. What do I already have in place that is bringing in donations? This could be your website, your newsletter, your events, your social media or something else. Really focus on the results-generation power of these assets. Don't be tempted, for instance, to send people to your website because it took a long time to build and you think it's smashing.You want to identify the asset(s) that are consistently converting strangers (or, one step up, casual acquaintances) into donors. This question will determine how you structure your campaign and the objective you choose, to make sure that you are driving people towards the asset that will convert them. This alleviates the need for a big funnel to warm people up, and sends them straight to where their engagement will have the most impact.

2. Who already knows my organisation and is familiar with what we do? This could be your website visitors, your social engagers/followers, your newsletter subscribers, your existing or past donors. As long as you are GDPR compliant, these warm audience groups are already further along the getting to know-like-trust you journey than new audiences will be, and can be shown ads to keep you front of mind and remind them to keep supporting you. Remember it's always easier to raise donations or drive action from people who already know you, because they are already familiar with why it's so important to support your cause. This is also a helpful testing process, because you know these people are most likely your ideal supporter(s) so if an ad is successful with this audience, you know it speaks to the right people and you can re-use it audiences who are less familiar with you the next time you have budget available.

3. What does my ideal supporter care about? Remember - this isn't necessarily the same thing that you care about. I say this to everyone - getting to know your ideal supporter is the best way to become an effective digital marketer, because when you know who they are and what they care about, it's significantly easier and quicker to create content that aligns with their interests and challenges. In short - it will save you and your team time and money, and boost results, if you know who you are talking to. Spend some time mapping out who this person is; where they are, what they like, how they feel, and why they would be likely to support you. Once you're clear on the type of information to focus on to grab their attention, consider how you can tell your story in a way that aligns with that. Storytelling is such a powerful way to build an emotional connection with your audience. Video is a great way to do this, but you can also test using static imagery, snappy testimonials or hard-hitting stats in a graphic. Remember the number one goal here is to show how your organisation makes its beneficiaries feel, not to focus on the practical steps you took to achieve this.

Now you have those thoughts in place, building a campaign that is focused on one goal and talking to one type of person is so much easier, and ensures that you are using that budget in the best possible way to reach the right people and send them to the right place.

How to repurpose video content to save time and increase reach

If you're on the fence about creating video for your non profit, here are some stats to blast you off it.

According to Google's research, 39% of people who watch a non profit's video look up the accompanying organisation within 24 hours of viewing it. And 57% of people who watch a video for a non profit go on to make a donation.*

Pretty compelling stuff.

Video content is a great way to introduce new people to what you do and why it's important. Done well, it can create an emotional connection with the viewer that starts to build that relationship that's so important for long-term engagement and support. And just a note here to flag that if showing beneficiaries isn't appropriate for you, hearing a donor or staff member speak about why they are passionate about your cause can be really powerful too, especially if they have relevant personal experience.

But once you make that initial 'brand' video that tells your story or a campaign video for a particular fundraising drive, how do you make sure that it's working as hard as possible for you?

It's really easy to stick it up on your homepage, not see any increase in donations, and dismiss it as a failure. If that sounds familiar, keep reading - you're missing out on an opportunity. Here's how you can use that video effectively.

1. On your website. Think of your homepage as a doorway to the information your website contains, and remember it's the first page most people will see. A 5 minute video is off-putting at that point - it feels like a big commitment. But once you've become a little more familiar with the organisation, a 5 minute brand video would be really powerful on an 'Our Mission' or 'What we do' page, for people who have sought out that information. If it's campaign-specific, a similar approach can be taken on your microsite.

2. On your social media. YouTube is a great channel for long-form video, but if your channels of choice are Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn look at breaking up your content. Repurposing content is one of the most time-saving and sanity-saving activities you can do in digital marketing because it saves you from constantly feeling like you need to reinvent the wheel. Chop your video into bitesize slices (aim for 30 seconds to a minute) and use them for social posts, with your copy introducing or expanding on the details in the video snippet. Add your logo to the end of each snippet - but not the front as you need those crucial seconds to grab the audience's attention.

