I run Appreciate (www.justappreciate.com) which is a new 100% free social platform to help people connect with non-profits, and one of our goals is to help take some of these stresses away from your day-to-day online social media management - setting up a profile is quick and you'll know people on Appreciate will see a visually great and to-the-point insight to your charity when they find your charity on Appreciate! Please do explore our platform , it would be great to have your charity join our growing community!

As a tech-for-good start-up, social media is a focus for building our brand, and so I hope these insights are helpful to your charity’s social media strategy!

Instagram - Just start! Posting pictures is only one part of creating an Instagram community around your charity. You'll have to ‘comment & like’ other people's content to drive the audience to your page. Also, if you feel comfortable switching your Instagram profile to a Business page, you’ll have access to a range of data insights which will educate you on who your audience is! Another great way to build a following to your charity’s brand is to update your 'Story' as often as you wish so people can gain a daily insight to your charity! You now have the ability to save ‘Highlights’ from your story. So you could have a series of highlights focussing on different aspects of your charity. For example at Appreciate we currently have highlights about ‘International Days’, our ‘Blog’ and the ‘Launch’ of our new Corporate Social Responsibility platform. You could have a highlight about you recent ‘Charity Day’, your short videos about your Team, or your charity’s 2018 Goals.

 

Targeting - People who already know you, will know you! I focus on targeting people who do not already know about Appreciate and so I will focus on certain demographics I want to target and try to interact with their accounts on Instagram. This is slightly harder to do as you don't necessarily know age/gender/location of individual Instagram accounts. Instagram's advertising feature would allow you to target more specifically, and it can be vastly more cost effective than print media in magazines or newspapers!

 

Promoting Your Charity Across Different Social Networks - Your Instagram posts work best on Instagram. You can link your Instagram account with your Facebook so that your content is automatically posted to your Facebook, however Facebook's algorithm's won't work as well as if you specifically posted to Facebook. Personally at Appreciate we link our Instagram through with Facebook as we are going with an Instagram-first-approach and we are okay with taking a hit from Facebook's algorithms!

 

Different Content on Social Networks - For maximum effect you should try to change your content depending on which social network you're using. On Instagram engaging pictures relevant to your charity will be great content. Facebook is moving towards a video-based-platform, so if you are able to create short videos, that would work really well -  most of us have a super-powerful smart phone with all the tools needed to start creating video content. For example you could create short 30 second video content of the Team who works behind the scenes at your non-profit. Or perhaps a series of 1 minute videos, each one talking about the different goals you have for 2018. Anything is possible! LinkedIn requires different content, in my experience, as the audience again is completely different!

 

I hope this helps - please feel free to reach out to me at [email protected] or on LinkedIn ! Please do have a look at our Instagram profile by searching for @AppreciateOfficial in the app. We're still learning too!!

This is a lot to take in but to create a strong following on social media is a lot of hard work!

Thank you & have a great 2018!

Robert

Founder at Appreciate.