To the Next Level: How to Convert Your Social Media Followers into Donors
Crowdfunding Advisors, FundRazr Team
People are quick to like the causes they care about on social media. They’ll dole out the likes, shares, and retweets with abandon, but getting your followers to step up and support your cause with their hard-earned money requires more work. The good news is that if they’re already engaging with you on social media, they’re more likely to donate.
55% of people who interact with nonprofits on social media take further action for the cause – Waggener Edstrom
So how do you actually get these people to convert into donors? The important thing to remember is that there isn’t a switch you can flip to make it happen, there are a few steps in between. Here are just a few tips that will help you cross the financial support bridge.
Keep Your Content Stimulating
This should really be a general point of your social media strategy anyway – but your content feed needs to be a mix of engaging posts, discussion starters, and content that in some way provides value to your supporters. A steady stream of donation appeals will turn off your audience, and potentially cause them to unfollow your account.
This is the place to tell your story and make your followers feel really involved in what you’re doing. Social media is dynamic, and so is your cause, so flaunt it!
Show off the highlights of your organization’s impact using infographics, videos, testimonials, blog posts, and photos. Link them back to your website to improve your web ecosystem and keep traffic coming to your site.
Recognize your supporters within your community by dedicating a lot of posts to recognizing donors, fundraisers, and volunteers. Tag them in pictures and thank them for their gifts, or share their posts promoting their crowdfunding campaigns to support your cause. With FundRazr, you can craft the post/tweet for donors to use right after they make a gift!
It’s also beneficial to spread information about issues and topics surrounding your cause. Share relevant and recent content from other thought leaders, media outlets, and partner organizations to spread awareness and information to your followers.
Direct appeals for donation are okay once in a while but should never bombard your followers. When you do ask for gifts, make it specific and use language that connects donors to the root of your cause – specify suggested amounts that are correlated to tangible results. FundRazr campaigns can use ‘wishlists’ to allow donors to contribute to your campaign by buying the specific item you need.
Hook Potential Donors With a Targeted Story
When speaking of converting social media followers into donors, it’s easy to mentally limit ourselves to just the followers who are with us now. Sometimes, it’s more important to think beyond drawing your existing fans down the funnel, and reach out to an external (yet more specific) audience.
Indeed, rather than reaching out only through your organization’s page on social media, donors can be found an instantly hooked by another story or event they might decide to support, which will in turn spur them to action for your organization (Think Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 video).
Think about what story you can tell to engage audiences and throw some spend behind it on social media. You could create its own Facebook or event page that links back to your primary pages.
Collect Email Addresses (and Remain Compliant)
One of the first steps in the funnel to converting a follower into a donor is to convert them into email subscribers. FundRazr campaigns allow followers to sign up to receive updates without donating right away – and it’s completely CASL and CANSPAM compliant.
Email acquisition is a huge key to increasing your prospective donor list, as it allows you to maintain a conversation (and if you’re particularly email marketing savvy, a highly targeted one to each user). When you start communicating via email, you ensure that your post doesn’t get lost in the fray of the feed on social media, which is happening more and more often as Facebook gives preference to paid posts over organic content.
The key to keeping unsubscribe rates low and conversion rates high is to ask yourself with every single email or piece of content – is this providing value to my reader? If the answer is yes, amazing! If no, time to edit and make it something that you would be excited to read on a weekly basis (and not just because it’s your job.)
Plan to Promote Your Crowdfunding Campaigns on Social Media
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. – Benjamin Franklin
When you’re running a crowdfunding campaign and soliciting donations, it’s important to have a plan for how you’re going to promote it to your users. (Hubspot offers a great free calendar template here!) Tweeting and posting on Facebook all willy-nilly won’t be effective and you may end up either not posting enough or inundating your followers to the point where they unsubscribe. Carefully schedule your posts with updates and new content along the way to your goal. Luckily, social media updates are easy to manage from your FundRazr campaign, and updates to your campaign can be pushed through to your linked Facebook page automatically!
If you have any questions about promotions, our incredible coaches are always happy to help you with your campaign!
