How To Properly Leverage Social Media for your Next Fundraising Event

As the end of the year is approaching many nonprofit organizations are going to be holding end of the year fundraisers or galas. Before you hold your event it is important you know how to leverage all aspects of social media to make your fundraising event successful, and help get the word out about your organization and your mission.

The first thing you need to do is create a content/communication calendar for the fundraising event. This calendar will tell you what needs to be done each day leading up to the event. The marketing calendar should include where the item is to be posted, by who and what time of the day it is to be posted. What time of the day it is posted is crucial, because it can determine if your marketing material is going to be opened or not. The best time to email people is from 9-11am Tuesday-Thursday or 2pm. The worst times are Monday mornings and Friday afternoons.

After you have your marketing calendar established the next step is to create an event registration page. Some key points of an effective registration page are:

• Title: Be as specific as possible so people know what type of event it is
• Keywords: Include keywords in the title or summary of the event so it can increase your Google search
• Have various types of tickets available that include different incentives. i.e VIP, Early Bird
• Have a Share button available: Having a Share button allows attendees to promote that they are attending on various social media networks

Once your calendar and event registration page is setup you are ready to start promoting your event on various social media outlets. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have different best practices on promoting your event. The first outlet we suggest you to promote on is Facebook. We suggest posting on Facebook 1-2 times a day and creating a Facebook event page to promote your event. Next, with Twitter you should be posting 6-7 times a day. Twitter is a lot more interactive then Facebook is, therefore the more you post on your page the more you will stay relevant with followers. Lastly on LinkedIn you should be posting your event to followers and groups that are relevant to your organization or the event you are holding. You should also be posting your event to any industry groups you participate in over LinkedIn. Social media is very complex with how all the different networks have different best practices. However, if you follow the best practices discussed above you will have a great social media strategy for promoting your event.

Lastly, you need to utilize social media for post-event activities. After your event has been completed send out a survey to attendees on their experience and promote it over social media. Also, sharing a recap blog post, and pictures of the event over social media is a good way to remain relevant to attendees.

Social media marketing is an excellent free resource when trying to promote a fundraising event/gala, and is not used nearly enough by nonprofit organizations.