One note here: your employees sharing a video posted from your organisation's profiles can vastly increase the number of eyes on your video!

1. On your social profiles. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter allow the upload of videos as media files, so alongside using the sliced-up content for posts you can also house the main file on your profile. This is helpful for people who have hit your profile page and are looking to find out more without having to move over to your website, and gives the video much more longevity than purely posting all or part of it.

2. Via email. If email marketing is part of your digital strategy (and if it's not, we should talk about that) then sharing your brand video with your subscriber list is a great way to reinforce the importance of your mission in their minds. You can embed the video within the email or share a link to it, depending on your set up.

3. On your digital ads. Video is a brilliant format for paid ads - it's simple to engage with, gets messages across easily and catches the eye when you're scrolling. Those snippets you used for your organic social can be repurposed for video view campaigns (amongst others) across the newsfeeds or reels/Stories, to get even more eyes on your video.

So that's one video, used in a multitude of ways across all your digital activities, helping it to reach - and move - the most people possible.

* https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/_qs/documents/666/digital-non-profits-study_research-studies.pdf

How do I call out my customer's pain points as a non profit?

'Call out the pain points of your ideal customer!' You've probably seen this guidance as much as I have in advice posts and articles about writing high-converting copy to drive purchases. And it's definitely a great way to build affinity between businesses and consumers because it makes the consumer think "wow, this is for and about me!". It's precisely why I bought curly hair products from a Facebook ad last month - they called out my curl struggles and showed me how they could make my life easier.

But how do you call out pain points if you aren't trying to sell anything, but instead trying to increase awareness around your cause and drive donations to fund your work?

It's a tricky one, but understanding three things will help you crack this:

Firstly, that pain points are actually challenges, niggles, things that you aspire to but feel you haven't yet achieved - big or small.

Secondly, who your ideal supporter is and why they would want to engage with you.

And thirdly, what challenge your ideal supporter faces that you offer the solution to.

Let me give you hypothetical example...

You're a smallish development charity working in a specific part of Africa. Already your geographic location makes you niche, but your organisation was also founded by Christian missionaries and continues to be religiously-driven, so now you're really niche. You look at your existing donor base and identify from conversations, comments on posts etc that they typically fall into one of three categories:

• highly informed people who dedicate time to educating themselves about world events

• Christians

• world travellers who have visited your African region

All good so far - but why would those people be interested in engaging with you? So you dig further.

• highly informed people who dedicate time to educating themselves about world events > likely to engage because they are aware of the social-political landscape in your region and are interested in the development work that they know is crucial.

• Christians > likely to engage because their values align with the work you are doing.

• world travellers who have visited your African region > likely to engage because they remain interested in the region and want to see conditions improved.

So what challenges (or pain points) do they experience that you could fix?

• highly informed people who dedicate time to educating themselves about world events > likely to engage because they are aware of the social-political landscape in your region and are interested in the development work that they know is crucial > they see a lot of terrible things happening in the world, and often feel helpless in the face of it all. They want to offer support where it really make a difference - your organisation gives them a simple and practical way of doing that (call out the pain point by showing what X amount of money would solve, with a personal story to showcase the difference that investment made)

• Christians > likely to engage because their values align with the work you are doing > they want to see these Christian values in action and support those organisations who are bringing these to life - which is what you do (use faith-based language to demonstrate your value alignment)

• world travellers who have visited your African region > likely to engage because they remain interested in the region and want to see the conditions improved > they saw first-hand the suffering of others and their return to a more privileged environment has further highlighted the contrast between their lives and those of others. They want to support charities who are actively working to reduce that suffering - which is what you do (personal stories will help paint a picture of life in the region and allow the reader to put themselves in the subject's shoes).

Once you have a good sense of what your ideal supporter needs from you, it's much easier to tailor your social post and ad copy to focus on the things you know your ideal supporters are interested in, and show that supporting your charity is a solution to the challenges they face.

