Thought Leadership
Top 5 Ways to Up Your Organization’s Organic Social Game
When nonprofits, higher education institutions, and mission-driven brands come to us looking to improve their organic social media, they share some similar frustrations: Why is no one seeing the content we’ve worked so hard on? How do we find time for social posts when we’re so understaffed? We need more content, where do we get it? Why don’t we have more followers, considering the incredible work we do?
If any of these questions sound familiar, here are our top five ways to take your organization’s social game to the next level.
-
- Quality Over Quantity – The algorithms of today favor top-performing content. You’re actually hurting your chances of reaching your followers, let alone any new users, by continuing to post content that is under-performing. Through monthly and quarterly reporting, you can identify your content types, determine which types perform best, and learn how to focus your strategy to bolster that content. We also recommend building a content schedule that your organization can maintain month in and month out. (If it’s once a week, it’s once a week!)
- Authenticity – Ditch the polished, designed assets that are ad-like and sterile. Create people-first content that feels human. To increase brand authenticity, consider having someone as the “face” of your organization. The people your organization has served, brand ambassadors, or an internal team member are all great examples.
- Building Audience Relationships – Speak to your social audiences the way you would speak to a friend. Even if your brand tone is “professional,” you wouldn’t lead a conversation with a real life human with an idiom or corporate jargon; you would simply have a conversation. Building individual connections with your audience over time is the most effective way to organically grow an active following, and100 active followers is more impactful for your online presence than 10,000 inactive ones. It’s all about conversation.
- Expanding Your Network – Even without an already-established list of corporate partners or influencers, thinking outside the box to utilize your network can help improve your organization’s reach. Creating a contest/challenge, encouraging UGC (User-Generated Content) with a core hashtag, or building and sharing a brand/influencer toolkit are a few ways to get started.
- Consistency & Efficiency – The biggest piece of the puzzle that is often missing for busy organizations is planning. The first few steps in establishing a social strategy project is to determine core messaging pillars, content buckets with individual goals for each type, and creating a road map and content calendar to implement this plan. We’ve seen time and time again that building a framework that your organization can work from month-in and month-out not only streamlines efficiency, but also improves results.
TL;DR: Building a plan for creating a few authentic, quality content types will expand reach not only with your existing followers, but ultimately with the algorithms which are trained to promote top-performing content.
Join the conversation
To get the latest news, sign up for our bulletin.