3 Tips for Telling Your Story Better Using Social Media

Only around 8% of donations (at present) are made online but, as this is an increasing number, it’s certainly one that’s worth paying attention to.

Besides which, for the first time ever, thanks to social media you can promote your charity’s message without spending a fortune on printing or advertising.  So what opportunities are there for your small charity to use social media effectively without spending all of your time online?

 
1. Get Your Social Media Strategy Right

First of all, I’d recommend starting off by determining why you are on social media in the first place.  You need to consider:

• Why Are You Doing This?
• Who Is Your Audience?
• What is Your Current Relationship with this Audience?
• How Do You Want to Use Social Media to Build Your Brand?
• How Will You Measure Success?

Telling your story

2. Consider Starting a Blog

Once you’ve determined WHY then it’s time to consider HOW you’re going to use social media – or rather WHAT social media you’re going to use.  Does your charity have a blog – and if not, is it worth considering?  Blogging can help to boost your campaigns AND engage your audience on a regular basis.  Not to mention that it can help people to find your website in the first place as the search engines love a site that is constantly refreshed – so basically, a blog can help with your search engine ranking.

A blog can provide a powerful way to tell your charity’s story and provide a different perspective to your audience.  You can also consider asking different people to write for you – members of staff, volunteers or clients themselves can all provide their own voice.  And this means content creation doesn’t have to become the responsibility of just
one person.

The Social Media Examiner (see the link below) goes into more detail too about how blogging can boost your social media effort through links and sharing.  It’s definitely worth a read even if you don’t currently blog…

3. Don’t Just Write – Show

Did you know that YouTube is the second biggest search engine after Google?

Since being purchased by the latter, YouTube has grown exponentially and now has over 2 billion users each year.  Using video to promote your charity is another way to tell your story AND get it in front of a huge audience.  Jonathan Graspas recently wrote about the dos and don’ts of telling your story using video

He talks about what works well in terms of story telling as well as when not to use it – for example, when you’re already doing something that works well!

Whatever your reasons for using social media, there is no denying that it can help you to build a new audience, reach out to people in different ways and present your charity differently – all of which can enhance your ability to tell your story well and in a way that will appeal to a range of people with different preferences for accessing social media.

Read more about developing your social media strategy in my Social Media post

For advice on boosting your campaigns with blogging, the Social Media Examiner provides some great advice

Read The Agitator’s article on developing a YouTube strategy for your charity