By Josh Kashorek, Director of Marketing from Five Q
Why Facebook is Important to Nonprofits
If you’re a marketer, then you know the impact that Facebook has globally. The platform provides a vast space for organizations of all sizes to reach people all over the world. The social media giant has 1.47 billion active daily users worldwide- that’s 66% of its monthly users- making Facebook the third most-visited site in the world. Think about how many people your organization could connect with to share your mission and develop a deeper relationship!
Americans alone spend 58 minutes a day scrolling through Facebook. With a worldwide audience of 1.47 billion, Facebook can make all of the difference for your organization, so of course, you want to use it to the fullest. Let’s jump right in to help you make the most of Facebook!
Building Your Community by Leveraging Facebook
An essential piece of any strategy for leveraging Facebook is building a community to engage with the content you share. One of the best ways to do this is through Facebook Groups. Think of a Group as a group chat between your organization and your followers. You can share relevant information about events and campaigns, and your followers can respond and share their support.
Groups can make a massive difference to your organization’s impact on the platform because they overcome the issue of Facebook’s algorithm. The algorithm differentiates Facebook from other platforms because the posts aren’t shown chronologically. It prioritizes the posts that it thinks will be more interesting and relevant to you.
Group posts are helpful because the content will be relevant to those users within the group, and more likely to be seen due to this algorithm. Sadly, this means that your Facebook Page probably isn’t going to get much action. Having a Group not only prioritizes your position in the timeline, but it also encourages deeper connections with your followers. Groups can be public, private, or secret, so you can change how users engage with your Group depending on your organization.
Think of your Facebook Page as your welcome desk or bulletin board and Groups as an intimate gathering/conversation with all of your biggest supporters. Both are necessary but serve a different purpose.
Knowing the Tools of the Trade
Facebook has a variety of tools that make the user experience more streamlined and straightforward. Facebook’s Social Good and soon-to-be-launched Community Action are tools that will make the most significant difference in your organization’s social media strategy.
Social Good is made up of four smaller tools: Charitable Giving, Crisis Response, Health, and Mentorship. These tools make it easier for organizations like yours to connect to people in need and provide help faster than ever.
The Charitable Giving tools allow you, and those who support you, to host fundraisers within Facebook. The Crisis Response tools enable nonprofits to reach people in need after a crisis, such as a natural disaster. The Health tool was created to identify health emergencies and alert the right people when help is needed. And lastly, the Mentorship tool gives those in need of support a way to connect with experts who can help. Depending on the mission of your organization, we recommend signing up for the tools to help you make the greatest impact.
Another tool on the horizon for Facebook is called Community Action. This new tool will allow users to create petitions for causes that matter to them, while also notifying local politicians to streamline the action process. With Facebook’s broad reach, they plan on impacting more people than individual petition sites while also ensuring security and avoiding excessive controversy. There are positives and negatives with this tool, which varies based on the cause of your organization. But we recommend keeping this one in mind for the future. Your audience could be interested in petitions for change.
Driving Growth by Leveraging Facebook
So with 20.1 billion users, how do you find your audience in the first place?
It starts with the Facebook Pixel. If you have website visitors, then you already have an audience on Facebook. How may you ask? It’s pretty simple.
The Pixel is a piece of code for your website that lets you measure and build your audience. It tracks visitors on your website so you can retarget them on Facebook, allowing you to:
- build custom audiences
- generate advanced remarketing lists
- track performance through conversions
- unlock automated bidding options
- expand your audience with ‘lookalike audiences’
Facebook is absolutely a game-changer for nonprofits. With a massive user base and several tools to help you reach the right people, your organization shouldn’t waste any time.
Hopefully, we’ve inspired you with some new ideas for leveraging Facebook to multiply your impact through social media! Don’t forget to sign up for Facebook’s Groups, Social Good, Community Action, and the Pixel. As always, we’re here to help your organization change the world, so reach out with any questions.
