When promoting your nonprofit, obviously you want to go where the people are. These days, that means Facebook, with its 1.44 billion active users. The beauty of this platform is how easy it is to reach out to users with the same interests. However, the difficulty comes in grabbing and keeping their attention. While Facebook shouldn’t be the extent of your marketing efforts, it also shouldn’t be taken lightly. With a good strategy and some forethought, Facebook can greatly benefit your cause.
Here are four things to keep in mind:
- Be a show-off. Take time to not only tell your followers what’s going on, but also show them. Post videos and pictures of behind-the-scenes work, events or employees sharing exciting news. Share testimonials, accomplishments, results, anniversaries and links to feedback from followers. Visitors of your Facebook page should be able to understand what you’re all about just from the posts on your timeline.
- Interact. Don’t be one-sided; your followers have things to say, too. Invite people to share their thoughts and express their experiences, and then respond to them. Post educational pieces or articles that share common interests, create polls for followers to quickly add their two cents, or ask questions about related events. All of these things can foster interaction with your followers.
- Track. Listen to your analytics. Facebook offers great tools to be able to watch and listen to how followers are responding to what you’re posting. Understanding the stats will allow you to adjust posts to be more effective in posting what your target market wants to see.
- Be purposeful. Show off your organization’s culture through the content of your posts. A nonprofit with a very serious, passionate and direct environment should show the same seriousness through what is posted on their page. If a nonprofit is driven by a fun, laid back atmosphere, their posts should reflect that. Even the profile and cover picture need to accurately show what the organization is all about. Facebook also allows users to save drafts to be posted at a later time. Be thoughtful and prepared when posting, and don’t forget to review everything before pressing the send button.