 Hi, everyone. Just before we get started, I just wanted to make sure that you can all see me and hear me. You should see the title slide up on your screen, and you should be able to hear me talking, hopefully. So if you are able to see the screen and hear me talk, if you could just let me know, yay or nay in the questions box, it would be really helpful for me. All right. Awesome. So we'll just give everybody a few more minutes to filter in, and then we will go ahead and get started. Okay, it looks like one person can't see me, so let me just see it. Well, can you see my slide? It should say social media strategy for Giving Tuesday. It looks like the consensus is that most people can see me. So I will just operate under that assumption, and it will be recorded. So if for whatever reason you can't fully see my screen, we'll just go ahead and get you the recording as well. All right. Hello again, everyone, and thanks for signing up for our webinar on social media strategy for Giving Tuesday. My name is Linda Gerhardt, and I'm a community engagement specialist here at Mighty Cause. My job title is a little bit vague, but just to give you some details about why I am hosting this webinar, my background is in nonprofit communications. And before coming to Mighty Cause, I helped manage online communities for nonprofit organizations. Now I also manage Mighty Cause as digital marketing. So I have a lot of experience in social media and know how to use it for fundraising purposes. I also run our blog, Mighty Blog. And if you read our content regularly, you may recognize me from there. Nonprofit communications are sort of a geeky passion of mine, and I hope on this webinar you'll learn some new tricks and helpful hints for Giving Tuesday. Just as a bit of housekeeping before we get started, I'll be taking questions at the end of the presentation. So if you think of anything you want to ask while I'm presenting, just type it into the questions box of your go-to webinar panel, and we'll make sure to get to it after I'm done presenting all of the slides. Okay. So before we get into the main meat of this webinar, we need to just go over some Giving Tuesday basics so that everybody is on the same page. Giving Tuesday is a global event that was started by the 92nd Street Y in partnership with the United Nations Foundation, and it's been around since 2012. Mighty Cause hosts our own Giving Tuesday event on our platform that is a structured giving event. We provide free training like this webinar, as well as free resources like eBooks and blog posts to help you with strategy so you can make the most out of your participation in Giving Tuesday. We also provide prizes for the event, which we'll be talking about in a few slides. And as if that weren't enough, we also offer platform fee-free fundraising, which I dare you to say three times fast. And how that works is that donors have the option of covering platform fees for you when they check out, as they always do on Mighty Cause. But on Giving Tuesday, if they opt not to cover those fees, we take care of it for you. That means your nonprofit won't see any platform fees on your disbursement, but just as a note in the interest of transparency, credit card processing fees still apply, and those are 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction. And unfortunately, we can't waive those because Mighty Cause does not keep that money. The last big benefit to hosting your Giving Tuesday campaign on Mighty Cause is that you'll get access to our premium fundraising tools for free throughout the event. If you're registered already, we'll be turning those tools on for you very soon so you can start making use of them. As for why this is such a huge perk, we'll talk more about the cool things you can do with some of those tools related to social media in this webinar. Hosting your campaign on Mighty Cause is super easy. It entails just going to givingtuesday.mightycause.com and clicking the big register button. The form is streamlined this year, so signing up is really as easy as clicking a few buttons and filling out a few fields. Then you update your Mighty Cause page and create your campaign. Early donations start on November 13th, which is two weeks before the big day, so if you register and start planning now, you'll have plenty of time to run an awesome, solid campaign. And just as a reminder, the big day is November 27th. On Mighty Cause, this is a 27-hour event, so it starts on midnight Eastern time on the 27th and ends at midnight Pacific time on the 28th, so that everyone gets an equal amount of time to fundraise no matter which coast you're on or if you're in the middle of the country and the mountains. So because you all took the step to sign up for this webinar, you'll get an exclusive sneak peek at the prizes, which haven't officially been announced yet. We'll have two leaderboards, one for small nonprofits and one for large nonprofits, so that the competition is fair. The leaderboards are ranking nonprofits based on the most dollars raised, and for the top spot on each leader board, we're awarding $1,000. The second runner-up or the second place gets $250, and what's really cool about this year is that we'll be giving away cash prizes every hour of the event, so there are lots of chances to win, and pretty much every nonprofit that participates has a shot at winning some extra cash. This is by no means a comprehensive list of prizes, it's just a little teaser, so keep an eye on your inbox for the full prize announcement with all of the chances to win. And if you haven't registered yet, now that you know a little bit about the money that's going to be available, it's a great time to get signed up. And before we dig in, I just want to talk a little bit about why social media is so important on Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is a day that was created for the social media age. It was designed for social media and it is fueled primarily by social media. The fact is that it's about as social media is reflected at the most basic level by the fact that the event name has a hashtag in it. It's about social media, it's about being seen and heard and encouraging online philanthropy, so since social media is at the heart of what Giving Tuesday really is, it's vital that nonprofits understand how to use social media well in order to be successful on this day. And with that, we'll move on to the main presentation. And we'll get into the nitty gritty of various social media platforms, but first I want to talk about workflow for social media at your nonprofit. So you may have come to this webinar for social media tips and perhaps wondering to yourself why I'm not talking about how to target and add on Facebook right now, but beyond all of that stuff, beyond all the little stuff on social media that helps you perform better is your internal workflow. That's really at the center of your success. A nonprofit that uses social media successfully is coordinated internally and you can usually tell how coordinated a nonprofit is just by looking at their social media feed and having a strong workflow will help you be more efficient. Since with most nonprofits and fundraising campaigns in general, there's a lot of moving parts and anywhere you can streamline and maximize your efficiency is