What can NGO’s learn from the best start-ups in content marketing?

What can NGO’s learn from the best start-ups in content marketing?

55% of NGO’s social media posts result in an action - that’s high!!

The split of actions shows how social media actively drives value for NGO’s in the form of donations and community actions

note: multiple actions are conducted from a single engagement, so the total actions are >55%

Raising money for NGO’s is like a Sales funnel

One of the best assets that NGO’s have is their stories.

NGO’s often have a deep element of humanity to their purpose and agitates people to provide money in the form of donations.

All NGO’s are purpose-driven, but the best can tell their story effectively

This creates a top-of funnel of thought leadership and awareness with prospective donors

Start-ups and influencers have cracked content marketing machine for social media, with regular posts. But why is posting frequency important?

The marketing rule of 7 says that on average it takes seven interactions with your brand before a purchase takes place, the same is likely true for NGO’s.

Looking at NGO’s with a start-up lens shows that they are a mix of B2B and B2C.

The channels an NGO chooses to market to different donors depends on which demographic NGO’s want to target - for example a more professional network driven approach is better suited to LinkedIn, however a younger donor base should target Instagram and Tiktok.

LinkedIn's top age demographic is 30-49 years old, followed by 50-64.

LinkedIn video is currently having outsized distribution as they promote the content online often with 30-50x reach on the original profile follower count. ie: with a follower count of 2,000 on LinkedIn a video can reach 100,000 views.

Facebook reaches 87% of people aged 18-29 and still engages more than half of those 65 and older.

Instagram's majority user base (53%) falls between 18-29 years old, but it also reaches 25% of people aged 30-49 and TikTok's user base skews younger compared to other platforms: 67% of 18-19 year-olds use and 56% of 20-29 year-olds.

What about word of mouth? Well, it’s still the best mechanism for NGOs to gain additional donors, your best champions are your current donor base. This relates to social media as content that’s easy to share helps existing donors spread the word.

How can NGO’s turn their awesome long-form content into social media posts?

NGO’s have historically been great at long-form content ie: conducting research on a bi-annual or quarterly basis, long and in-depth videos or webinars with experts

However this does not match the consumer preferences of social media. NGO’s should aim to post smaller (<1minute videos) or text + image posts at least weekly.

Short form content should take the insights shared in longform content and convert them into bite-sized chunks of information.

The trick is that key insights can be re-shared multiple times throughout the year with slightly different angles and lenses applied to keep the content fresh.

Use a simple social media strategy and donor funnel is:

1. Social Media: Get noticed

2. Email Capture: Get emails

3. Email Marketing: Build awareness and focused content

4. Pro-active Outreach: Get to know donors, invite to events or ask for donations

5. Digital Call to Action: Ask for Donations 

What is the ideal format per channel:

TikTok: 25 sec

• The first 1 second must hook a TikTok scroller and the attention span is very short for the audience

• Caption limit: 2,200 characters, longer captions can help capture keywords for search, aim for 1,500 characters

Instagram: 30 sec

• The first 3 seconds must hook an instagram user

• Caption limit: 2,200 characters, longer captions create more engagement in the comments section, aim for 1,500 characters

Twitter: 45 sec

• Mixed attention spans, with the majority of short posts, but increasing engagement on long-form tweets

• Tweet length limit: 280 characters, although verified users can have long-form tweets up to 10,000 characters long

Facebook: 1 min

• Users like watching short videos that they can quickly like or share

• Post Limit: 33,000 characters but highest engagement is under 80 characters

LinkedIn: 1 min

• Although videos can be up to 10 minutes, shorter is generally better for the professional social media platform

• Description: 3,000 characters but posts are cut-off after 140 characters so ensure they are punchy

YouTube: 10 mins

• Although Youtube can host long videos like webinars, the majority are short in length, videos should be edited to maintain engagement

• Description: 5,000 characters which can aid for search, ensure the first 150 characters are a strong description and keywords

Sounds like a lot of work. How can NGO’s do this with a small team?

NGO’s are some of the most resource-constrained entities and competing for audience with a small team is hard!

NGO’s can create their content around “topic clusters”, these content clusters can be arranged around 1) topics 2) formats

It should be information that is easy to create and have access to collaborators:

• Impact and on-the-ground content: NGO’s uniquely have access to content which shows impact. It could have been captured in unique locations with distinct stories and narratives. Interestingly a lot of this information is underutilised by NGO’s who find it hard to publish this after doing the hard work of creating impact and capturing content/information

• Expert-led interviews: NGO’s often have team members who are super knowledgeable on the specific coverage area of the NGO, finding ways to effectively capture this information and insights can be actual podcasts, or turned into content for marketing on different platforms, like video scripts or blog articles

• Project focused and transparency: follow a specific project as a series of content provides progress, transparency and a story on where money is being spent and the impact it is having

• Event-led: events are a highlight in NGO’s calendar they can be an amazing opportunity to capture content for social footage, hosting world leaders to have focused discussions on the NGO’s sector and creating a FOMO (fear of missing out) effect for those who did not attend. Tagging participants in posts adds to shareability and wider teach too

• Webinars: NGO’s often host in-depth webinars with a panel of experts, these webinars can provide rich content which can be adapted to social media posts

• Team and behind the scenes: highlighting the amazing work from supporters or volunteers shows the impact that donations are having, and the awesome work of the team and volunteers are doing as a community

An effective way to build this is focus on creating one long piece of content once per week or once every two weeks (brainstorm at the start of the week)

Then blocking time to repurpose content eg: sharemore.ai to automatically create and schedule posts for different social channels

This creates a steady stream of relevant content and keeps the team accountable with having consistent content stream which maximizes engagement.

With a strategic approach, even resource-constrained NGOs can build strong connections with their supporters and drive substantial positive change.