In the first installment of this series, we discussed how your organization could prepare for mobile and social fundraising success. Hopefully, your leadership and staff are now all “on board,” your website is formatted properly – including online giving – and you have a system in place for email communication with your donors and friends. Your next step is to use social media to secure donations.
Now that you’re ready to connect with your donors and supporters via social media, you’ll need to decide what you want to say to these folks. You should also decide which social media sites you want to utilize (you can’t use them all!), and then draft up a schedule of “touches” for every week or month.
Content
Thankfully, social media content is generally kept short and sweet, which makes it pretty easy to create. Post topics can include any of the following:
- capital campaign updates
- lobby renovation news
- recent major gift
- parking lot closed
- pledge deadline extended
- program update
- donor spotlight
Once you’ve decided on your topic, just get to the point. Write clean and clear messages to current and potential donors, and make sure your readers know how to reach you if they have any questions.
Connecting with Readers
If your organization utilizes multiple social media platforms, you can’t use the same message, pictures or video for each one. Not only would it be redundant, it wouldn’t send a great message. Many sites have a certain format for text and photos, so what works well on one platform might look odd on another. Instagram and Pinterest are both picture heavy. Twitter is the king of short, witty remarks, while Facebook can deliver both long and short text, with or without photos.
Tweet Sweet
New information from LinchpinSEO shows us how you can boost engagement with your donors and supporters on Twitter.
- Short and sweet – Tweets of 100 characters or less are much more popular with readers, even though up to 140 characters are allowed on Twitter.
- Image Links – Readers are much more interested in tweets with image links than just words alone.
- #Hashtags – Tweets with one or two hashtags do very well at engaging Twitter followers. However, more than two has the opposite effect!
- Retweets – If you want your tweet to be retweeted you need to ask for it. Also, if you don’t have a link in your tweet, your chances of a retweet are very poor.
Call to Action
Use every social media interaction to remind your audience to be a part of your team. Ask your donors and friends to:
- Get their pledges in
- Register for the golf tournament
- Email their representative
- Call with questions
- Share a video with friends
- Send in their donation today
- Nominate a volunteer of the month
If you have any questions about fundraising ideas for social media and mobile, or would like more information about brick fundraisers, contact us at Bricks R Us today.
