Marketing Tips for Social Media
For many charities, the use of social media is marketing. It’s low-cost of entry, and the potential to reach interested customers faster is a huge draw. Here are a collection of social media marketing tips from Phil, our Social Media and Marketing Manager.
This post follows on from our previous article “Top 3 Tips For Social Media Advertising”. Check it out!
Phil, Social Media and Marketing
01
Your Page isn’t a noticeboard.
Many organisations have simply digitised their noticeboard. The same posters (produced A4) are uploaded and posted, with nothing else. This is about as effective as the noticeboard outside your premises. Some people might see it and spread the word, but it’s much more dependant on luck.
However advanced computers are, they still rely on words. Whatever you’re posting in the image, put in the text. Even if all you do is copy the text. Social media also has a way of putting your notice in places where people who want to see it, might see it, but you still have to tell it where you want it. We do this with a #tag (that’s the old pound sign, or Octothorpe if you want to use its official name). Use the #tag to include words that will help find it #wrexham, #charity are good ones, but they are quite broad #event, #free can get you some more eyes. You want to limit it to about 6 or 7 #tags, any more than that and the computer may treat your post like spam.
In the same vein, you’re posting on social media. If you’re doing an event with someone, tag them. You tag them by typing @ (the at sign, or the ‘commercial at’ – except in Italian where it’s playfully called the ‘’snail’ sign) followed by their page name. That will let them know that you’ve tagged them, and hopefully cause them to react. The more interaction your post get, the more people see it. It’s like people nudging their friends and saying ‘look at this’.
02
Don’t Make More Work For Others
People are, generally, very busy. Social media has become a way of continuing to be busy, but it’s busy with their friends, and with the things that interest them. If you’ve got their attention, don’t make them scrabble to find the link to your website, so that they can find the post they want. On Facebook you can put the link right in the post, so do that.
If you’re sending your marketing out for others, don’t send them PDF’s for social media. Someone will have to convert that into an image, and THEN put it on their socials. That’s a very quick way to get your stuff put into the ‘I’ll do it later’ pile, which will reduce the chance of it getting anywhere in a useful time frame. Make their life easier, include the text you want in it as well. Charities often have one person with many different hats, the less work something is for them to do with their media hat on, the better the chance you have of getting your post out quickly and efficiently. The same goes for information into an email shot. Send the image (preferably in the ‘Instagram square size), and the text in one email.
Pro Tip: Don’t put ‘active links’ into the text that you want sending out. They don’t always work when copied and pasting. Make sure you have the ‘plain text’ URL. If the URL looks too long, try using a shortening service like tiny.cc (https://tiny.cc/)
03
Pictures are worth a 1000 words
This is especially true on social media. Don’t make an image that is full of text. Think about what text needs to be there, and what text can go in the post. The image needs to have the headline – what, where, why, when, who. The details can go into the text part of the post. You want to grab their attention.
When thinking about pictures, pictures with people are better, followed by pictures of animals, third is pictures of nature (trees and flowers). That said, a good photo is better than a bad photo, regardless of the content of the photo.
Pro Tip: If you’re posting on your own socials, try to take the time to fill out the ‘Description’ or ‘Alt’ boxes. These are both used for screen readers, and can help people better understand what’s in the picture. It also, however, helps the computer know what’s in the image. Remember, computers can’t yet understand pictures (at least, not very well). So the words in this box help people find your post, and the computer to know who to show it to.
04
Defnyddio’r Cymraig
Use Welsh! A lot of charities have requirements around the use of Welsh, and that will include their social media posts, email and physical mail-outs, and so on. Take some time to get it translated. Ask a member of staff that speaks Welsh to help! It doesn’t have to be ‘standard’ Welsh (for those of us that grew up thinking there was a difference), Welsh is now a living language. Translate it like you speak it. If you’re like me, and can’t remember a word, search the term “Translate English into Welsh”. It’s a real help 85% of the time!
If you don’t have a Welsh speaker, there is a FREE service that can help.
https://businesswales.gov.wales/heloblod/ – Helo Blod will do you 500 words a month. Not a lot, but it’s FREE.
You can also get a raft of help from Cygliad, which will do some online Welsh Spell checking (https://www.cysgliad.com/cysill/arlein/), though most common word processors will now allow you to spell-check Welsh. This link also has links for specialised translations for health and law, and other useful pieces of information.
You can also give some of the online translators a try. Their accuracy is improving all the time, but use with caution. That said, they can be really helpful if you have a Welsh learner who can read it for sense, but may not be comfortable translating.
While the number of places that won’t share your article because of lack of Welsh isn’t high, it’s not 0, and is slowly climbing. This is especially true if you deal with statutory bodies (like the council). If you can translate something into Welsh, it can make a real difference. It should definitely be on your radar for any big events.
Conclusion
Marketing of any kind still takes time. Creativity, which is needed for marketing, takes time. When building deadlines for an event, remember to build in time to let people know about it, and to give someone the time and the space to put together some good materials. What you do is important work. It is also important to let people know about what you do – there are people out there desperate to find an organisation just like yours.
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