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[Year-End Fundraising] Using Social Media to Boost Year End Giving

Forget everything you’ve read and seen about Facebook “reach” falling off a cliff.

Yes, everyone’s Facebook “reach” dropped in December, however, early statistics are showing that while “reach” is down, “click-throughs” (engagement) are holding steady and may even be up a little. This data point is what’s important for year-end giving.

9 Ways Social Media Can Boost Year-End Giving

• The rule of thumb for posting on social media is to include a link back to your website 50% of the time. This week, we suggest that 75% to 100% of your posts contain a link back to your year-end donation page.

• Urgency works. Remind people that their 100% tax deductible gift has to be received by midnight December 31st.

• Double down on your urgency with a match campaign. Tell donors, if it’s true, that their donations will be matched until midnight December 31st.

• Post how the donor will make a difference, not their money. There may be multiple ways they impact your organization (clean air and clean water) and if so, turn this key message into several posts.

• Mix up using bit.ly links without a photo (just the status update with a link) and links with photos in your Facebook posts.

• We don’t recommend using memes for year end social media. There’s a time and place for memes and this isn’t it. However, we DO strongly recommend using printed signs or print on your images to increase visual exposure and click-throughs. This example from Best Friends Animal Society is perfection.

• Stay consistent with your year-end campaign theme and visuals. Don’t be concerned about repetition. Due to a drop in “reach” only about 9% of your audience will see any given post anyway, so keep with your theme and reword your call-to-action.

• Make sure your landing page reinforces your message and benefits of giving at year-end.

• Post about 2013 victories indirectly proving you are the right organization for your mission.

You’re in the thick of your year-end fundraising now. Go get ’em.

[Year-End Fundraising] Series

We’re running a series of strategies and tips you can put to use immediately to have your best online year-end fundraising campaign ever. You can see all the posts here:

• Your Campaign Brief
• Email Frequency and Cadence
• Messages, Powerful Structures, and Narrative Arcs, Oh My!
• Top Tips for Your Landing Page
• Light Boxes Work!
• List segmentation
• Using social media to boost your year-end revenue

• Split A/B testing – what’s important to test and how to test it