Four Tips in Optimising Social Media for the Third Sector

When it comes to social media it is surprising how many industries are still dragging their feet. If the majority of internet referral traffic comes from Facebook, then you’re missing a huge potential market by not utilising it.

There is a huge deficit in social media for charities – surprising when you consider that this is a free way to advertise your charity and approach a wide audience. These four tips will help to increase charitable donations and awareness of your cause:

As a charity you already know the importance of word of mouth, it is one of the driving forces behind charitable donations after all. By making good use of your social media you can reach more people than ever before. You’ve probably already heard about how this can help you, but how can you make the most of it?

This really is very simple. Ask people to share their stories, photos, recommendations of your charity on their profile or tag your charity in their status. Not only will this make more people aware of the work you do, but it also boosts your online reputation marking you as an authority.

Another big mistake is not creating a custom URL or neglecting to fill in the entire profile. This is such a simple process that can make a world of difference when people search for you – search engines always scan URLs first and content second. So, by having a vanity URL with your charity’s name and a full description of what you do, you’ll find a lot more people are able to easily find you through social media.

If your website has a blog, and it should, then you can share content from it over social media to help drive more traffic to your site. The more people sharing it, the better the content appears to Google – shooting you up in the search engine results and driving even more people to your site.

Why should you care how many people are on your website? Every person that visits your website is a potential donation, so even if only 5% of your visitors donate the more people you have on your site the bigger your donations will be. If you’re creating quality content designed to pull on people’s emotions, then sharing this on social media can help to give you the attention you deserve.

Optimisation isn’t just about search engines, most importantly it needs to be about hitting your target audience. If your number one goal is to create a fantastic experience for your audience then the search engines love you for it. Create content and posts that people will want to read about and share themselves – figure out when the best time to post is and what kind of post they like the most.

By following these four simple steps you will see a huge increase in the amount of interaction you receive through social media, and if done correctly a significant influx of traffic to your website. All of this will help you to create stronger brand awareness and boost your donations.

If you are looking for help that’s completely tailored to your charity then get in touch with us! At Liberty we love doing whatever we can to give charities the help they deserve.