[Infographic] 14 reasons to include social networks in your digital strategy

For some time now, you’ve been hearing that it’s essential to include social networks in your nonprofit fundraising strategy. But do you really know what benefits they will have for your campaigns? 14 reasons to include social networks in your digital strategy.

1. More visibility

Social networks are a real springboard to develop your visibility on the web. It is a way for you to make yourself known to the right media outlets, partners, competitors and especially your future donors using the principle of virality of information.

2. Improve your SEO

In recent years, we talked about Social Media Optimization (SMO) for your nonprofit fundraising efforts.

SMO is a set of techniques that can attract visitors to the contents of your website through promotions via social networks. Social referencing favors the traffic and the natural referencing which makes it possible to improve your visibility on the search engines.

3. Conquer new customers and retain current customers

Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or others is a good way to diversify and increase your sources of customer acquisition. They are therefore a tool to use for your commercial prospects but also for future loyalty.

4. Instant communication

Another advantage of social networks is to broadcast your messages in real time (be careful about what you write). We advise you to create a calendar for your publications. Several management tools like Hootsuite have emerged that help you create and post on a regular basis.

5. Large scale communication

By communicating on social media , you will reach an audience over a wide geographical area both in United States and around the world.

6. Low cost communication

Unlike offline media such as television, radio, the press … or paid search on Google Ads, publishing on social networks is free. (With an option of paid promotions also.)

It is important to communicate regularly on social networks with powerful messages that are of interest to your readers. This is a gradual process that takes time.

It may be advisable to recruit a community manager, to call on an expert in external communication or simply to acquire skills in this area.

7. Manage your reputation

Another advantage of networks is the ability to regulate and improve online reputation. Internet users share their opinions easily and more often on the products and services they use. For many nonprofits, having a good image on the web is a key issue.

A presence on new web technologies can help you better manage your reputation.

8. Create a community

Being present on social networks allows you to design a community and to develop engagement with it. You must always remember to keep your current fans, but also to win new ones. Publish interesting and original content that appeal to your readers, and they will want to like, to comment, even to share your publications. They can also contact you and interact with you.

The development work of a community is long so arm yourself with patience before reaching the thousand of fans.

9. Get to know your target audience

With social networks , you establish a certain proximity with your audience by creating privileged relationships with them and above all it means that it is a way for you to get to know them better by asking them questions, offering them surveys …

10. Gaining responsiveness

Dialogue with your support group, partners or donors makes you more efficient and quicker. And above all, it is a medium to gain insight on what others are doing. You can be responsive to what your competitors do in terms of marketing actions.

11. Give importance to your activity

Being present on social networks is an opportunity to create value, share  ​your expertise. This gives you credibility while making the communication more human. Internet users will have more confidence in you.

12. Highlight your news

Social networks are an ideal marketing tools to communicate your news especially when fundraising: promotions, events, appeals … your donors would love a well constructed message and if they believe in you and your cause they do not hesitate to share.

13. A tool related to your blog

Once you have written and published the article on your blog, you must share it and then share it regularly on social networks.

You should know that when you publish on social media, and pick up the right frequency.

14. Generate traffic to your site

Sharing articles on the networks will bring you visits to your blog. In addition to these sharing, creating interesting content on social networks is a source of additional traffic to your website.

Now you understand that including social networks in your digital strategy has many benefits. Admittedly, it is a slow process that will not bear fruits immediately, but in the meanwhile you can easily measure the returns.

So ready to start?