Indspire Me

Note: This blog was first published by me on LinkedIn
Don’t worry. The the well-meaning but ambiguous advice of creating interesting and relevant content does not feature in this list.
1.   Join domain-specific groups on Facebook and share your posts in these groups: I’ll illustrate this point with an example. Say you are a nonprofit located in Delhi and working towards educating homeless children. You will want to join the following categories of groups: general non-profit networking groups, groups on children’s education, CSR related groups, crowdfunding related groups etc. Once you have joined the groups, start sharing your posts. Remember to customize your posts with a line or two of copy, as per the interests of that particular group.
2.   One post per day: Post consistently, so that your target audience (for non-profits it could be their community of outreach, supporters, youth audience, potential funders and potential advocates for their cause) know that there is value to liking your Facebook page. You do not want to be eliminated in the spring cleaning of unliking pages, something that today’s discerning social media users frequently do.
3.   Make a Facebook posting plan: Unlike popular perception, posting professionally on Facebook is not half as easy as logging into the website intermittently during the day and indulging in whimsical rhetoric. If you are a newbie to posting, you might want to start out and create different themes for different days of the week. This will help give direction to your content, make posting an efficient and impact-generating activity and also train your users to expect certain kinds of content on a regular basis. You could also use hashtags to define and reinforce these themes. For example, #motivationmonday, #thoughtfultuesday, #wellnesswednesday etc. The world is your oyster.
4.   Visuals Work: Facebook’s search algorithm pushes up posts with images a lot more than text only or link only posts. In fact, link only posts are a bad idea altogether. Before adding a link to your post, upload an image to it. Otherwise the link’s image will become the default thumbnail of your post. You don’t need to have a library of original images for this purpose. You can use images taken by others (most of the time, unless you’re dealing with really strict distribution laws), but do remember to credit them. It’s only right.
So, there you have it folks. I’ve shared four simple, organic ways non-profits can dramatically increase their Facebook engagement. This is hardly the end of the knowledge bucket. Look forward to a part two next week.