by Anna Olinger
Social media is the key to any great marketing campaign. It’s the easiest way to connect with your audience, get to know what they are looking for, and then engage with them about your product or service. As a non-profit business owner, social media is even more essential because you (likely) don’t have a big marketing budget. Social media marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your target audience and give them meaningful ways to support your cause. These 7 tools will help your non-profit’s social media plan succeed.
Buffer lets you take all the content that you want to share with your audience and followers, and schedule it in a way that makes sense for your business. You can schedule posts directly from Buffer’s website, through a plugin, or via your newsreader. Buffer also lets you collaborate with your marketing team (or the other members of your non-profit). This is handy when you have one person providing photos, someone else creating articles, and another person responding to comments. Everyone can have access to the site remotely.
If you have a blog, you likely need to produce new content at least once a week. Finding the time to come up with content ideas, research, write, and edit a new post each week takes time and effort that could otherwise be spent working with clients and creating new business. And this is an easy thing to outsource. Essays Capital is a custom writing service that will get to know your company’s voice and create weekly blog posts for you.
Viraltag integrates with Canva, Dropbox, Picasa, and other image creation and storage sites to let you easily post and tag visual content to your social channels. The website has a special plan for non-profits that starts at $12/month for one account on each platform.
Ninja Essays is another custom writing service that you can use to lighten your load. They can create blog posts, website content, or social media content. They can also create PowerPoints if you need online presentations for your social pages.
Action Sprout is the leading Facebook tool for raising awareness of causes. If you plan on creating an online petition to raise money for a campaign, get signatures, or just get the word out about your non-profit, Action Sprout can help. The website helps you manage your page visitors to turn more viewers into supporters.
Post Planner helps you find relevant and highly rated content to share with your followers on social media. It can save you a lot of time that you would otherwise spend scouring the web or social platforms to find sharable content.
Planning all of your social media content is an essential part of your marketing plan. But you don’t want to spend hours on the computer everyday posting new material, responding to people, and networking. Hootsuite lets you link all of your social media accounts to one website and manage them from there. You can schedule all of your social media engagement for a week and then just respond when needed. It will save you hours every week (or even every day) and it will allow you to stay on top of you social presence.
When you’re planning your marketing plan for your non-profit, be sure to include a segment for social media. It’s the best way to reach a like-minded group of people. These tools and resources will help you grow your online marketing efforts and increase your exposure without breaking the bank.
Anna Olinger is a freelance content manager from Washington, DC. To learn more tips on content marketing, writing and social media follow Anna on Twitter and LinkedIn.