Social media to boost your fundraising goals is a great strategy to yield more funds.

Even if you’re not an avid social media poster, we’re about to give you an in-depth look at how to share meaningful content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Social Media to Boost Your Fundraising: Top 4 Tips

1. Tell your Story

Is there a story behind your fundraiser? Has this been a journey? Are you helping someone else? What’s the main reason that drives you to fundraise?

Summarize it in a few sentences, add a magnetic image, and post the story to social media. Ask your friends to share your post! This is how to use social media to boost your fundraising goals

Posting it to your personal pages is fine, but be sure everyone can read it and your friends can share it with their friends. If your nonprofit or cause doesn’t have its own business profile now is a good time to create one. Business pages are more easily shared regardless of a person’s list of friends or followers.

2. Post Shareable Content

Make your social media posts shareable. Be sure that the privacy settings are set to global (or all) so that everyone can share it and all of their friends and followers can see it too. Make sure the images are vivid and bright. Give them a reason to want to share it by using social media to boost your fundraising goals

Make it easy, tell them what you want them to do…a clear call to action is vital.

3. Give a Call to Action

This is where you tell your audience what you want them to do. Be specific.

For example, “Please support our school by sharing this to your timeline” or “Post this to your wall and ask your friends to share it too!” and “Thank you in advance for sharing this with your friends!”

4. Create a Sense of Urgency

For online auctions, this is fairly simple. Try using phrases like these, “Auction ends in two days!” or ”Don’t miss out this is a one-of-a-kind item.”

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Below, learn how to use social media to boost your fundraising goals.

Social Media to Boost Your Fundraiser:

Using Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

There are many different social media platforms, but let’s stick with the main three.
Go where the majority of people are active members. Join the thousands of fundraisers who recommend to use social media to boost your fundraiser!

Let’s dive in!

Twitter

Twitter is best for fast-paced sites like auctions that are ending soon or have a ton of items up for auction.

1. Use hashtags. These keywords will help your post be found by the people who are interested in your cause. Some might be powerful hashtags that aren’t necessarily unique to your cause, like #GivingTuesday, which will trend leading up to and after the Tuesday after the Thanksgiving holiday in the US.

2. Be engaging and engaged. Don’t just post and run. Pop back in, like your replies, and give everyone a genuine response.

3. Thank users and donors through their social media of choice. If a donor uses Twitter, then you use Twitter to send a thank you tweet. This will let them know you truly care, but it will also show other Twitter users that you have an auction and people are bidding. In your Tweet, include how the bid will help your organization.

4. Enlist the support of your network. Everyone has a network, you just have to find yours. It might be your granddaughter, a substitute teacher, or a school volunteer. Contact whoever is or may be willing to help you. If they have a social media account, find them and ask them to share your auction items up for bid.

Tag us for support @IDTCharity.

Facebook

Just about everyone has a Facebook page. Make sure you tell your story here.

1. Every day, pop in and tell your friends what you’ve been up to. Start from the beginning of your journey. The minute you decide to do a fundraiser for a cause, tell your Facebook family about your plans.

2. As the items get donated, send out a post about all of the great items you will place up for auction in the coming days. Build excitement. When your auction items go live, post each one to Facebook. Be sure to space them out. Don’t post everything at once.

Tip: Space them out by at least three hours – if you have a business page you can schedule them. Posting one item a day through the end of your auction is effective too. This is how you use social media to boost your fundraising goal.

3. When you share your item, tag friends who might be interested in bidding, or describe your cause and give a call to action by asking them to share on their own pages. People who may not be interested in bidding will be happy to share. It is an easy way to participate and feel like you are giving support.

For additional help join our Facebook Community Support Group.

Instagram

Instagram tends to be “nicer” than other platforms. It tends to be a happy place. This is how to use social media to boost your fundraising goals.

1. Share your story with beautiful images. One post a day or every other day is more than enough when using social media to boost your fundraising goals.

2. Be sure to use hashtags to drive people (traffic) to your post. Choose a hashtag that is relevant to your item and then click in the home feed to see similar tags. Use can use up to 28 hashtags per post.

Sample hashtags: #charityauction #auctionforcharity #dogood #bidforcharity #onlinecharity #fundraising #fundraiser

3. As long as you know their social media handle, you can tag your friends here too. Use @ and their name. For example, @charityauctionstoday.

4. Tag the person who donated the item (with a thank you), the auction house, and anyone who might share it or bid on the item. More than likely, the auction house will share it with their followers too.

We’re on Instagram, tag us and we’ll help you promote your online auction for charity.

If you are active on other social media platforms that we haven’t covered, be sure to share there, too. Wherever you have a network, you can share your story on that social media to boost your fundraiser.  Using social media to boost your fundraising goals is a smart strategy.

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Thank you and good luck!