Social media platforms are where your organization’s current and prospective donors are, and they’ve grown to expect the information and content shared with them to be personalized, compelling and something they can easily share with their peers.
Driven by two-way communication, social media platforms are invaluable for your organization to connect and engage with its audiences. Combining the power of great stories and the reach of social media channels, your organization can inspire others to take action and motivate them to become passionate, online advocates for your mission.
Social media platforms are constantly evolving — updating tools and features to accommodate various audiences and making it easier than ever for nonprofits to drive online donor development. As our world becomes overwhelmingly more socially conscious, these platforms have launched tools that help nonprofits amplify their missions. Facebook and Instagram are two social media platforms that have made a respectable — and creative — effort to help nonprofits raise more money online.
As a highly visual platform, Instagram is one of the most ideal platforms for sharing some of the most compelling story-driven content your organization has. While the platform is highly visual, stories are still a driving force behind each image or video shared — people want to feel a connection to what is being shared with them.
With compelling images and attention-grabbing captions that define mission and impact, many nonprofits have leveraged the power of Instagram for visual storytelling.
Beyond sharing a single photo or video to your nonprofit’s feed, Instagram has launched new, extremely engaging tools that amplify the efforts of organizations using the platform to tell their stories.
Instagram Stories
Given Instagram’s focus on brand aesthetic, your organization is likely reserving its most polished and impactful story-driven content for its feed. Using the Stories feature on Instagram gives your nonprofit the opportunity to share other stories of its value, volunteers and staff, in addition to a more behind the scenes glimpse of what it takes to drive impact.
With text and drawing tools, stickers for polling and Q&A’s, using this feature to tell your nonprofit’s stories provides an opportunity to get creative with its content and motivates the audience to engage with it. Additionally, it can tremendously enhance your organization’s exposure as Instagram Stories have more than 300 million daily users.
In addition to its widespread appeal, using Instagram Stories to share your organization’s stories takes your audience on a compelling storytelling journey, providing a more exciting experience for your audience. And although Instagram Stories are set to only be available for 24 hours, Instagram has encouraged their long-term use by enabling users to ‘highlight’ their stories, where they then live at the top of the user’s profile.
Beyond some basic rules and regulations, there are really no limitations to the stories you’re able to tell on Facebook. Without a rulebook or structure to using Facebook, it’s easy to get carried away with just sharing your organization’s stories in a body of text. But our digital world has rewired our brains and our expectations of what we engage with.
Today, we demand the interactions we have with brands and organizations seeking to connect be quick, visually stimulating, personalized and engaging. And because the platform has so many tools to take advantage of, there is no better place to adapt, customize or reimagine your efforts than Facebook.
Facebook Ads
Due to changes in the platform’s algorithm, it has become increasingly difficult to reach individuals organically through a single Facebook post. This means nonprofits — especially smaller nonprofits — seeking to reach individuals outside of their network need to get creative with the way they share their content.
Facebook Ads are an incredibly affordable way for your organization to reach new people who might be interested in your cause outside of your existing community. Strategically weaving your stories into Facebook Ads is a fresh, creative way to share some of your organization’s most impactful stories, driving specific desired behaviors, like making a donation, visiting your website or signing up for your email list.
The options users have with Facebook Ads are almost limitless, with the capability of including both photos and videos in your ads — giving your organization the opportunity to tell a compelling, visually stimulating story in an easily viewable way, and even giving your audience a call-to-action.
Unlike simply posting regular content to your feed, Facebook Ads offer a clear, scalable way to drive tangible results for your organization. Additionally, Facebook Ads are extremely targeted and allow creators to refine the desired audience based on demographics like location, income level and interests.
If you’re interested in learning about the numerous ways you can elevate the stories your nonprofit is telling, reaching more individuals and enhancing your organizations ability to drive online donor development, download our free eBook The Nonprofit’s Guide to Storytelling for Digital Media here.
Photo Credit: Pete Pedroza via Unsplash
