2022 Social Media Plans and Strategies

Thanks for your response Diana, It's a big topic and big question Diana, because there are so many different aspects to participating and managing various social media channels and coordinating with organizational marketing plans.

In my experience, social media ties back to the organizations marketing plan, which ties back to the organizations strategic plan. What is your organization working to accomplish this year? Of course every organization wants to grow, but with limited resources you have to be strategic in your marketing expenditures.( Although posting on Instagram and Facebook is still free, it does take time from a person to create the post and then post to the right channel).

Once goals are established, it's time to dig into the marketing plan, set your budget and determine what avenues you can use to support the goals. When I mention goals, be sure they are as specific as possible. Goals should be targeted, not general. For example goals shouldn't be something like get more donors. Instead narrow that down: Obtain 20 new donors @ the $1,000 level for our cancer fund raising campaign or attract 20 new volunteers for our fun run program.

Now it's time to start looking at what does the donor/volunteer you're trying to attract to the cancer program or fun run look like, what do they read, where do they spend time on social media, what do they listen too, etc.. ? Sometimes you have to make an educated guess, but if you start thinking like the person you are trying to attract, it gives you a clearer picture of where you want to make marketing investments. If I'm over 45+, most likely I won't spend a lot of time on TikTok, so I can eliminate that social channel. If I'm trying to attract young people, then yes, TikTok might be a great avenue.

When we were doing social media marketing at the Y, we tested a lot. Different posting times, different messages, different photos. And then we measured what was getting the best responses? I found that photos with kids posted after 6pm got the most responses. (that's because our goal was to attract people to programs, especially our youth programs). Most moms were working during the day and didn't get on social media until the evening, so that really helped dial in our social media strategy and messaging.

We also worked on allocating our overall marketing budget towards different channels. Social media, print, video, mailings, etc.. all got a percentage of the budget based on goals .To get back to your original question:

Tips for right-sizing the effort relative to benefits: Typically we used about 5-10% of our operational budget for marketing. We took that 5-10% and then allocated it across various marketing mediums/channels, based again on our goals.

That's way more that you asked for, and I apologize, but I hope it's helpful. Here's the link for the article I was reading on the Associated Fundraising Professional website (AFP):

Always love learning and hearing from nonprofit friends, so let's keep the dialogue going, so that we can all benefit from discussion.