How to Leverage Social Media and PR to Boost Events for Non-Profits
For decades, non-profits have struggled to find an effective solution on how to attract audience attention. Fortunately, modern digital technologies facilitate marketers’ efforts in this field. Today, every non-profit organization can achieve great results utilizing various social media and PR tools.
When the advertising budget is close to zero, it’s crucially important to set the right priorities and wisely allocate resources. Even one small error can turn out to be a barrier for implementing a noble mission.
If you want to know how to promote events for non-profits without making mistakes, check the following useful tips.
#1. Use Suitable Channels
Non-profits, which use email marketing as a major channel to communicate with the target audience, should change their tactics and start using social media. Today, the most famous and successful non-profit organizations have 474 followers on Facebook, 186 on Twitter, and 41 on Instagram for every 1,000 email addresses.
Pay attention to the fact that it’s much easier to reach the audience via social media. According to the recent marketing research, only 15% of newsletter subscribers regularly open emails, while almost 35% of followers daily check non-profits’ posts on popular platforms.
More and more potential donors are following charity organizations on social media. In 2017, the Facebook fans growth rate was 13%, the Twitter followers growth rate was 15% and Instagram fans growth rate was 44%. It’s obvious that this trend will continue in the nearest few years, so it’s really important to create relevant content for social network users.
Twitter and Facebook are two channels, which every non-profit organization should use to inform the wide target audience about the upcoming events. Creating a post, you should provide a brief description of the event, mention its date and time.
You should use Instagram when you need to raise awareness of about the issue your organization tries to solve. Focus attention on the fact that every single individual can make a great contribution to mission achievement.
LinkedIn helps to reach the business community and built credibility. It works great when you need to invite wealthy company owners (potential donors) to your event.
Also, you can find volunteers, who have experience in running events for non-profits. Probably they will agree to assist you.
#2. Promote Your Event on a Budget
Non-profits can use social media to promote its events even if a marketing budget is close to 0. Instead of paying for the ad, an organization can use this money to achieve its mission. You can also rent a portable staging uk instead of buying one.
You can reach your target audience simply producing high-quality content, publishing it at the right time, using proper hashtags, and tagging the right places. In addition, you can repost your blog posts or other interesting content produced and published by reputable companies. Also, it’s a good idea to share posts about the followers, which support your organization in the way they can.
Moreover, it’s really important to tag the right people and other nonprofits, which can be interested in providing your organization with support. For example, if your event is related to girl-focused education programs, you can tag Michelle Obama, who helps the organizations in this field.
#3. Interact with Your Target Audience
If you really hope to boost events for non-profits, you should learn how to interact with your followers on social media. You should run discussions of your event in groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. Also, you should weekly organize live chats or online streaming to answer all frequently asked questions.
And one more important note: if you target a global audience, you should translate and localize social media content. For example, if you organize an event dedicated to the fight against AIDS in Eastern Europe, you should publish your posts not in English, but in local languages.
If you want to build credibility online, you should create only high-quality content. So, if there is no in-house copywriter in your organization, it’s better to utilize professional writing services.
#4. Collaborate with Influencers
Business entities pay a lot to cooperate with the influencers, but you can try to do it for free. You should find digital celebrities, who will be happy to support your noble mission and will advertise your event at no cost.
For example, “Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke regularly collaborates with various non-profits. She uses her fame to convince 18.3 million followers on Instagram to support charity events and organizations. Obviously, she doesn’t receive any profit from these posts.
#5. Follow 80/20 Rule
Only 20% of all the content you post should be related to the event. Other 80% should consist of news, social proof, fun facts, and your plans for the future. Otherwise, if every post will contain information about your event, it will look like spam.
Moreover, you shouldn’t overwhelm your followers with negative information. Even if your organization deals with such serious global issues as world hunger or child mortality, you still need to publish content, which brings positive emotions. Don’t hesitate to post photos of happy people, healthy animals, or clean beaches – any pictures, which demonstrate the results of your organization’s work.
#6. Create a Catchy Name of Your Event
If you want more people to get to know about your event, you should create an online buzz. Name of your event should be short (2-5 words), exclusive, catchy, and memorable. People should memorize it immediately.
Feel free to run a brainstorming session with your team to generate new ideas. You should compose a title from the keywords, which are associated with your mission. For example, if your organization fights with air pollution, you should focus on words air, breath, clean, pollution, protection, lungs, etc.
The second step is to ensure that the chosen name is unique and that it can become a trending hashtag. You should run it through Google search and check it on social media. For example, you can find out that hashtag #LetMeBreathe is unsuitable because it has been used by other users, while hashtag #BreatheFreshAirTomorrow is still available.
Final Thoughts
Modern people are spending a few hours a day checking their social media apps. So, if you want to boost events for your non-profits, you shouldn’t lose an opportunity to reach your target audience through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Keep watching the social media trends and create content, which will not leave people indifferent.
Daniela McVicker
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