WPBlab EP74 - Nonprofit Event Marketing On Social: Tips & Tricks

This week on WPblab Bridget Willard and Jason Tucker share some tips and tricks for effective social media campaigns for your nonprofit’s events.

Nonprofits are often short on time, money and are reliant on volunteer assistance to help things run

Geocoding and hashtags are two great ways to curate your event’s photos/marketing, etc.

Things that make crowdsourcing photos really easy:

Smartphone
Selfie stick (possibly with tripod!)
Public-facing social media

Re-gramming on Instagram is against the TOS so Twitter is often a better choice for sharing and re-sharing of photos. You can however, share links to the Instagram posts (on FB, Twitter, etc). Here’s an example. https://www.facebook.com/SoCalHiker/posts/10155307306634344

Both Twitter and Instagram posts can be embedded into your blog posts, which is a great way to get the word out and continue to motivate your attendees/volunteers and/or thank them!

You can also create an event gallery on Flickr that everyone can contribute to. Dropbox or Google Drive that multiple people have access to is a great option as well.

Be sure to thank your volunteers/contributors!!

You want to provide good information on social media because people will be looking for updates about the event, answers to questions, and wanting to know who is attending and what the event will be like. Think of the things that you take for granted and that someone new would not necessarily know. Always think “hospitality”.

Make sure your social media avatar shows your real face. People love to see faces and helps people to relate – it humanizes an event. Remember the names of your frequent attenders or volunteers and mention them by name when they arrive at your event.

Use ‘urgency’ in your marketing and peer sharing / FOMO (fear of missing out) factor

Tell a story: all non-profits exist to help humanity in some way and storytelling is a powerful marketing tool that resonates with people

When attending an event, always have an external battery or 2 or 3.

When doing photography for your event, keep in mind that you don’t have to edit every single photo. Make a few quick edits as needed, but then just share what you have.

Also remember that volunteers may not always have the tools available that they need to help out. Ie. photographers – you can have disposable or affordable cameras / phones available to let your volunteers use to contribute.

Ask your volunteers what they are into and see how that intersects with what they enjoy and are good at

Invest in your volunteers and they will stick with you!

There are lots of social media managers who are willing to do pro bono work for non-profits, so reach out to your networks and ask people you know to find someone to help you.

TOOLS:

Media Release form

Nonprofit Chat #npchat

WPBlab EP74 – Nonprofit Event Marketing On Social: Tips & Tricks

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