Nonprofits with Great Social Media
4 min to read ✭ In this post, you’ll learn about a few nonprofits that are excelling at social media and the keys to their success.
Characteristics of Great Social Media
The ever-changing world of social media is certainly hard to master, but there are some organizations out there that are truly crushing it when it comes to curating quality content. Content across nonprofits on social should aim to inspire, evoke emotion, educate, or express gratitude. In order to achieve these things, you must have an in-depth understanding of your audience so you can accurately tailor your content towards them.
Video has become the most powerful type of content out there and almost every social media platform’s algorithm is prioritizing video content. Statistics show that 57% of users that watch a nonprofit’s video make a donation. Video has become an absolute must, and the organizations we are about to highlight are definitely utilizing it.
While utilizing video is a must, it is good to mix in a variety of other content as well. Visual content like pictures, infographics, and gifs are a great way to illustrate your story and catch a user’s attention. Engaging content like polls, Q&As, and quizzes are a great way to draw the user in and increase engagement. Another example is user-generated content, where you share photos or videos that a user tagged you in which can help make your brand seem more personable. Lastly, educational content such as articles, webinars, podcasts, or infographics can all be shown or previewed on social media for users looking to learn more about your organization.
As you can tell, there are a lot of moving pieces that come together to make a nonprofit’s social media “great.” We’ve gathered a few examples of organizations that are demonstrating strong social media marketing.
charity: water
Charity: water is a nonprofit that provides clean drinking water to people in developing nations. After looking at their Instagram profile briefly, the user can get a clear understanding of what the organization’s purpose is. The photos on their profile are crystal clear and perfectly curated to demonstrate their impact on people. In addition to their incredible photography, they are doing a great job using Reels for educational purposes. The Reel itself contains cinematic video content paired with text that features facts or quotes, and the captions dive into a deeper discussion on the topic at hand. Lastly, most of charity: water’s posts contain photos of people, which helps to humanize their brand and evoke emotions.
Soles4Souls
Soles4Souls collects new and used clothing items and redistributes them to people in need. Their social media displays photos of donors, recipients of donations, infographics, and quick “Did you know?” facts. Soles4Souls does a great job utilizing user-generated content by posting photos of their participants collecting shoes. When they do use images with words, they are all branded and matching in font, color, and layout. One last thing to point out, they used their brand colors to create highlights on their Instagram profile which is a nice touch to keep things looking cohesive and branded.
Save the Children
Save the Children is an international humanitarian organization that aims to improve the lives of children. They do a great job staying relevant and relating current events back to their mission. Staying relevant on social media is an underrated goal and requires the ability to think on your feet and post content in a timely manner. Save the Children also does a great job displaying video content via IGTV, grid posts, and on Facebook. Everything is branded with their fonts and colors, they utilize posting articles that are relevant to their audience, and they do an excellent job of storytelling while evoking emotion in their post captions.
All Hands and Hearts
All Hands and Hearts is a volunteer-powered disaster relief organization. By scrolling through their page, a user can immediately notice how well they illustrate their sense of community. The majority of their images are high-quality photographs featuring volunteers that work with them. They also do a wonderful job of storytelling via their IGTV channel by posting content around gratitude and impact stories.
To Write Love On Her Arms
TWLOHA is a nonprofit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. This organization is a little bit different than the ones mentioned above. Their social media strategy contains fewer photographs and more graphic designs with words. Algorithm busters have commonly reported that photos on Instagram of words typically do not perform very well. Of course, this is different across every account, and posting this style of content seems to work very well for TWLOHA. Everything is designed to match their brand characteristics, and they are able to get their message across without using photographs. If your organization is one that finds it difficult to use photographs on social media, this account is one to check out. Their graphics are trendy and relatable which leads to more shares and engagement from followers, and encourages saves as well.
Creating Successful Social Media Content
Curating content that is effective is not an easy task. As you may have learned from experience, sometimes when you have a killer piece of content to post, to your dismay, it doesn’t end up performing very well. You’ll hear this on every blog you read about social media, but consistency is key. It’s going to take a lot of time to increase engagement, followers, shares, and likes. Try not to focus so hard on vanity metrics, and stick to doing what you do best – telling your story.
