The 2022 State of Social Media for Nonprofits

This is how you can excel with your organization's social media strategy this year. Let's take a look at the current state of social media for nonprofits.
The 2022 State of Social Media for Nonprofits

Social media is quickly becoming, hands down, the most important communication channel for almost any organization, including your nonprofit. Trends that impact social media for nonprofits can be hard to predict, but thankfully we have a secret weapon.

Hootsuite’s 6th annual Social Trends Report is backed by global data and expert insight. The full report covers 2022 Social Trends and recommendations on how to take action.

We’ll take a look at the data and trends and how it relates to social media for nonprofits.

Table of Contents

  1. Get Community Right
  2. Use Social Media for Donor Care
  3. Engage Your Audience with Short Form Video
  4. Establish Your Voice with Social Audio
  5. Measure Your Social Media Efforts
  6. Use Ads to Reach New Donors and Volunteers

Get Community Right 

There has been a seismic shift in how people interact with brands and organizations and, subsequently, how they decide where to put their money. Instead of big names or fancy influencers, consumers are seeking out more authentic communities. 

Building a community from scratch might seem overwhelming for your organization, especially if you already feel that you don’t have the resources or brand awareness to make a big splash.

“Thriving communities on social media present a big opportunity, especially for smaller brands… You no longer have to create a niche community from the ground up—you can find a community that you fit into and if you show up for them, they’ll do the same for you.”
– Maggie Lower, Chief Marketing Officer of Hootsuite. 

Attach your organization to pre-existing communities that allow you to engage organically, shifting your communication strategy to one that involves building long-term relationships. 

This is where the power of content creators can help your organization thrive. Partnering with creators can connect nonprofits to new audiences, empowering your audience to gain their trust and their donor dollars. 

Over 50 million people consider themselves creators, and the creator economy has an estimated value of over $100 billion dollars. Almost every single platform – Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram – introduced tools in 2021 to help creators monetize their content. 

What does that look like in practice? Good question.

TikTok is becoming the most valuable social media marketing tool

For many years, social media for nonprofits has been limited to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter

For nonprofits specifically, Instagram was a crucial piece of the marketing pie. Of the nonprofits that used social media in their marketing strategies, 75% of them used Instagram. However, as the social media landscape changes, so too should digital marketing strategies. 

Enter stage right – TikTok. 

In September of 2021, TikTok surpassed 1 billion users, making it the 4th most popular social media platform. This is especially important when you consider the growth rate – in less than a year, their user base increased 45%. 

Over the same time span, Instagram’s user base only grew 6%. 

When the world went into lockdown, there was a noticeable increase in home renovation and organization. BiGDUG, a UK-based shelving company, saw a sizable boom in product inquiries. They took this opportunity to pivot out of their B2B model to target DIY’ers on TikTok, with the help of Miles Laflin. Laflin has 12.1 million followers and has amassed 211.9 million likes on his TikTok’s.

They used TikTok’s Creator Marketplace to get in touch with Laflin and sent him products to use in his videos. Since then, they have become a regular fixture in Laflin’s feed, garnering millions of views and hundreds of thousands of impressions with do-it-yourself’ers. 

Not bad for shelves, right? You might be wondering how this applies to nonprofit organizations though – and that’s fair. 

Let’s talk about Giving Tuesday. 

TikTok launched a massive Giving Tuesday campaign this year – #GivingSzn. 

TikTok Giving Szn

“On this Giving Tuesday – a globally recognized day of giving – we’re partnering with our community in celebration of #GivingSzn, a monthlong in-app celebration of generosity and goodwill featuring LIVE programming from creators and non-profit organizations, including fundraisers and community-rallying moments.”

Not only did TikTok initiate a massive giving campaign on their platform, but they also put their money where their mouth is, supporting nonprofits and creators. Last year on Giving Tuesday, TikTok:

  • Donated $3 Million to various charities
  • Invested $1 Million in the form of advertising credits to a diverse group of nonprofit organizations
  • Partnered with Charli D’Amelio on the “Charli D’Amelio Dance Grant” and donated $100K to the American Dance Movement. 
  • Rolled out donation links in profiles that allow users to raise funds for causes and organizations they support. These links are in addition to the TikTok Donation Stickers that allow users to raise funds during LIVE streams and in video. Unfortunately, only 90 organizations are currently eligible for the Donation Sticker. 

To add a nonprofit's link to your TikTok profile, go to edit profile, choose nonprofit, and select an organization from the list.

We know that many nonprofits and other charitable organizations are strapped for time, making it tough to find time to create content for another platform. However, it may be time to consider prioritizing TikTok. 