really important. You can also keep your staff and volunteers from duplicating efforts or having too many people working on the same thing so that you can keep your messaging focused and consistent across all of your channels. You can also reduce errors that can happen really easily on a busy fundraising day like giving Tuesday and reduce gaps like two staff members posting on social media at the same time or even posting conflicting things. One of the biggest keys to getting your internal workflow under control is appointing a social media manager. If you have someone who normally manages your social media or if you even have a staff member who has that title, it's an obvious choice but if like a lot of nonprofits you have several people working on your social media accounts or just kind of flitting in and out to post about certain parts of your work, it's really important to appoint one person to manage all of that even if it's just for the duration of the campaign and not a permanent position. Your social media manager will coordinate posts, make sure that your social media plan is integrated with your overall communications plan for the day and make sure that everything lines up with what you're saying. So when you're saying something in an email or at an event, for instance, they'll make sure that the social media reflects that and everything's on track for the day. And next you'll want to identify your team for a lot of nonprofits that may be one or two people but it can also include volunteers who might help with everything from writing copy to taking photos or even putting together a video. So when you're identifying your team, don't leave volunteers out of that equation because they can be a huge help on social media. Then you and your team will create a social media plan which will include where you're posting, how often you're posting key pieces of content you want to share and also coordinating any paid advertising efforts and coming up with a proposed budget for ads and boosted posts. And we'll talk a little bit more about social media planning in the next section of the presentation. One thing I also highly recommend is sketching out an editing process because although social media is a lot more informal than other venues, you still want to put your best foot forward and make sure that all of your posts are copy edited, have their links checked and so on. So I also just really recommend having that process in place so you can check each other. And I also recommend setting up regular meetings with your team so you can brainstorm ideas, talk through any issues that pop up and are in sync with each other for Giving Tuesday. All right, so now we'll move into social media planning. The first step and this is really just rolled into your general campaign planning is finding your angle for promoting your nonprofit on Giving Tuesday. While general pleas for help can work, it's best to have a focus like a specific program or initiative or even just a thematic focus on one thing and then coming up with a marketing hook. Your hook is basically answering why should people care? What sets you apart? What is the story you're telling about your nonprofit? Do you have a tagline? One good example of a marketing hook is Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation's 2017 campaign on Giving Tuesday. It was a general appeal, but it had a great hook and tagline. Their campaign, which you can see screen-shotted here on this slide, was all about saying yes. They asked their supporters to say yes, help them say yes to helping more animals. And it worked because their supporters ultimately donated to their work because they want to see them help animals. So the theme of saying yes to more animals really resonated with them. And the proof was really in the pudding because Lost Dog and Cat raised over $47,000, which is well past their initial goal of $30,000. So think about how you can make your campaign resonate with donors and how you can compel them to donate. Step two is identifying your needs. So think through the things you'll need to do well on social media. One thing you're going to need most definitely is images. So figure out what your needs are based on your campaign's marketing hook, and then just make that happen. So that may entail an actual photo shoot with a volunteer photographer, but it can also just mean collecting the images that you already have at your nonprofit into one place. And one tip I have here is to ask your staff. I worked at a local animal shelter here in Virginia, and the staff were a photo goldmine. They had tons of pictures and videos of the animals in the shelter just on their phones. And when they sent them to me, I had everything I needed to run a solid fundraising campaign. So make sure to outsource as much as you can to your staff because they may already have great assets that you can use just sitting on their smartphones. You'll also want to consider a video because video is a very effective tool on social media. So think about whether you'll want a slick video with some production values, or again just pull together the videos that are sitting on people's smartphones and work with those. Both can be equally effective, and you can also elevate and splice together the random smartphone videos you have into something more cohesive using free editing tools like the ones on YouTube or Kizoa or the multitude of free video editing apps that are available. Something to think about as well as any testimonials or quotes you want for your campaign, which is important because if you're focusing on the personal effect on your work and the people you serve and the impact you've had on lives, these things can take a little time to coordinate since you'll need to do outreach and wait for people's responses. So think about the needs you have there and start doing that outreach early. And lastly, think about graphic design. You may not need anything at all, but you may want to have some images on hand like infographics or a tweaked logo for Giving Tuesday. So just think about those needs and come up with a plan to get them ready for the big day. Again, you don't need to hire a real graphic designer if you don't want to or don't have the budget for that, but you can assign a staff member to put some stuff together for you in a program like Canva, which is easy to use, is free, and doesn't need any special graphic design knowledge or training. The last step of planning is really just putting all of these different things into motion. So start scheduling posts. We'll talk a lot more about scheduling later on in the presentation, but basically scheduling your key content ahead of time will help you make sure that your social media efforts are tied into your other efforts like emails and you have a cohesive presence and plan for Giving Tuesday. Draft your posts with the scheduling tools that are available, and again, we'll talk about those a little bit more and edit them. You should be testing links to make sure they work, looking at images to make sure that they display how you want, and copy editing to make sure that no embarrassing typos get posted on Giving Tuesday. I generally recommend as a best practice having two pairs of eyes on each post or tweet, just so you can double check yourself and ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. And now we're going to move into some best practices for social media. So the biggest thing I can recommend to nonprofits is to go where your audience is. That'll be different for every nonprofit based on your supporters and the kind of work you do, but focus on platforms where your audience is actually paying attention. Take a look at where you have the most followers so you can make sure that your efforts aren't wasted. You don't need to devote equal time and attention to all platforms, especially if your Twitter following outpaces your Instagram following by thousands of people. And as an offshoot of that, Giving Tuesday is really not the best time to experiment with new platforms. There are a bunch of things you can try throughout the year, but Giving Tuesday is high stakes and your time is limited. So if you've never used Snapchat, you don't need to use Snapchat on Giving Tuesday or waste your time trying to figure out how to use Pinterest if you don't have much of a presence there throughout the rest of the year. It's totally okay. And in fact, I 100% recommend that you stay in your comfort zone on Giving Tuesday instead of putting lots of effort and time into areas where you're not really guaranteed to pay off. Another best practice is to utilize volunteers, especially if you're small and you have limited resources, volunteers can be a godsend. And sometimes nonprofits can limit volunteers to certain roles or are worried about giving them access on social media. But there are a lot of people who work in marketing and manage online communities for a living and they have great skills and knowledge they can offer you. So ask for their help. You can ask on social media through email or even post volunteer opportunities with the call to action tool on Mighty Cause, which is a premium feature you all have access to once you register. They can also help you produce content like video graphics, they can write copy for you, and they can even just help with editing and testing links. So definitely make sure you make use of volunteers on Giving Tuesday. So one best practice that I recommend utilizing for social media year round is scheduling. Pretty much all platforms have a way for you to schedule and free tools for you to do that as well. Use Facebook's publishing tools, which everyone with a Facebook page has access to, and use Tweet Deck, which is a free Twitter product that all Twitter users have access to. Programs like Buffer and Hootsuite, which are paid programs that require a subscription, can also be a huge help, especially with Instagram, which we'll talk about a little bit later. Scheduling ahead of time will help you integrate your social media with your larger larger promotional plan, and you can optimize your posts to win golden tickets and power hours. So if somebody forgets that there's a power hour happening at two o'clock, it doesn't matter because you've already scheduled that post and it's just going to fire automatically. So these tools are available and it's a best practice to make use of them. I recommend following Mighty Cause on social media, not just because I want to promote our own company, but because we're going to be sharing a lot of tips and resources on social media, as well as important announcements. So it's a good idea just to follow us there so you can stay on top of what's happening at Mighty Cause related to Giving Tuesday. So on Facebook and Twitter, we're just Mighty Cause and you can find us on Instagram as Mighty App. So lastly, we recommend using hashtags on Giving Tuesday. The name of the event itself is a hashtag, so I just want to go briefly into how hashtags work, and I apologize if this is review for some of you. Basically, the hashtag is just a pound sign that makes any word you type after the hashtag searchable, which connects your posts to other posts and other users that either use or have an interest in that same hashtag. They really rose to prominence on Twitter, but now pretty much all social media platforms utilize hashtags. So Giving Tuesday is a hashtag, just the name of the event itself, and I always end up fielding a lot of questions about this, but Giving Tuesday is not two words. It is hashtag Giving Tuesday run together because when you enter a space, the hashtag stops. So if you were to post something with hashtag giving space Tuesday, you basically just posted something with hashtag giving, and the Tuesday was not included, so people won't be able to see your posts if they're following the Giving Tuesday hashtag. This hashtag, the event name, applies to the overall effort. On November 27th, the global event, not specifically Giving Tuesday on Mighty Cause or any other platform. If you want to reference that you're participating in Giving Tuesday on Mighty Cause, use the hashtag Mighty Tuesday. We'll be following that hashtag to see the conversation about Giving Tuesday on our platform during the event and leading up to it, and we'll also be looking for an opportunity to give a boost to people who are using that hashtag. And lastly, we recommend tagging us on social media because we are always happy to help you out by giving you a retweet or a share. With that, we'll move on to some platform specific tips. On this webinar, I just want to note that I am sticking to the Big Three, which are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, because if we discussed every platform, we'd be here all day, and frankly, these are the platforms that nonprofits use most prolifically, since there aren't many nonprofits making use of something like Mastodon. So we'll just start out with Facebook. Facebook had a golden age where it was basically free democratized marketing for nonprofits back from about 2010 to 2014 or so, but it's changed a lot since then, and it's now got some specific challenges for nonprofits. First is the problem of decreased reach on Facebook, which is something nonprofits and for-profit companies have been noticing for a few years now and has really only gotten worse. Last year, Facebook made some significant changes to their algorithm that prioritized family members and friends and people's feeds, and they made even more changes earlier this year that make conversation and interaction an important factor in whether Facebook shows a particular post to a particular user. So this is a great feature for users who want to hear more from their family and friends, but it does have some consequences for nonprofits that are using Facebook pages to connect with supporters. They also have some new advertising rules, which are basically a result of what happened during the election. So their advertising guidelines have gotten more strict, and you'll find that if you skate the edge of those rules, your boosted post or your ad might get flagged a lot more easily because they are paying a lot more attention. This might not be a huge deal for like a food bank, but for nonprofits whose work is more political based, it can be a huge barrier to getting your ads through the review process. As a result of Cambridge Analytica and the election, users are also generally just a bit more wary of Facebook, even if they use it, and filtering to other platforms, but also cautious about things like clicking links and making donations through