How to stay sane on social media as a non profit marketer

Do you ever feel overwhelmed looking at other charity social media feeds and ads? The comparison trap is so easy to fall into when it looks like everyone else is doing more, reaching more people and generating more engagement, and this can quickly spiral into imposter syndrome and paralysis.

It's hard to act when it feels like you are in constant competition with others. I was the same for a long time - when I started out in the ads world I followed lots of digital marketers on Instagram and felt disheartened every time I saw how well they were doing. I forgot that they were on chapter 15 of their career, and I was on chapter 1, and that that would change. Since then, I've learnt some really helpful techniques for staying sane on social media, that I thought might be helpful to share:

• Reduce the noise. It's more important that you can focus on growing and engaging your audience than it is to know what everyone else is doing every second of the day. Unfollow the accounts - charity or otherwise - that trigger that comparison monster. For those accounts that are relevant to your organisation, like other charities with common goals, partner organisations etc, follow them but review your notification settings so that you don't see an alert pop up on your phone every time they post. Distraction doesn't breed brilliance.

• Have a solid social media strategy in place. By this I mean being really clear on who you want to talk to, where they spend time online, what they value and how best to reach and engage them. There are two major benefits to having a strategy: a) you will know how often you have to post content and what type of content this should be, which makes you significantly more efficient, and b) you can allocate the time you need to spend on social media engagement, go in, get the job done and log back out. This saves you from 'just popping into' Instagram every 20 minutes and getting sucked down a rabbit hole.

• Remember who your ideal supporter is. Keep your ideal supporter at the heart of everything you create, based on the challenges they face and the value you can offer them. Consistent content creation for and engagement with your audience is the surest way to grow on any social channel. And focusing on one person (or few people) really helps you avoid getting distracted by what everyone else is doing for their audience - after all, if your audience is women aged 25-40 living in London, it doesn’t matter what charities talking to men aged 55+ living in Hull are doing.

Lastly, if I could gift you one thing this week, it would be these two tiny life tweaks that have been so helpful in helping me focus and reduce the noise of social media. Last week I went through all the notification settings on my phone and switched all alert types to silent other than phone calls (not vibration, silent - who knew that was even an option!), and I also changed the mail notification settings on my laptop so I don't get a ping or an urgent looking little red number when I get mail. It feels like finally I have more power over my own time, and I have the option to focus on one task at a time. My brain already feels significantly less distracted and congested - if you try it, I'd love to hear how you get on!

3 things your prospective supporters don't care about - and what to focus on instead

One of the hardest lessons to learn in marketing is that the things you love the most about what you do can be wildly different to what your audience loves about what you do. And that to engage your audience and grow awareness around your cause, you need to focus on what your audience thinks is valuable.

Here's an example - when I started in the ads world one of my first clients was an amazing zero-waste breakfast food delivery business in my area, founded by a man who cared deeply about eliminating plastic waste and reducing carbon emissions. All his milk and juice was locally sourced and delivered in reusable glass bottles and he delivered early in the morning by bike rather than truck.

Our initial thought was to talk about the business' eco credentials in his marketing because that was the foundation of his business. But then we asked his customers what they really valued. Can you guess what it was? Fresh croissants on their doorstep when they woke up. The majority weren't too fussed that the delivery didn't come wrapped in plastic; they enjoyed the luxury of rolling out of bed to crispy pastries and freshly squeezed juice. So that's what we focused on.

So, if you're struggling with audience engagement, now's the time to analyse whether your social media, blogs and ads are focusing on things that you care about rather than things your ideal supporter cares about.

To get you started, here are my top 3 topics your audience doesn't care about, and what to focus on instead...

1. Anniversaries. A milestone anniversary is a big deal and a brilliant cause for celebration internally. But the fact that you've been around for 50 years doesn't mean anything to new and prospective supporters. What to focus on instead? Your goals for the future. You've done so much in the last 50 years, what do you want to do next? What are you working towards? How can the public help you achieve those goals? Is it donations, volunteering, participating in an event, something else? If you can make your prospects and supporters feel part of a mission or a movement, you'll drive motivation to get involved.