We wrote about Why TikTok is perfect for Nonprofits last summer. In that article, we cover what TikTok is as well as some ways nonprofits can use the platform. 

Influencers Still Have Their Place for Nonprofits

When we talk about harnessing existing communities and asking creators to support your cause, we’re really talking about influencer marketing. Over the past few years, influencer marketing has become more refined and continued to grow in popularity.

Share of US Marketers Using Social Media and Influencer Marketing 2019-2022. This chart shows that both social media and influencer marketing have been rising over the past few years. Social media market share was at 55.4% in 2019 and is now at 72.5% in 2022. Influencer marketing rose from 91.0% to 92.1% over the same time period.

We suggest finding a social champion with content relevant to your cause. Someone who has a fairly large following on Instagram ideal. If you have a cause for anything related to the environment, your pool of choices is huge. Other niches might have a hard time, but there are influencers for nearly everything.

Influencers are able to reach a bigger, younger audience. Studies are showing that Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly philanthropic. So it’s a great way to include them in your donor base.

Recently, there has been an increase in peer fundraising among this segment with 84% of Millennial donors having given to a cause based on a friend’s ask, and more than half of Millennials and Gen Z donors having fundraised on behalf of a charity.
Forbes

What does this mean for you? Micro-influencers can provide a more peer-to-peer feel for your fundraising asks than you can. Even without using something like Tributes to set up a “Challenge your friends” campaign, you can create that same effect. Rather than reach one person at a time, your influencer is encouraging many of their “friends” to support your cause as a group.

You could also ask influencers to set up a peer-to-peer fundraising page on your website. This would encourage their followers to do the same, increasing your fundraising potential exponentially.

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Use Social Media for Donor Care

64% of people said that they would prefer to message a business, rather than call them. While this data covers consumer behavior, you can bet that it applies to donors as well.

Despite the demand for social customer care, 71% of organizations have not invested in, or don’t plan to invest in, digital customer support channels. 

Social donor care is going to be a large part of how social media for nonprofits operates in 2022. Donors want answers and they want them quickly. Just as they would ask of a brand, donors will expect someone at your organization to answer questions via social media channels. 

There are a few things you can do to get ahead of this now (and even some ways to partly automate this process). 

  • Create a Social Media Donor Service Strategy 
    • Monitor conversations about your brand using a social listening tool
    • Use the right channels – at the moment, that is most likely Twitter or Facebook
    • Create social media guidelines that live and align with your organization’s brand guidelines 
    • Be proactive and always respond
  • Create templates for FAQ’s 
  • Try using a Chatbot to improve response time 
    • On Facebook, employ away messages and Instant Replies to send canned responses until a human can respond
  • Use a tool like Buffer, Sprout Social, Agorapulse, etc. to merge conversations across all channels to one inbox 

Nonprofit organizations must meet donors where they are – and that includes answering questions, sharing information, and creating donor resources that are readily available on social media channels. 

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Engage Your Audience with Short Form Video

Short form video is king – unless we’re talking about YouTube, that is. Simply put, a social media strategy for nonprofits must include snackable video content. 

Video length distribution: 3.1% are 600-1200 seconds long. 9.9% are 241-600 seconds long. 10.5% are longer than 1200 seconds. 16.2% are between 121 and 240 seconds. 23% are 61 to 120 seconds long. And 37.3% are 0-60 seconds.

Vidyard, which is a video hosting software company, determined that 60% of all videos published on the internet in 2020 were 2 minutes or less. This is surprising, since not that long ago, we all thought long-form was the way. 

And it was – until TikTok upended the way people consume content. 

Since then, Instagram has sunset IGTV and YouTube Shorts has rolled out. 

Long-form video still has its place on YouTube, but those videos are mostly relegated to tutorials and how-to videos.

We already covered why you should try TikTok, but keep these things in mind as you start to experiment with short-form video: 

  • Use TikTok to reach new users and future-proof your charitable organization 
  • Use IG Reels to re-engage your audience 
  • DO NOT simply push your TikTok videos to Instagram. Instagram has been very clear that they will not push content that has a TikTok watermark on it. Furthermore, the content that you most on either channel may not perform the same as you have different audiences. 

However you choose to use short videos on social media, remember to include data from your impact reports, stories about your impact, and donation asks.

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Establish Your Voice with Social Audio

There are already several options for social audio. You might have heard of the pioneer in the social audio realm – Clubhouse. Social audio is simply another way to have a conversation with an audience. 

The best way to describe it is to liken it to Zoom or Google Meets without the video aspect. 

