Create Greater Impact with Social Media in 2024

National newscaster Charity Digital presents insight from social media management platform Hootesuite on how to build an engaged community, be focused, and make successful use of artificial intelligence.

Social media can be a powerful communication tool for charities.

It can be used to raise awareness and funds, to better engage beneficiaries, as well as help charities reach a much wider audience. And it can do it much more quickly than other traditional methods.

But for charities large or small, it can be difficult to work through the world of social media, let alone get started on this type of digital platform.

Social media is always changing and is a landscape that continues to evolve; as it is shaped by the advances in how we work, what we think, and by the technology we use.

For those that do use it, over 70% of non-profit groups recognise it is challenging to keep up with new features being put in place and the best practices for whatever social media platform they use.

Social Media Strategies
The landscape on a charities’ chosen platform constantly changes, so it pays for web and content managers to work through this year being versatile as always, but with a sense of optimism and consistency.

People have shown they use social media to be entertained, but they also use it to mainly keep in touch with friends and family.

Whilst social media posts are a great opportunity to advertise, most of the time that’s the last thing visitors want to see as it can be alienating.

In the interest of just using social media to connect and communicate with others, managers could look to create content that is fun, educational, is inspirational, and upbeat:

Content that promotes a connection or the discovery of common experiences that any web visitor would consider “enjoyable” can establish stronger, longer-lasting relationships and can lead to profits better than any advertising campaign.

Whilst social media has this great potential to raise money for a charity, building a loyal audience could offer better opportunity for this to happen.

Social media offers a great environment to introduce and present a small charity to web visitors, motivating them to share the enthusiasm for the charity’s cause.

In doing so, charities can build connections with potential promoters, donors, and volunteers:

By charities using social media to create a sincere and compelling connection with a given audience, this can be more successful than simply focusing on raising money.

In terms of society’s technological timeline, publicly available generative artificial intelligence (AI) has not really been around for long; and whilst AI for social media posts aren’t always wrong(..!), charities need to proceed carefully.

For example, the views of younger audience (Gen-Z, Millennials, etc.) can be different to the views of older audience (Gen-X, Baby Boomers, etc.)

Humans still have that unique skill and position to plan, to edit and to refine content, keeping up brand standards, as well as have that human(e) touch to interact with their audience/s.

But machine systems can be used to process and brainstorm ideas, and even generate written first draft suggestions, which could help reduce staff workloads.

In the interest of increasing productivity whilst preserving a sense of authenticity; IF charities want to use AI, it is recommended that they prioritise which tasks should be left to people and which should be given to a machine generated system.

Newscaster Charity Digital explore these aspects and more in the guidance on how charities can make the most of social media this coming year.

With insight from social media management platform Hootesuite, they present approaches which can improve performance both online and in the long term, to help charitable causes succeed in today’s digital world.

To read the guidance, visit the Charity Digital website.

Source: mva.org.uk