2. How you help. There are a lot of places where this is massively relevant information - and I'm definitely not saying don't communicate what you do for your beneficiaries! But when it comes to raising awareness and driving engagement, remember that your most powerful tool is storytelling and that means focusing not on what you do, but on how you make your beneficiaries feel. Video content can be really useful here, but there are other ways to convey this information if you can't feature your beneficiaries in person - pulled out quotes and interviews with your services team telling stories about their work can be really powerful too.

3. Jargon-heavy research results (especially if you're in the medical space). Always approach your social content with the understanding that social media is a busy, noisy marketplace and that the average user is easily distracted and spends their day being bombarded with information. This means that you need to not only stand out from the crowd enough to stop the scroll but that your content needs to be easily digestible. You don't want your audience to have to Google terms to understand the research or give up entirely. So, if there's a new piece of research that you want to share, rather than posting a link to a journal, consider sharing your top few takeaways from the research and - most importantly - what these results mean in practice for your beneficiaries. Linking any updates like this back to either your work on the ground or your vision for the future helps to translate potentially dry research into hope, which is much more relatable to a non-medical audience.

In reality these are minor tweaks, but they can make all the difference!

How building relationships through social media can boost your ad campaign results

If you're a charity marketer or fundraiser, you're likely in the same boat as me. You get served a lot of charity ads on your social channels and, because of the work you do, you notice them maybe more than you would otherwise. I've seen a lot of ads these past few weeks asking for donations, some driven by the recent devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, but many others too.

And maybe what you're seeing is at odds with what I bang on about all the time (and you may also see elsewhere) which is all around the need to:

1. identify who you want to talk to, how they feel and what they want

2. figure out where they spend time online and how to reach them

3. use your organic social and paid ad strategy to take them on a journey to get to know, like and trust your charity enough to engage and ultimately donate.

What's the point of doing all that if I can go straight out for donation to complete strangers and bring in the $$, you may ask yourself. Am I over-complicating everything? Am I wasting time? Cue massive downwards spiral and crisis in confidence.

Here's my take, to put your mind at ease.

Firstly, you can. You can go straight out for donation and most likely bring in funds. There's a place for that, especially for big, established charities with broad brand awareness. Unicef, for instance, can ask you for a donation when a disaster like the earthquake hits and even if you've never seen their socials or other ads chances are you have a pretty solid idea of what they do and would trust them with your donation. Some of the larger charities are part of the fabric of our lives and have that mass awareness that nudges people further along the know, like, trust journey without them realising.

And even for smaller charities it's worth testing going straight out for donations, so that you know either way if seeing a single stat or a single story is enough for your audience. It might well be, in which case keep doing what works.

BUT - whatever size your charity is - if you want to really increase your brand awareness and drive donations, keep reading, because here's where I think some charities miss out on donations from ad campaigns...

I see a lot of charity ads asking for money and not that many make me get my wallet out. You might be the same.

And that's no criticism of the teams behind those ads, which are usually really strong and often go into my swipe file of great charity ads. And it's not self-criticism, because you can't be moved by every ad you see.

The reason that I scroll on past the vast majority is because I have no relationship with them; I don't know exactly what they do, where they operate, how they change lives, how their beneficiaries feel before and after they engage with the charity. I might not have had an experience that connects me with that specific cause. So unless what they are asking for money for is something that I'm already aware of and care about, like a disaster in the news, I'm unlikely to engage.

So, if you want more people to engage with you and donate, it's really important to build those relationships. And that means letting people see the life changing work you do, how you make your beneficiaries feel, what drives you. Consistently and over a period of time on your social media channels and via engagement campaigns. So that when the time comes for your donation ad to pop up on your audience's newsfeed, they already know and like you, and they understand just what their donation can do to help make the world that tiny bit better.