Facebook. Also, this is a big one. Facebook ruled out their own fundraising tools, which compete with Mighty Cause and other platforms, and they market these tools pretty aggressively. So you've all probably noticed at this point, if you post something with the words nonprofit or charity or donate in it, you might see a prompt to start a fundraiser on Facebook. They also market pretty heavily to users having birthdays, asking them to fundraise for charity for their birthday, and really all is fair and love and war and marketing, but it does cause confusion when your nonprofit has chosen another platform like Mighty Cause for fundraising, and we've even seen it cause confusion for donors who might accidentally donate through Facebook when they meant to donate on Mighty Cause. All right. So the good news is that there are workarounds for nearly every challenge we just discussed. The first tip for Facebook is to post algorithm friendly content. Now, it's worth noting that nobody really knows how Facebook's algorithm works because it's ever-changing, and to some degree, it's unique to each user based on how they use Facebook. So there really aren't any hard and fast like hacks that you can use to increase your reach, but we do know that there are some kinds of content that perform a little bit better on Facebook. Facebook Live is a great way to be seen on Facebook because all of your followers who have not yet turned off Facebook Live notifications will get a notification letting them know that you're live, which will prompt them to view your live video. Facebook stories work a lot like this, and if you haven't used them much or have never posted a Facebook story, Facebook will notify your followers that you've posted a story. And as a bonus, the stories are at the top of people's feeds on mobile and at the top right on desktop. So stories are given a prominent position on the page. Some old stand-byes like native video, meaning video files that have been directly uploaded into Facebook, and of course images do well. And some marketers are noticing that long text posts, which were once a total taboo and something you should never ever do, are actually seeing better results, largely because people need to click on the Read More button to keep reading your post, which means that people interact with it. So that can be something to experiment with leading up to Giving Tuesday and just see how that affects your reach in your post interactions. Tip two is to boost posts, target them well, and plan ahead. So obviously Facebook is a for-profit company, and they like when you give them money. Not only does an ad or a boost help that post reach more people, it also usually means that you're rewarded with reach for subsequent posts when you spend a little bit of money. So come up with a budget, and it doesn't need to be much. It can be a boost of $10 or $15 for a key piece of content, but consider asking the powers that be at your nonprofit for a little bit of advertising money. Now, I've had a lot of people report to me that they have boosted posts, but they didn't see great results or got clicks from people across the country, and the reason for that is that they were not targeting these boosts properly. If you don't give Facebook information about who you want to see your ad or your boosted post, it'll just kind of blast it out. So play around with Facebook's targeting tools and make sure that if you have a little bit of money to spend on an ad or a boost, that you're at least having it seen by the right people. If you do work locally, you can restrict your ad to a geographic location. And if you're not sure, you can always just boost it to your followers, which is a pretty safe move, and will help your ad or post be seen by the right people, since the people that follow you are likely in your service area anyway. I recommend giving yourself a little bit of extra time to set these up, because you may find that the review process takes a little longer or your posts might get flagged, and obviously you don't want that to happen on a high stakes day like giving Tuesday, so give yourself some extra time. Targeting by certain demographic information like political affiliation can get your ads caught up in the review process or flagged and taken down. So steer clear of that and stick to audiences created by location, interests, and look-alike audiences. Tip three is to use Facebook if you have followers there. There's been a lot of press about Facebook and a lot of buzz in the marketing community that Facebook is dead, but the data doesn't really bear that out. People are still on Facebook, people are still checking their news feeds. And while there's been a very slight drop in users from 2017 to 2018, it's still got millions more active users than literally any other platform. 1.15 billion people still log on to Facebook every single day. And just to put that in perspective, that's more than every single person in the United States. So Facebook is far from dead. There's some data on this issue on our slide, but one thing that I think is interesting is that some of Facebook's most active users, which are women 35 and above, are also the nonprofit sector's most engaged demographic. Although, of course, that can vary based on your nonprofit, but that's just a general statistic. So it's still a great resource for nonprofits. Don't jump ship just because you heard some bad things about it. People are still there. They're still paying attention and they're still making donations and following links on Facebook. So the next tip is to avoid the donate button. And the reason for that is that the donate button forces your donors to donate through Facebook instead of your chosen platform. So please refrain from adding that button to boosted posts or ads and make it clear to your followers that they should donate through Mighty Cause because it will help you win prizes. If they donate through Facebook, we don't track it. It's not counted for our giving event and it won't help you win prizes. So they need to donate on Mighty Cause in order to win prizes. So we have no record of donations that occur outside of Facebook or outside of Mighty Cause and that could cost you in powder hours affect your position on the leaderboard. On this subject, if there is a donation that you cannot find in your donation report on Mighty Cause, it's often because it was accidentally made on Facebook. So you can definitely contact our support team for help. But that's something we're seeing happen more and more often, unfortunately. So it's good to check the donor's receipt if they can provide it to you just to figure out whether or not they made their donation on Mighty Cause. Some marketers have noticed that reaches sometimes seemingly hindered when you link out to a competitor like Mighty Cause or YouTube. So while this isn't verified information, it's more just anecdotal. You can also try putting links and comments instead of the post itself to see if that might help you get around this issue if it's happening to you. If you're noticing that posts that link out to Mighty Cause are getting a little bit less reach. You can experiment leading up to the event to see if this will help. Our last tip for Facebook is to make use of some of the new tools they have available for pages. It