Social Media Content Best Practices for Nonprofits
- Shannon Fernandez
- May 28, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Jan 7, 2021
Posting engaging content is so important to ensure the success of your nonprofit; it supports brand awareness, encourages engagement and works wonders for your SEO. With that being said, I can't stress enough the importance of scheduling good quality posts ahead-of-time for your social media platforms and/or blogs.
Close to 63% of businesses don’t have a documented strategy for social media content, which means they resort to an ad-lib approach and come up with posts on the fly. While the impromptu technique works sometimes, content marketing depends on consistency and high quality, and that can’t be achieved without some strategic planning.
A GREAT WAY TO STAY ORGANIZED
A great first step to take it to sit down and develop a monthly content calendar to help you plan out your content for each platform ( or at least a couple of weeks at a time). It can be as easy as using an Excel Spreadsheet, a hand-written planner, or even a specialized app like Hootsuite or Sprout Social.. Once you take the time to develop a calendar, set aside a couple of hours to create, plan and schedule content across all of your platforms. *Remember, each platform has optimal images sizes for posting. The more you can schedule posts in advance, the less you have to deal with it during the week.
IT KEEPS YOUR AUDIENCE ENGAGED
A well-organized content calendar can help to define themes and posting cadences to match each social platform's objective. For instance, you may post to Facebook 3x/week while your Twitter feed performs better with 6x/week. A crucial point to mention is while creating a content calendar, make sure your messaging and graphics are different in some form or another for each platform. This not only helps match to each social platform's audience, but it encourages more followers on each of your platforms. If someone is following you on Facebook and you post the exact same post on Twitter, what is the incentive to follow you on both?
KEEPS YOU IN THE KNOW
One of my absolute favorite reasons to develop a content calendar is for awareness days and holidays. With many marketers leading a hectic day-to-day schedule, it’s easy for important dates to slip your mind. You don’t have to memorize every holiday and be aware that tomorrow is, say, National Margarita Day. Your content calendar can include these days and allow you to stay ahead of the curve. My go-to website to capture this information is Days of the Year. You can include national awareness days that match up with your mission, and you can also include a few silly awareness days to help boost employee moral, showcase company culture, or highlight an aspect of your brand voice. Did you know that June holds awareness days like Running Day, Doughnut Day, Rose' Day, and World Music Day?
If you need help getting started, here are a few great templates to use:
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