All nonprofits are using social media, but who can clearly articulate why? What are your nonprofit’s social media objectives?
Last week, Kristina shared which social networks nonprofits said most helped them achieve their objectives in 2022 and which held the most promise for 2023.
But what are those objectives exactly?
In the 2023 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report being released this week, we share this pie chart that shows a great amount of diversity in social media objectives.
Here are the top objectives in order:
- Increasing Participation Levels
- Changes in Knowledge or Understanding
- Increasing Levels of Influence / Thought Leadership
The next four are essentially tied:
- Encouraging Loyalty /Donor Retention
- Increasing Subscribes or Followers
- Financial Gains / Fundraising
- Increasing Demand or Desire
I am drawing two bits of advice based on these results.
Get Specific About Your Social Media Objectives Before Choosing Your Content Strategy
While a lot of social media advice you read makes sense regardless of the objective (think about your community/target audience, use a conversational tone, use more video . . .), much more of it is probably irrelevant unless it is speaking directly to your particular objectives. Before you can define a content strategy for social media, you really need to choose a couple of specific objectives above. Then you can decide what types of content really make the most sense.
Focus on Changes in Knowledge or Increasing Influence if You Don’t Have an Ad Budget
I’m encouraged to see that more people chose changes in knowledge than fundraising and donor retention as their social media objectives. That’s not to say you can’t fundraise on social media because you certainly can, but it takes a significant ad budget to do so at scale. Changes in knowledge or understanding and increasing levels of influence, I think, are the most realistic objectives if you are relying primarily on organic traffic.
That said, increasing participation levels was the most popular objective. Whether this will work, I think, depends on exactly what kind of participation you are calling for. Some calls to action will probably require ad spending, while others can work with organic traffic only. Calls to action that take people off the social media platform will always be harder than those where they can stay on the platform to accomplish the action.
What do you see in this data? Comment below to let us know!