used to be that you could just post images and videos and words and that was more or less it. But now you have lots of options and Facebook rewards pages for using them. One thing to try is polls, which you can insert gifts into, which is fun. They're interactive by nature and Facebook is looking for posts that get interactions. Adding notes, lists, feelings, and activities. Make use of these newer tools and may help you reach more people or even just find new creative ways to talk about your campaign. One button to be aware of is the support non-profit button, since that is the button that will compel people to donate through Facebook instead of your chosen platform. So that is the one feature you will want to avoid using. All right. And now we will move into tips for Twitter. So Twitter is a platform that's also been getting some media attention lately. And it's one that more and more nonprofits are using as well. The benefits of Twitter are that it's all about interaction and conversation. Whereas platforms like Facebook and Instagram are more about talking to an audience, Twitter is really about talking with them. One cool change that's not new but is nevertheless exciting is that they've done away with the 140 character limit. So you now have 280 and links and images do not count towards your limit anymore. So it's a lot easier to say what you want to stay without having to do gymnastics around a character limit. It's always super busy on Giving Tuesday. There's lots of people getting involved and having conversations, and that's part of how it can help you expand your reach on Giving Tuesday. We already mentioned this in an earlier slide, but my first tip is making use of Tweetdeck. It's a free Twitter product that allows you to do a lot from scheduling tweets, monitoring your mentions, and monitoring any hashtags so that that are of interest to you like Giving Tuesday or like Mighty Tuesday, so that you can get in on the conversation and start interacting with users. It's at tweetdeck.twitter.com and you just use your Twitter login credentials to sign in. It's a really great tool. It's one that I use here, and on Giving Tuesday, your social media manager can just sort of have this open. So you don't miss anything happening on Twitter. You can retweet. You can like tweets and just get involved in that online conversation. And on that note, the next tip for Twitter is making smart use of hashtags. You'll want to use the event name in Mighty Tuesday, but if you can use other hashtags related to your work, like hashtag wildlife or hashtag stop hunger and so on to help your tweets be found by others interested in work like yours. Pay attention to any trending hashtags and participate in them with the caveat that you should read the threads to understand what the hashtag is all about before jumping in. We've all heard horror stories about companies jumping into a trending hashtag about something serious and trying to use that hashtag to sell hamburgers or something. So don't be that nonprofit that goes viral for all the wrong reasons. Just a quick once over should give you an idea of whether or not a trending hashtag is appropriate for your nonprofit. And you can see what's trending when you log into Twitter. They're on the right side of your home screen. Posts with hashtags get around 60% more engagement than those without. So if Twitter is part of your social media strategy, it's in your best interest to utilize hashtags and utilize them smartly. Just like Facebook, certain types of content on Twitter will help you stand out in people's feeds. So diversify the type of content you share. You can post images, use videos, and go live, which will result in those notifications to your followers. One little thing that can help and sounds kind of silly is using emojis and posts. Just make sure that you're using them carefully and understand the meaning of the emoji before using it. For instance, the peach emoji might seem like a grand idea for a food bank from Georgia, but you should also know that it's got a dual meaning, one being an actual peach and the other one being a butt. So if you aren't sure, check before tweeting. But these can help draw the eye to your posts and help you get more interaction. One last little tip for Twitter is that you can find shortened URLs for Twitter right on Mighty Cause. So to get one, just go to the page you want to share, click the Twitter icon and copy the link or post from there if you have your Twitter account connected. This eliminates the service to run every link you want to share through a service like Bitly. All right, next up is Instagram. Instagram is an image-based social media platform. And while I love Instagram, and it's really awesome for things like sharing outfit of the day pictures and pictures of my cat, it's a platform a lot of nonprofits have really struggled to figure out how to use well, because it's got some specific challenges. The biggest challenge is that you can't post live links in your posts, and users also can't copy and paste them from posts in the app. So that's a little bit of a wrinkle. You also can't easily schedule posts like you can on Facebook and Twitter, which can make managing Instagram a little bit tougher. There's also no desktop API you can post on. You can basically view and reply to posts and like posts on Instagram on a desktop, but everything else has to be done in-app, which means that you have to have the app on your personal phone while logged into Instagram, along with any images or videos you want to share, which for some people is a little too close to comfort to your personal Instagram and your phone, because nobody wants to be the person who accidentally posts a selfie to your nonprofits page. So these things can make Instagram a little bit more challenging for nonprofits. And there's also a little bit of a generation gap. Instagram users tend to skew a little younger on average than Facebook users, for instance. Twitter kind of covers every demographic. And nonprofit donors tend to skew a little bit older. So there's some question that nonprofits have about whether Instagram is the right place for a nonprofit to find its audience. But the good news is that Instagram has plenty of benefits for nonprofits. Number one, it is growing fast as a platform and has 1 billion active users every month. So people are using Instagram more and more, and there are more opportunities to be seen and connect with the public. And since Instagram is owned by Facebook, a lot of the tools you want, especially advertising tools, are available through Facebook as well. Many you can set up an Instagram ad through Facebook's API using their targeting tools that you've saved from your saved audiences. It's also made for visual storytelling. So it's a place where you can really draw people in and build emotional connections with images and video. Lastly, the coveted millennial audience is using Instagram. And they're getting older and wielding more spending power every year. So even though they're also on Facebook and Twitter and other platforms, you can start cultivating the next generation of donors to your nonprofit through Instagram. So the first step I have for Instagram is to convert your account from a user account into a business account. And the reason you