Social Media Marketing | StrategyBeam

The most important part of an effective nonprofit marketing strategy is your ability to forge a trusting relationship with your community, donors, and general audience. Your nonprofit marketing strategy should be focused on building a brand of trust and engaging with your community. To make this happen, your organization will need to drive qualified traffic to your site and engage them so they trust you enough to become loyal donors. This is not an easy feat, and you will need to master SEO marketing tactics and produce enticing website content for your brand. If you are strapped for time and resources to make your own content, your nonprofit can harness the power of User Generated Content (UGC) to engage your online audience and increase donations. User Generated Content is the most powerful kind of social proof that your nonprofit can leverage because it uses validation from external sources your organization. This is a fantastic approach because people tend to trust the opinions and reviews of sources not related to an organization, plus your audience will be making content for you instead of your internal team of volunteers! Why Does UGC Matter For Your Nonprofit? More than half of Americans trust UGC more than content published by companies and other organizations. 84 percent of Millennials say they are affected by the UGC you discuss on your site, so UGC provides a clear advantage to your nonprofit if you are looking to gain the trust and drive donations through a holistic communications strategy. This trend continues to be true with other demographics and geographic locations, so your nonprofit organization can leverage UGC to boost your online presence and annual donations. This is the case for all industries like restaurants, hotels, and even nonprofit organizations. People looking to give donations to a cause are looking for proof that their funds will be used wisely and fulfill the social good that they are looking to address. Instead of relying on your small communications team, you can look to your audience to think of fantastic memes, tell stories about you, and even create videos or graphics that you can use to promote your organization. Even the largest Internet marketing teams need a little help, and many times UGC offers the content needs that your nonprofit needs. Plus, this type of approach allows you to focus on other areas of the organization and let your supporters come up with content for you! This means that you can spend more time working on other areas of your business as your audience helps you grow your brand and online marketing. Understanding The Power Of UGC Maintaining a steady flow of content across your various communication channels can be difficult to keep up. If you want to build a strong community of followers, you need to make unique content for blog posts, email blasts, website content, and social media channels. This is an enormous undertaking for any marketing team, and if your nonprofit has a small group of volunteers, it can be almost impossible to grow your online presence. Understanding how difficult it is to create new content on a tight budget or with a small group of volunteers underlines the importance of UGC for your nonprofit organization. Here are some stats that really showcase the importance of UGC in your organization: 59 percent of millennials state they utilize UGC to notify their purchase decisions how they spend their money. 70 percent of customers place peer-reviewed recommendations and testimonials above professionally written articles. Pinterest pin production is up 75 percent, Twitch video broadcasts are up 83%, Wattpad tales are up 140 percent, and Airbnb testimonials are up 140%. 65 percent of social networking users from ages 18 to 24 consider information that is shared on social networks when making a buying decision. 84 percent of millennials report which UGC on nonprofit sites has some influence on which they purchase. 86 percent of Millennials state that user-generated content is usually a fantastic indicator of the quality of service or brand. Brand admissions increase by 28 percent when customers are vulnerable to both expert content and user-generated merchandise video. Understand Why Your Audience Shares Content The above stats show why UGC is important for consumers, but it is equally important to understand why people share content. Since your nonprofit is looking to entice people to create content for you, you need to tap into the basic psychology of sharing content. Just like anything else in life, people want to reinforce their decisions and show their importance. While the driving forces behind sharing content changes based on the person and organization. Here are some reasons that people share content, and you can tap into these factors to ensure your nonprofit organization receives the amount of content that you need for a strong online presence. Personal Standing: People like to be correlated with specific brands or perceived as being "in the know." Many are trying to construct their very own brand and stage through sharing. Exclusive Accessibility To Brands: People like to position themselves with specific brands because it highlights their personal traits or beliefs. Co-Creation: Lots of men and women love contributing to the body of knowledge and articles the planet's platform. Contributing to something bigger than themselves can make the individual feel more attached to the world. Social Contest: Social standing in the kind of likes, stocks, as well as only online bragging rights would be the spark which ignites users' urge to discuss opinions, knowledge, expertise or imagination. Altruism: Since your nonprofit addresses a social need, you can use the work that you are doing in your community to draw on the good-will of your audience. Donors what to share the value that you bring to your community, and sharing content is a quick and easy way for people to show their support for you. 3 Ideas That You Can Use Today To Get More UGC Now that we have a solid understanding about why UGC is important to your nonprofit, why UGC is powerful for your brand, and why people share content, let’s take a look at some proven tactics that you can use today to get more User Generate Content for your nonprofit marketing strategy! 1. Encourage Your Audience Reviews Among the first things, you can do to raise your user-generated content would be to encourage your audience to leave reviews about your organization. You can support users to depart studies by the following: Google My Business: No matter what your nonprofit does, you should have a Google My Business (GMB) account. You can set this up in a few minutes, and once you verify your listing with a postcard that Google sends to you, your organization will be up and running. Reviews help your online rankings, and you should always respond to reviews- especially if they are negative reviews. Social Media Reviews: based on the kind of your FB webpage, your fans could have the ability to write reviews on your webpage. As your most active donors to leave reviews on your organization’s Facebook page. This helps your organization rank in Facebook’s algorithm and you can show the impact you make on your community. 2. Establish Social Media Campaign or Contest People love receiving free stuff, and your nonprofit organization can run contests on social media to generate engagement. To do this, you can run a messaging campaign that promotes your audience to publish content about your nonprofit. This can be images, social graphics, or videos of their experience with your brand. Social networking competitions have been a fantastic way to engage your viewers, and this content strategy is also a terrific way to help entice your loyal followers to post content that directs to your website and donation page. Be sure to pay attention to specific guidelines that require you to note a competition and that all content submitted will be owned and used by your organization. Some nonprofits fail to do this and as a result, they are not able to use UGC that comes through social media competitions. Just make sure you notice on your terms and requirements which any material submitted may be reposted. 3. Hashtag Campaigns To Grow Awareness If your organization already has a strong following and is currently well-loved on social channels, you can create a hashtag campaign. This is where you encourage your audience to use specific hashtags, and as a result, social channels can push your organization and the hashtag to trending. This approach is a great way to increase your reach across channels and grab the attention of people who do not currently follow you on the social channels. A simple means to do so is by way of a Facebook article, or you can share on your Instagram bio to publish photographs for potential reposts using a designated hashtag. This is a fantastic choice to engage your audience and will generate enthusiasm for your followers once you opt-in to repost their articles. Grow Your Organization With User Generated Content If your nonprofit organization is looking to increase your online presence, grow your community of followers, and drive more donations then you can’t beat implementing UGC campaigns. Not only will this approach help you fill your online messaging needs, it will also save you time and money since your audience is doing the work for you. Use the above tips to implement a User Generated Campaign today! Featured Image

Category: Social Media Marketing

The Best Ways To Incorporate User Generated Content Into Your Nonprofit Marketing Strategy