6 Ways non-profits can thank sponsors on Social Media

Corporate sponsorships play an integral role in non-profit fundraising and are usually critical to achieving financial goals.  Given their importance, acknowledging sponsors on your social media networks should be an essential piece in your overall social media strategy.  Ultimately, you want your sponsor to return for future fundraising initiatives.  Making your sponsor feel special is one way to make that happen. 

Social media networks continually add new features and functionality and these changes can be daunting to stay on top of.  Fortunately, however, these updates present fun and innovative ways to recognize the generosity of your sponsors.  If your current online thank you consists of visiting your sponsor’s website, grabbing their logo and posting a grainy, poorly formatted image, it’s time to show your gratitude with some of these suggestions:

Share their Social Media Page with your Followers

This is perhaps the easiest way to express appreciation while giving your sponsors social media accounts some added visibility.  In your accompanying text, be sure to capture why your sponsor is unique and/or an asset to the community.  Your followers will only need that magical 1-click to check out, and hopefully, follow your sponsor’s page.

Thank you via Stories

Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat all have a Stories feature – bite-size content that is only viewable for twenty-four hours.  Use this feature to give a thank you shout out.  If you are low on visual content, a selfie with fun and correlating stickers will do nicely.  Given the short lifespan of this content, make it light in tone, and crisp and to the point! 

Bonus – tag your sponsors Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat business page in your Story. 

Create a video thank you

Post a short video with the Chairperson or well-known board member of your non-profit communicating your thank you. This type of post can be memorable, particularly if you can share a little-known story, or spotlight the sponsor’s philanthropy. 

Bonus– If the sponsor’s organization is local, go the extra mile and create the video in their store or office. 

Promote product and services of your sponsor

Is your sponsor in the midst of promoting a new product or event?  Use your social media thank you to give it some timely online exposure.  For this kind of content, be sure to always post high-quality pictures or video.  You want everything about your sponsor – their products, their storefront, their employees – displayed in the best possible light. 

Share sponsor media highlights

Do you have a sponsor that distributes a lot of press releases, receives regular positive media mentions, or is periodically in the news? Share a favorable article with a caption that incorporates your thank you.

Create the post or review on their page

If your sponsor has a Facebook page, extend the shelf life of your accolades by posting directly to their page in the form of a visitor post or review.  When visitors come to check out the sponsor’s Facebook content, your comments will be seen.  In general, these types of posts greatly improve the validity of the page.

Yes, staying informed about the constantly shifting features of social media can be difficult.  However, each time a social media network introduces a new feature or type of content that can be shared presents a new opportunity for your non-profit to thank your sponsors.

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Create better content by kicking these 5 lazy Social Media habits

The amount of online content is crushing all of us, particularly on social media.  On Facebook alone, 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded every 60 seconds.  This explosion of content impacts both the businesses using social media for marketing as well as the users they are hoping to reach.

If you are a content marketer or small business owner managing your own social media pages, it can be tempting to take a few shortcuts in the hopes getting your content out ahead of the pack.  However, not all shortcuts are created equal.  Resist the urge to sacrifice quality!  Just like you, your customers have only 24 hours in their day.  Don’t clog their social media feeds with subpar content.   Reward their attention and time by giving them your best.  To up the quality of your content and overall social media presence, avoid falling into these 5 common lazy social media habits.

Retweet without reading

According to a recent study, 6 out of 10 social media users share links without reading them.  Yikes!  How can you expect to be influential if you don’t know what you have shared beyond the title?  Some organizations are considering ways to combat this type of thoughtless sharing.  For example, Facebook is currently looking into letting users know how widely a link has been read when it is shared.  If you’re going to share, first read the article, and even better, offer your Followers value in the form of adding your key takeaway or insight.

Not formatting images

The optimal image dimensions for posts in Facebook’s newsfeed differ from Instagram or Twitter.  In fact, each social media network has its own recommended height and width for sharing images.  Take the time to format your images accordingly.  Apps such as Canva and PicMonkey will help simplify the process.  Ditto for copy and captions.  A caption crafted for maximum Facebook exposure probably won’t play well on Twitter. Take the time to write in the style best suited to the platform your Follower are using.

All thumbs up and hearts, no comments

Yes, liking other users post is an important component of engagement and building your online community, but go the extra mile or keyboard stroke and comment or react.  What about the image or post initially grabbed your attention?  It is also worth noting that Facebook now ranks reactions higher, which impacts your Insights.  So let other users feel your engagement.  With persistence, what goes around comes around! 

Auto sharing

You know those Twitter accounts that simply automatically share all of their Facebook status updates?  Do you read them?  Chances are, no one is reading yours either.  Creating and posting all of your content for one social media channel and then auto sharing it to all of your other networks should not be your sole strategy.   In some ways, it’s not respecting the other networks and its users.  A social media scheduler such at Hootesuite or HubSpot can help you create and schedule unique posts tailored for each of your networks.

All media, no social

Social media is two words.  Many businesses focus so much on the media, they forget the social piece.  When you receive a lot of comments on your Instagram post, do you take the time to respond or acknowledge? Not every post has to be an overt promotional sell.  Take the time to share gratitude, a personal side, or humor.   Ultimately, the attentiveness that is required to be successful in real life social situation holds true for thriving in social media.   

Like all forms of marketing, social media works best when you heed even the smallest of details. 

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