should do this is because business accounts get features that regular user accounts don't. Those include contact buttons and Instagram insights. You can also connect your Instagram business account to your Facebook business account. To convert your profile, it has to be public. It must be public. And you just sign up for a business account. Convert an existing account and set up your business profile, which involves identifying your information. So you just follow that click path on the slide and you can easily convert your Instagram account to a business account. The next tip is sticking the link to your Mighty Cause page in your bio. You cannot post live links in your posts, but you can post them in your bio, which allows users to get to the page you want them to visit very easily. Now, this does for sure add an extra step for them. But Instagram users are used to this. It's par for the course. It's how you have to get to links on Instagram. So if you want to get a link out to your users, to your supporters, putting it in your bio is a lot more effective than putting it in the text of a post because in the app, you can't copy and paste URL. So just put the link there and in your post mention that they can visit your page to support you by clicking on the link to your in your bio. Okay. So one of the coolest things about Instagram is stories. Instagram stories were developed in response to the popularity of Snapchat and they function similarly. These are live for 24 hours and then they disappear unless you choose to add them to your profile as a highlight or you cross post whatever the content is to your actual feed. The great thing about them is that their real time Instagram like Facebook uses an algorithm. So sometimes users will see posts a few days after they were actually posted, which really doesn't help you out on days like giving Tuesday where you want them to see them when you post them. Any app stories from accounts people follow are listed at the top of their feed. So they're super visible and easy for users to access as an added bonus. If you've never posted an Instagram story or haven't posted one in a while, your followers will get a notification that you posted a story, which is a huge boost. If you do a live story, people will also be notified that you're live. There's a lot of fun stuff you can do with Instagram stories. You can post text and photos and videos, but you can also use filters, use boomerang to make short mini videos, which is a cool way to showcase short events like throwing confetti, jumping, and so on. One of my favorites is Super Zoom, which zooms in and adds music and effects. And you really just have to experiment with Super Zoom to see what it can do, but it's definitely a way to bump up the humor and cute factor of your posts. You can also do face filters if you want to have someone from your organization talking about your campaign with dog ears and a dog nose, which you may want to do if you're into that sort of thing. There's also gifts and stickers and all sorts of fun stuff you can add into your stories. And one last thing they just rolled out recently was the ability to have people ask you questions, which you answer in subsequent stories. Also, just as a note, if you have 10,000 followers or more, you can add links into stories that users can access by swiping up in the story. That's a pretty high bar if you're not Chrissy Teigen or a Kardashian, but it's there. That is how they work. So I just wanted to make sure I mentioned it. My next tip is about finding inspiration for Instagram, because if you want to do well, but are sort of struggling to figure out how to utilize Instagram, it helps to look at nonprofits who are using it really well. Look for large nonprofits in your area of work. Like if you're an animal shelter, you may want to look to the ASPCA or the Humane Society of the United States Instagrams. Or if you run a food bank, check out what Feeding America is doing. And just make note of the things that they're doing. What kinds of content are they posting? What hashtags are they using? These larger nonprofits have huge teams of people managing their social media. So you can easily get some ideas for how to use Instagram from these big dogs who are doing it so well. One nonprofit that always does an awesome job on Instagram is Charity Water. They kind of do everything really well. So they're worth checking out if you're curious about what other nonprofits are doing that's being effective for them, because they have definitely figured out how to harness the power of Instagram. So hashtags are a big deal on Instagram. And Instagram actually lets users follow hashtags, which allows them to put posts with a particular hashtag in their feeds. So it can be a huge boost to you if you learn to use hashtags well. And since there's no character limit, you can really just dump lots of them into your post to help more people find you. We recommend hiding them to keep the post looking neat and make sure that it doesn't look spammy. And you do that by adding four or five periods in their own lines at the end of your posts, which you can see an example of here. You just put the hashtags after the lines with the periods in them. Do some hashtag research and find out what people are using on Instagram. For instance, for animal rescues, things like hashtag adopt don't shop and hashtag cats of Instagram or dogs of Instagram are active hashtags that get used millions of times. And actually in the app, when you start typing in a hashtag, Instagram will tell you how often that hashtag has been used. So be sure to use the ones that are used more often and try to stay away from ones that have only been used a handful of times or if you're the first one to use it. All right, guys, we're running up on our time and we're in the home stretch. But before we take questions, I just wanted to quickly go over a few of the premium features you can use to boost your campaign on social media. And the first is Data Connect. Data Connect is our integration with Zapier. And Zapier is an automation tool. And what that means is that when you have two programs that you use that are not connected to each other and don't talk to each other, Zapier acts as the bridge that connects them, which makes life a lot easier. You can create automation processes called Zaps to build that digital bridge. Zaps have a trigger and an action. So you'll set up a trigger in Zapier and tell it what you want it to do. We have some preloaded Zaps for programs that nonprofits use a lot. And you can also create custom workflows. You will need a Zapier account for Data Connect to work, but basic accounts are free. And if you really like Zapier and you want to do more with it, you can upgrade to one of their pretty affordable paid accounts. And again, Data Connect is a feature nonprofits usually need a premium subscription for on Mighty Cause. But you'll all have access to it for free during the event. So you can take it for a test drive and see what it can do. Zapier has literally thousands of apps that are available to users, including Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter, Hootsuite, Buffer, Google's G Suite, which includes Google Sheets and Docs. It's a very extensive list. So if you're curious about whether you can use a