How to run a campaign using social media

If you’ve got something special to share about your charity – perhaps a new report, a fundraising campaign or a big piece of press coverage – you will want to run a campaign. Whether it’s large or small, here are our top tips.

Think about your audience

Which websites and social media outlets do your intended audiences use? These will be the platforms to prioritise for your campaign. For example, Twitter may be a good platform for a campaigning charity, since people are more likely to tweet about political topics than share them on Instagram. You’ll want to check where your audience is most active.

Set your goals

What do you want to achieve from your campaign? Do you want people to sign up to a petition? Donate? Talk about your cause? What does success look like and how can you measure it? This could include using insights to track engagement rates or the number of people accessing your website donations page. Read more how to measure success on social media.

Plan your content

Think about your key messages, your tone of voice and particular images you could use. What do you want them to convey and how can they help you to achieve your campaign goals? It’s also important to remember to include a call to action, which gives you a clear way of measuring the success of your campaign. Read how to manage social media for more tips.

Create opportunities for interaction

A key part of social media campaigns is interaction with your prospective supporters.This group will become your biggest advocates and they should feel passionate about spreading the word about your campaign.

Be fluid

Like any campaign, those driven through social media shouldn’t be static. It’s important to keep updating information and introducing news aspects to the campaign so people maintain interest. Multimedia might play a role here – allowing you to refresh content by presenting short videos, podcasts or hosting interactive web chats.There may be topical angles on your agenda, so keep an eye on popular hashtags.

Be prepared

If your campaign goes well, it may be that you get lots of website hits, queries – and hopefully donations. Make sure that you have an aftercare plan for your donors, and also that your website can stand up to a spike in traffic.

Report

Once your campaign has wrapped, write up the key results for your management team. Done right, this should help create further support for social media.