Stephanie Jabardo, Social Media Manager at Silicon Luxembourg, joined the Come Together Associations Network in February to talk about “Building a digital presence for a non-profit organization with intention.” The presentation was interactive and full of useful ideas.
As many ASBLs have limited time and resources, it’s perhaps natural that social media is not prioritized, but Stephanie shared some great tips and ideas about how to make your social media work for you.
A simple thing is to check and make sure your social media links are on your website. This is the easiest way for your audiences to find you. Many of us are using different social media channels and they include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Discord. Your organization needs to identify who you are trying to reach, and then make a choice of which ones to use but a valuable tip Stephanie shared is that you should repeat your message on the different channels so creating content will not be so onerous.
One thing that should ideally be done before starting with social media is develop guidelines, this is invaluable when you bring on volunteers to help you. This includes having your key-words defined so they can be used often. Also, identify the tone you want - examples include informative, serious, fun, inviting, whimsical, etc. It’s important to make a reasonable goal of how many posts you are going to make and then make them on schedule. However, don’t make the goal too audacious as it then won’t be attainable.
What if you feel that you don’t have content? Look around you - what are you doing behind the scenes? What is coming up that you want people to know about? Share what inspires you and your organization’s mission. What are you doing to help others? Use photos. Stephanie highly recommended the tools Capcut, Canva, VSCO to create your posts.
A challenge frequently mentioned was how hard it is to find someone to do a group’s social media. As we are all ASBL’s, associations or federations, typically with small budgets, the preferred option is to have someone from within your organization simply manage this task. However, this is not always possible so recruiting a volunteer is the next best solution. You can promise a volunteer real-world, quantifiable experience. Actively searching for a volunteer is an option and you can place a request on your website, in a social media post, or post a volunteer opportunity on Agence de Benevolat’s platform - benovolat.lu, LinkedIn or Indeed. Stephanie also suggested it would perhaps be a solution for a few associations to group together and engage the skills of a freelance social media expert.
Now you have your social media media manager, your look is defined and you are posting but you aren’t done yet! Next tip is to find other groups and people that you can collaborate with to cross-tag and share your posts. The simplest way is to ask anyone who would be interested in what you do. We all want the same goal - more views so working together benefits everyone.
Now it's time to get Social. If you have questions, feel free to ask us at our next meetup on Wednesday the 29th of March