specific program with Zapier, just head over to Zapier.com and check out their library of apps. Once we activate all the premium features for everybody who registers for Giving Tuesday, you'll find it in your Mighty Cause manager by going to the supporters icon in your dashboard and then clicking Data Connect. So how you can use Data Connect for Giving Tuesday is by automating thank you tweets to donors, adding new donors to your email lists, auto posting thank yous to donors on Facebook. And you can also send personalized thank you emails from your executive director's Gmail account. That helps you give your thank yous, that personal touch that really can help keep donors engaged. You can do a lot with Data Connect. So this is just a sampling of what you can do, but you have access to it when you register for Giving Tuesday. So I just wanted to make you aware of some of the cool things that you can do with Data Connect. Next up, we have analytics. So with analytics on Mighty Cause, you can actually hook up your Google Analytics account. We recommend having a dedicated account for your Mighty Cause page, but linking your Google Analytics account will help you see where your traffic is coming from so that you can move forward knowing which channels have been most effective for you. And this is often surprising for nonprofits because sometimes the channel they think is the most effective actually isn't the one bringing in the most traffic to your Mighty Cause page. So it's definitely worth making use of this feature if you use analytics while you have access to it for free. And just as a note, you can also get rich analytics that will help you with your post-event reporting with Mighty Cause Premium. So definitely take use of that while you have the free preview. Okay, so that's it for the presentation. Thanks to those of you who stuck with me because I know that was a lot of information. So now I'm just going to open up the floor to any questions. So if you have a question, just type it into the Questions box of your GoToWebinar panel. Is there a template for the social media plan? At this time, there's not like a printable template, but we do have a blog post that kind of takes you through the different aspects of a plan. And that's something that we could definitely make for you. So keep your eye on your inbox. We may just follow up with a template that you can actually print out and use to get your plan together. Will we be sharing the power hours? Yes, they're just not announced just yet, but they are forthcoming. So just keep an eye on your inbox because we will give the full rundown of all the prizes, power hours, golden ticket hours, etc. So that's forthcoming. Today was just kind of a sneak preview for everybody who signed up for the webinar. So yeah, just keep an eye out for that because there will be power hours, there will be random golden tickets. So there's a lot of different things that are coming up that are really exciting. So just watch your email for that announcement. Some questions about stories, how they differ from a status. So a story is kind of, it's not really a status. It's just kind of a short video that people can watch. If you treat it like a short video, something specific you want to share, like, you know, hey, go to our Mighty Cos page or hey, we're here for Giving Tuesday. This is our campaign. They're just kind of short video bursts. You can also use images for stories. But yeah, they're kind of something that you would use in conjunction with a status. I wouldn't post them by themselves. I would post your key content as statuses on Facebook, for instance. But you can utilize them to sort of be seen a little more easily because they are prominent on Facebook. And if you find yourself fighting the algorithm, it's a way around that. It's a little hard to explain what stories are, but they're basically inspired by Snapchat, which are just kind of quick bursts that you can use to interact with your followers. So things that are good to include are videos, images, just cute little short statements to your followers. And I'll maybe follow up with some resources about stories. All right, so yes, we will be sharing the slides and the recording. Let's see. In your experience, how often do you think a nonprofit should be posting where it's effective without being annoying to followers? This is a really good question. I would say it depends on your followers. Take a look at how often you normally post if you go from posting once a month to posting 50 times in a day. People might go, oh my gosh, what is going on. But just like with email, really if somebody is like, oh gosh, this is annoying, unfollow, they're not going to donate to your campaign. So it's okay to keep posting. I would say quality is more important than quantity. So if you're posting and you don't really have anything in particular to say, don't post. If you have something substantial to say, like it's the beginning of a power hour, or you just hit a milestone and you want to celebrate it, or if you have a matching grant starting, for instance, those are the kinds of things you want to post about and not worry too much about how often you're posting. Just because in my experience, quality trumps quantity every single time. And you also want to keep in mind that not everybody is going to see things you post exactly when you post it. So just post quality content. Don't post if you don't have anything worthwhile to say, don't post just to post. But if you have something important you want to share, just post about it. I mean, the worst that can happen is somebody unfollows you. And if somebody unfollows you because you posted two times more than they would have wanted, they're not going to donate to you anyway. So it's not really a huge loss. But I find that most people are not really that annoyed because especially on platforms like Facebook, it's harder for you to be seen. So they're only seeing a handful of things you actually do post. But make sure that you post your key content at any time you have something specific and important to say. All right. What are the best times to post on social media? It varies. This is one of those hacks that people really look for that takes the guesswork and the testing out of the equation. But those don't really exist. And they are very wildly from nonprofit to nonprofit and page to page. So it's about taking a look at what works for you. There's really no hard and fast golden rule about what times are best. Facebook insights, for instance, will tell you what posts do well and sort of take a look at the times that do well for you. But there's just really not a hard and fast rule when it comes to that. And when it comes to giving Tuesday, because a lot of the things are time sensitive, like power hours, golden tickets and climbing to the top of the leaderboard and celebrating milestones, it really doesn't matter as much when you post them in terms of strategically getting seen, but just posting at the times that make sense for your nonprofit. So I would say pay attention to what you need to post when you need to post it for giving Tuesday. In general, I'm a fan of testing different strategies. So if you're like, I don't know what time is best for us to post on Facebook, if we just have like a general post that