When it comes to your nonprofit’s social media outreach, there’s nothing more powerful than a reliable ambassador. Your nonprofit can only reach so many social media users on your own, and it’s the nature of these platforms that you’ll need to find creative ways to amplify your voice.
Social media ambassadors do much of the heavy lifting of promoting your digital fundraising campaigns, sharing online petitions, and spreading the word about your message. With their valuable networks, your nonprofit can expand its reach and build clout online.
This is why giving your social media ambassadors the tools they need to do their jobs well is absolutely crucial. When your team lays the right groundwork, you can activate a whole community of dedicated, inspired ambassadors to amplify your voice online.
Not sure where to start? In this article, we’ll review some of our favorite ways to improve how your nonprofit engages with social media ambassadors, as well as offer up smart solutions for growing this effective community.
Whether your nonprofit is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or even LinkedIn, this guide will give you the expertise you need to strengthen ties with social media ambassadors. Read on to explore these essential strategies!
1. Embrace peer-to-peer fundraising.
One of the most effective ways to leverage your social media ambassadors is by empowering them with peer-to-peer fundraising solutions.
Peer-to-peer fundraising thrives on social sites. In this unique fundraising strategy, nonprofits call on supporters to set up fundraising pages on behalf of their cause. Then, these volunteer fundraisers share the pages with their personal networks and encourage them to become donors.
This strategy is a great fit for dedicated social media ambassadors because peer-to-peer fundraising plays to their strengths. These individuals already know how to command an online audience, so they’ll be excited to get in on the peer-to-peer fundraising action.
Even better, when your nonprofit has a robust peer-to-peer fundraising strategy in place, you can start connecting with new social media ambassadors.
Bonus tip! Think your team is ready to embrace peer-to-peer fundraising? Brush up on these donation page design tips to boost the results of your next campaign. A well-designed donation page can do wonders for your fundraising ROI.
2. Call on advocates with online petition forms.
Another great way to excite social media ambassadors is to give them the tools to spread your message online. For advocacy organizations, this makes online petitions a perfect fit!
Online petitions are similar to donation forms, except instead of making a gift you simply share your digital signature. Petitions like these can make a huge difference when lobbying for change and have the capacity to spread far and wide over the internet with the help of your ambassadors.
When designing your online petitions, keep some of these best practices in mind to capture the hearts of your social media advocates:
- Customize your form with evocative imagery, like photos of your constituents or videos of your team members at work.
- Always include a call to action on your form that uses direct, commanding language, like “Save the Rainforest!” or “Help a Child in Need!”
- Remember to frequently refresh your forms. Create new forms for each of your advocacy campaigns so individuals don’t feel like they’ve already given their signature.
Bonus tip! Are you looking for more ways to excite your social media ambassadors? A fundraising consultant could be the key to help. Check out this Averill Fundraising Solutions article on fundraising consultant fees to see how much this investment might cost.
3. Make meaningful connections with social media ambassadors.
Activating your social media ambassadors isn’t just about giving them the right tools and content they need to amplify the voice of your cause. It’s also about making real connections with them and bringing them into the fold of your organization. You want these social media ambassadors to feel like meaningful members of your team, because that’s exactly what they are!
The best way to achieve this is to frequently interact with them on your main social sites. You can do so by:
- Posting photos and videos and tagging ambassadors to start conversations about your nonprofit’s latest actions and upcoming events.
- Boosting their online presence by periodically sharing posts by ambassadors that relate back to your organization.
- Directly asking certain social media ambassadors to share their thoughts on your cause as valued supporters so your team can hone its engagement strategy.
When your nonprofit frequently engages with social media ambassadors outside of directly asking them to make gifts or share your forms, these individuals will feel a greater connection to your organization and will be more inclined to stay active with your cause.
4. Learn from your supporter data.
All too often, nonprofits struggle to effectively put their supporter data to work for them. When it comes to activating social media ambassadors, smart data can be a truly useful tool.
Just as you would for donor data, be sure to track social media ambassador data in your nonprofit’s database software. Build robust supporter profiles and track their actions to get a better sense of what excites them and how they leverage social media.
Be sure to tailor your constituent relationship management software to address the unique needs of your cause. For example, if the bulk of your peer-to-peer fundraising pages are spread on Facebook, track Facebook engagement and closely monitor ambassadors who prefer that site.
Above all, be sure that your supporter data is kept up-to-date and clean so you can gain accurate insights about your community. Your software should continuously update itself and include deduplication features to flag excess data.
5. Give ambassadors the tools they need to spread your message.
Social media ambassadors are such an integral part of your nonprofit’s success because they really know their stuff when it comes to sharing your message and reaching wide audiences.
However, without the right promotional tools, these important supporters won’t be able to maximize their online voices. To get more from your social media ambassadors, be sure to offer them the right solutions to get the word out about your cause.
Your team can try some of these methods to help ambassadors reach more individuals online:
- Make your online forms (like donation pages and electronic petitions) easily shareable with a link that includes your organization’s name.
- Include social sharing buttons on content that help facilitate the spread of your content online. Sharing should be as simple as making a few clicks.
- Offer social media post templates that give ambassadors a basic script to follow when sharing your content with their networks.
Bonus tip! Looking for smart social media software to help boost the impact of your ambassadors? Check out Salsa’s guide to the top nonprofit social media tools to get inspired.
6. Put smartphone users at the heart of your efforts.
These days, a vast proportion of your nonprofit’s online supporters will be interacting with your cause through their smartphones, and not via desktop devices. This is doubly true for your social media ambassadors, who are more likely to be using smartphones or tablets when using social sites. For this reason, it’s essential that your nonprofit optimizes and markets the ambassador experience with smart device users in mind.
One great way to do so is to ensure that all of your online forms, including petitions and giving forms, are mobile responsive. This means they’ll display seamlessly on any screen, regardless of the device used to access it.
Additionally, pay special attention to social media traffic on sites like Twitter and Instagram, which garner the vast majority of their users through smartphone apps. Ambassadors are less likely to share your content if it’s not optimized for the device they use on these apps.
Finally, the best way to boost engagement with smartphone users is to keep your social media presence active and engaging. Post regularly throughout the day to give ambassadors ample opportunity to interact with your content (and to mitigate the risk of them missing it in their newsfeed).
7. Show ambassadors how much their support means.
Finally, the best way to keep your social media ambassadors engaged with your organization is to always show them how meaningful their support is to your cause.
Just as you thank supporters as a prospect development strategy, so too should you extend your appreciation to your social media ambassadors when they advocate on behalf of your cause. This way, they’ll be more excited to continue sharing your message online.
Your team can show ambassadors love by:
- Holding in-person and online appreciations events
- Posting thank-you videos and images
- Offering networking events among your ambassador community
- Awarding high-achieving ambassadors special prizes
- Sending formal thank-you letters to ambassadors at the end of a campaign
When looking to retain ambassadors, the same rules apply as for donor retention. Simply put, always place your appreciation at the forefront of your relationships with ambassadors. Never let them feel taken for granted!
With a robust community of social media ambassadors on your side, there’s no limit to how far your nonprofit can spread its message across social media sites.
Now that you know our top strategies, your nonprofit is ready to get started making better connections with these coveted supporters!