Digital Marketing and Social Media Tips for Busy Nonprofit Leaders

June 13, 2023

The New Jersey State Council on the Arts is a division of the New Jersey Department of State dedicated to improving the quality of life in New Jersey through strategic support for the arts. The Council provides financial and technical support services for New Jersey artists and nonprofit organizations with programs in arts education and lifelong learning, artists' services, community arts development, folk and traditional arts, diversity, equity, access, and inclusion in the arts, and arts marketing.

The Council’s Communities of Practice calls bring together nonprofits with similar attributes (e.g., size, subsector, etc.) for conversations with guest speakers on various themes. In April 2023, NFF’s Marketing and Communications team had the opportunity to speak with a cohort of grantees about digital marketing and social media. Following are a few key takeaways that we hope can be useful for other nonprofit leaders seeking to maximize their limited time and resources to get the most out of digital marketing and social media.

Tips for developing a digital marketing plan

Digital marketing and social media help connect you to your community. They are critical tools for sharing important news, updates, events, and requests for support. Some nonprofits have staff who manage these responsibilities full-time, but for those who don’t, digital marketing and social media might be managed by anyone from a part-time volunteer to the executive director. It’s with these organizations in mind that we’ve taken some of our own communications approaches and distilled them into practical tips and bite-sized actions.

The start of the year is a great time to outline a simple digital marketing plan to help guide your efforts and direct resources in the coming months. We prioritize the following three steps when drafting our plan for the year:

  • Define core audience(s)
    • Who do we want to reach?
    • What would we like them to do, think, or feel?
  • Write a few messaging points to serve as guideposts
    • What stories do we wish we were telling?
    • What are the big ideas we want to be talking about?
    • What do we want to be known for?
    • What are some of the most exciting things happening for us right now that we want others to know about?
  • Sketch out a simple calendar for upcoming events and/or milestones to help organize content and topics. This can help organize and prioritize the big moments that you want to make noise about.

Bite-size actions:

  • If you have 30-60 minutes, go through each bullet at the start of the year
  • If you have 15 minutes, focus on a calendar of upcoming events

Strategies for newsletters

As with all forms of digital communications, our goal is to make sure we’re putting the right content in front of the right people. Here are a few tips for building up your newsletter strategies:

  • Build your contact lists
    • Put signup link on your homepage and throughout your website
    • Include opt-ins to join your newsletter on forms for ticket sales or event registration
    • At in-person events, bring a signup sheet where people can provide their emails
    • Include the signup link as a “call to action” in social media posts
    • Consider creating list segments so you can direct targeted messages to specific groups (e.g., people who have attended in-person events, donors, sponsors, etc.)
  • Match the message with the audience
    • Who are our fans? And what do they want to hear from us?
    • Include stories about your organization’s work along with timely and relevant updates, such as upcoming events, new programming or guest speakers, any fundraising campaigns, or other exciting news
    • Organize content into sections with clear headers, links to your website, and any action items the reader should take (e.g., buy tickets, donate, learn more, etc.)
    • Whenever possible, include pictures and other multimedia to visually draw people in
  • Communicate at a pace that works for you
    • You can organize the frequency of newsletters at whatever cadence is realistic for your organization
    • Consider a blend of regularly scheduled newsletters (perhaps quarterly) and real-time updates for any notable milestones or updates that your audience would enjoy hearing about  

Bite-size actions:

  • If you have 30-60 minutes, put a sign-up form on your website and create a content calendar
  • If you have 15 minutes, just start with the sign-up form and one idea for your next email

Getting the greatest return on investment from social media and paid advertising

While there are lots of different social media platforms to choose from, you don’t need to be active on all of them, especially if you don’t have much time to dedicate to posting content.

  • Focus on platforms that best align with your organization’s work
    • Nonprofits in the visual arts space might invest more time on Instagram, which is a photo-based medium, whereas organizations that center on events might get more out of Facebook’s event planning features
    • Make it easy for your audience to follow you by putting links to follow your social profiles on your website, and include your social media handles on printed marketing materials and/or email signup sheets at events
  • Plan out some of your content (e.g., a recent story or upcoming campaign). For the rest, leave room for spontaneous posts like impromptu photos from events or local media coverage of your organization
  • Experiment with paid advertising if your budget allows
    • Think of paid advertising as a funnel where you cast a wide net and then continue to develop and cultivate relationships at every stage of engaging with new people
    • Target ads to your region and audience as much as possible and include a specific “call to action”
    • Try the 3-2-2 method where you create three versions of an ad with two versions of the primary text and two versions of the headline

Bite-size actions:

  • If you have 30-60 minutes, brainstorm five social posts and where/when you'll post them
  • If you have 15 minutes, just start with one or two!

How to work with multimedia and video

As you are sourcing marketing content, multimedia such as video and/or soundbites are great resources – especially if you are already recording an event or a performance. They don’t have to be professionally produced to engage your audience and highlight your organization’s work.

A few quick tips:

  • Keep it short and sweet
    • Put the most compelling, engaging content in the first 5 seconds
  • Consider the "no sound" experience
    • Use text or captions in case people are viewing with the sound turned off
  • Upload directly on each platform
    • Algorithms like videos that are posted directly through that platform (as opposed to a link from YouTube or Vimeo)
  • Include a “call to action” in the description or in the video itself
    • For example: subscribe, purchase tickets, comment below

Here are some additional tools and resources that can support various aspects of your communications efforts:

We hope this overview is useful! For more insights, blogs, and fundamentals resources, take a look through NFF’s Learn content, and be sure to join our newsletter.