we want to share, try a couple of different times and measure the results. Facebook insights, for instance, will give you that information. Twitter insights will give you that information, they'll tell you how much these posts are seen. So just really test it, be a growth hacker, look at what works and what doesn't work. And just keep in mind that there are lots of variables according to that can affect whether a post is successful or not, like the type of content you're posting. But generally, you'll just have to test, which I know is not the popular answer. I wish that there was a hack that I could offer that would make it better to know when should we post. But I would say the biggest tip is to just stay away from anyone who's telling you, oh, well, 6am is the optimal time to post on Facebook, because people are just waking up and getting ready to work, because that's just kind of an almost an urban myth. It's not really something that data bears out. And just see what works for your nonprofit and try not to get too caught up in that kind of stuff. And just test if you're curious. Oftentimes testing doesn't lead to significant results. So really quality over quantity, quality over time, if you're posting things that are interesting and engaging, people will sit up and take notice regardless of what time it is. And with certain platforms like Facebook, it's really all about trying to get interaction, trying to get shares, trying to get comments, trying to get likes, getting people interested in your posts. So that's why quality is really the number one thing you should look at. All right. So I'm just going to read this question. Oh, okay. This is interesting. Somebody says that their nonprofit, which they just joined, has been posting a lot of secondary content, like things that other people have created, which I assume are like memes. And, you know, what my opinion on that is, I mean, I would say I don't think that that's a great strategy. If you're doing that exclusively, I don't think it's something that you should like never ever do, because sometimes a meme works. Sometimes something that somebody else created makes sense for you to post. So it's certainly something you can sort of roll into your strategy. If something is interesting, I would say to make sure that you vet the sources, you know, because something could come from some weird place. I used to work for the Humane Society of the United States, and we didn't do much of that. But sometimes memes would have weird origins like in organizations and companies that we didn't support as an organization. So that's one thing to keep in mind when you're posting content from other sources. But I don't think there's anything wrong with doing that, that I think people come to social media to see what you are doing. They want to hear from you. They want to know what your organization is up to, what you're doing, how they can help. So that's not really as effective at getting people engaged in what you are doing as a nonprofit. So I would say it's not against the law to do that. You can certainly post memes and images that other people create. But just make sure you balance that with information about what your nonprofit does, because that's ultimately why people are there. That's why they liked your page. That's why they followed you because they want to know what's up with you. So if you're just saying things that other people have already said, they're not going to get what they want out of that interaction. And you also want people to take an action on a post. You want them to do something, whether it's like comment, share, go to a link, watch a video. So you want to keep in mind the call to action in a Facebook post. If there's really no call to action and you're kind of just posting it just to post, then that's not really a great strategy. So I would say if you want to post secondary content or secondhand content, that's totally fine to do that. Just make sure it's balanced and that you are representing your organization well as a whole. And not just kind of repeating things that have been said elsewhere, because that's not a good look. And it's not really giving your audience what they want, which will not keep them engaged. All right. So oh, this is interesting. Do you think artsy aesthetics have a place in nonprofit Instagrams? I would say it depends on your nonprofit. I think there's a place for pretty much everything under the sun on Instagram. And definitely one of the keys to Instagram is being seen posting things that people find interesting that makes them stop scrolling and take a look at what you're posting and what you're saying. I would say if you're an organization for kids posting like a really abstract piece of art or a weird poem is probably not the best strategy. But if it's related to what you do, if you can tie it back to who you are as an organization, then yeah, go for it. You know, there's definitely a place for it. And I also just like the idea of trying different things out and seeing how they affect the response you get, because sometimes you'll try something completely weird and out of the box that you're like, I don't even know if this is allowed. And you'll find that people love it. So try new things. Don't be afraid to stick your neck out and try something new, but measure your results. If you try something new and it falls on its face and people hate it, then it was you don't want to do it again. So yes, I think it's fine to do that. I think there's a lot of great arts on Instagram. If you are an arts nonprofit, you know, like if you help people learn how to create art, then yeah, I mean, totally post art. If you're like an animal shelter or a food bank, it might be a little bit hard to do that. But we actually just had a blog post about this recently. One of the things that has been really amazing for shelters is taking their animals and putting them in an artistic context. There was a photographer who did an entire book and she worked around the country, taking artistic pictures of pit bull type dogs and flower crowns. And that helped them get adopted. And it helped these animal shelters reach more people with their message. So yeah, for sure, try new things, measure your results. That's always the follow up, try new things, but measure your results, see how they work for you and do more of what works less of what doesn't work. But don't be afraid to try new things. Instagram's kind of a an interesting platform and you need to get grab people's attention, just make sure it actually represents your nonprofit well, and it makes sense with what you do in the world. All right, so we are way over our time. I think we were supposed to go to 245 and is now 258 on the East Coast. So I think that's it for questions. If you guys have any other questions that you think of, you can totally reach out to me. My email is linda at mightycause.com. I'm happy to go through any ideas with you or answer any questions that you weren't able to get to during the webinar. But thank you guys so much. This was such a great webinar and you had so many great questions and I really appreciate you sticking with me during the the long webinar. And I hope that those of you who are in Florence's path stay safe, but have a great day and happy fundraising on Giving Tuesday.