Clubhouse launched at just the right time – just a month after the pandemic really “began” in the United States. However, Clubhouse used invitations to “gatekeep” their platform a bit, making in less accessible for many. Twitter responded by launching Spaces shortly after. 

According to the Hootsuite Survey, 74.2% of respondents said they planned on investing in audio-only in the next year, but the results were mixed on how: How are you planning to invest in audio content? 39.8% said hosting and leading live streams as thought leaders. 39.2% said partnering with influencers. 38.8% said creating a podcast. 38.7% said joining live audio streams as a listener or participant. 32.1% said buying ads on existing podcasts.

For our purposes, when we talk about social audio, we mean hosting or participating in live audio streams. 

Thought-leadership is the main driver behind hosting or participating in a Twitter Space. Just like any other content, Spaces topics should be relevant, timely, and valuable. (And they can be recorded for redistribution elsewhere.) 

Twitter Spaces allow one or two hosts to speak to a larger crowd, and even interact with them. Many hosts follow a similar format – speak with their guest for 20-30 minutes and then allow 15-30 minutes for questions. 

You can use Spaces to discuss topics surrounding your mission, like tips for implementing recycling programs in areas where they are not accessible. Think outside the box. If your nonprofit helps a specific group of people, you could use social audio platforms to tell positive impact stories. The possibilities are endless.

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Measure Your Social Media Efforts 

Historically, it has been hard to link social media for nonprofit efforts and strategies with fundraising outcomes. However, after leaning all the way in on social media over the course of the pandemic, many organizations are feeling more confident about measuring ROI

How confident are you in your organization's ability to accurately quanitfy the ROI of social media? 37.4% said somewhat confident. 32.1% said very confident. 13.8% said extremely confident. 10% said not confident at all. 6.7% said they do not measure the ROI of social media.

Here are two things you should know about social media for nonprofits and measuring its ROI:

  • Social media primes the rest of your marketing efforts: Social works in conjunction with other marketing channels to drive awareness and help with brand recall. 
  • Gain donor insights based on how they use social media: Social listening has increased in value for their organization. Meaning, these marketers are using social media to learn more about what their customers want and need so that they can deliver exactly that.

Ochsner Health is the largest nonprofit, academic healthcare system in Louisiana. Ochsner is the gold standard for social media for nonprofits. 

They have created a very vigorous and engaged brand ambassador program. Brand ambassadors represent an organization. Typically, ambassadors help increase cause awareness, which drives donations. They should embody the organization in demeanor and values. 

Ochsner launched their brand ambassador program with a few volunteers that were already active on social media. Today, their program has over 400 members! 

Social Sentiment 

You should also keep track of social sentiment. Social sentiment is how people feel about your organization on social media. It adds context to the mentions, comments, and shares. This way, you know if the mention was positive, negative, or neutral. 

Simply noting that someone mentioned your brand on social media is not enough. Tracking sentiment empowers your organization to evaluate how donors feel about your organizations. 

Ochsner Health uses Talkwalker to track negative sentiment about their organization across various social media platforms. They created a list of approved responses to common feedback and established a workflow for managing complaints and addressing misinformation. 

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Use Ads to Reach New Donors and Volunteers

Last, but not least, let’s talk about ads. Ads are kind of an elephant in the room for a lot of nonprofits. The expense is sometimes not justified, or the budget just isn’t there. Plus, there’s always the stigma of overhead expenses. But, they have value.

The Paid vs Organic Social Media: Organic brings brand awareness, customer service, and relationship building. Paid means reaching a larger audience, targeting ideal customers, and driving leads and conversions. They overlap to gain new customers and followers, promote quality content, and research target audiences.

Ads can help you increase your donation revenue so that the overhead expense of them is covered and you generate more in the process. Again, without proper planning, marketers weren’t able to be effective or measure the ROI.

The effectiveness of your ads depends entirely on your goal, the content, and your targeted audience. Done right, ads can help your nonprofit increase your social media following, find volunteers, get donations, and more.

Don’t invest heavily in the beginning if you do choose to try out ads. Get the hang of it and experiment with different formats and audiences. When you think you’ve found the right combination, then you should boost your ad spend a little at a time.

Back to the Table of Contents

The State of Social Media For Nonprofits

Social media is a vast interconnected network of people that will ultimately help your nonprofit succeed. The shifts in technology and social media marketing trends will affect your nonprofit as time goes on.

This year as long as you focus on building your community, tracking your ROI, and trying new forms of content – such as short videos and social audio channels- social media can make a huge impact on your organization. Adding the extra tools like shoppable content and messenger bots will only further your success.

If you want to dive more into social media trends for your nonprofit, here’s the full recap from Hootsuite: 

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