Social media marketing is now easier than ever, with just one click of the button your post can be seen by thousands of people meaning your charity can gain lots of recognition! Social media is particularly helpful for smaller charities with limited internal resources, and when done effectively charity marketing campaigns drive high response rates.
So how has the coronavirus pandemic increased the use of social media marketing? Well, Facebook has in fact seen a 70% increase in usage during the pandemic. This is the same for many other platforms, meaning that your social posts are more likely to receive more attraction and reach a wider audience.
Social Media Marketing
Here are key tips and recommendations to help you perfect your social media strategy suited to your charity during the pandemic:
1. Understand your audience
To create an effective marketing strategy, you must consider your target audience and the media they consume on a regular basis. Customer insights are a great way of finding this out, such as Google Analytics and Sprout Social which enables you to see who is visiting your website, and help you establish what your audience demographic looks like. This will help you tailor specific messages for your audience.
Firstly, identifying the basic information of your audience, such as age, location, gender and basic interests helps you to get a bigger picture of the audience you’re looking to target. Also, by looking at influencers and your competitors, you can get an idea of the type of customers they target their campaigns towards and their ways of doing so. By putting yourself in your customers’ shoes you can ask yourself how are they finding working from home? Are they trying to stay fit and healthy while in quarantine? Are they looking for more fundraisers to donate to? This helps to give you a perspective on what your customers would like to see whilst scrolling through social media!
2. Clear communication
Charities with passionate employees who believe in their cause very strongly will always come across well in a social media post and will make consumers interested in your charity. It’s critical that communications to your audience are frequent and relevant, and during uncertain times trust is essential. Without being able to have open communication, potential donations could be stalled, but you can limit this by providing regular updates via social media to reassure your audience that your charity continues to remain resilient during this unprecedented time.
3. Use trending hashtags
Hashtags should be used on a daily basis on all social posts, but your usual hashtags might not have the same engagement they usually do. Recently, there has been a spike in the trend of coronavirus related hashtags. When you combine your branded hashtags with trending hashtags it means you’re able to get in front of a larger, but still relevant, audience. However, definitely tweak your hashtags for each platform as some hashtags which are trending on Twitter may not be trending on Facebook for example.
4. Share updates about your virtual events
Promoting your events on social media enhances great recognition for your charity, but now that your events are having to be virtual, you have to make sure you’re staying in contact and reaching out to your digital audience. Use your social media channels to share updates, drive registrations, look back on past events, and remind supporters that your events are still happening and your beneficiaries still need them.
