5 Quick Social Media Tips to Create Buzz Before #GivingTuesday

Giving Tuesday is fast-approaching!

Love it or hate it, the truth is that this wildly popular international day of giving and giving back will most certainly generate record amounts of press coverage, website clicks, and donations to charities small and large.

Not sure if you should carry out a campaign this year?

Before you launch a #GivingTuesday campaign, be sure to make these 5 key decisions, and read my post with 10 tips for nonprofits as they plan their campaigns.

However, if you are going to jump on this bandwagon and woo your donors and supporters this November 28th, here are 6 quick ways you can enhance the experience and get them excited starting this week.

Get your free Done-For-You #GivingTuesday Calendar template, and launch your best campaign yet! 

1. Create a Facebook Page Cover Video.

Did you know that you can upload a video to take the place of the static cover image on your nonprofit’s Facebook Page?

And what better way to catch people’s eye and grab attention on Giving Tuesday than a quick video?

Here is how to do it:

• Create a colorful, eye-catching video using Animoto or another free/low-cost video tool.
• The video can be a collage of images and text – explain your Giving Tuesday campaign succinctly and make sure to include the URL or call to action where they can participate!
• Videos must be between 20-90 seconds long and resolution must be 1080p.
• Keep important text, photos, and subjects centralized because for whatever reason, part of the height of the video will be cropped.
• Go to your Facebook Page, hover your cursor over the cover image and click on the Change Cover button. Click on “Upload Photo/Video”.

Examples of great Facebook page cover videos:

• https://www.facebook.com/ThePreparedPerformer/
• https://www.facebook.com/kimwineyphotography/
• https://www.facebook.com/bufferapp

2. Post an Instagram Story.

If your nonprofit is using Instagram, but you have never posted a Story before (or if you hardly ever post to Stories), this is a great way to grab attention and engage your followers.

Not only will you show up at the very top of the Instagram feed when someone logs in, I know that i’m always intrigued when an account i follow posts a story if they have never done so before (or if they do so very rarely).

Here are just two ways to do this:

1. Use Adobe Spark to create graphics and edit images that you can then upload to your Instagram Stories.
2. Use the Instagram app: Open up the Instagram app, click on the little camera icon in the upper left, and take a photo of your desk, your office, outside your window, add a caption “Can’t wait to share our #GivingTuesday campaign with you!”

Bonus Tip: Take a series of videos (it is called a Story, after all) about how the staff and volunteers are preparing for Giving Tuesday.

Be sure to use the hashtag in each Story, and location tagging as appropriate, as Stories and posts with these two extra elements reach exponentially more people!

3. Tweet once per day using hashtags.

Twitter can be a great place to connect with potential donors before the big rush of Giving Tuesday.

Last year, there were a total of 2,399,092 social media engagements on Giving Tuesday – that’s a lot of people using the hashtag!

Here’s how to do this:

• Jump on popular hashtags and tweet once per day up to #GivingTuesday.
• Examples of popular hashtags:
• #MotivateMonday
• #TipTuesday
• #WednesdayWisdowm
• #ThrowbackThursday, #TBT
• #FollowFriday, #FF

More daily hashtags can be found on the Buffer blog: https://blog.hootsuite.com/daily-hashtags/

Bonus Tip: Create pretty graphics with images and text overlay to add to the tweets using free graphic design tool Canva, or a low-cost mobile app like WordSwag.

4. Play with visual storytelling apps.

Tell your story and humanize your nonprofit’s brand by having a bit of fun with some popular, free mobile apps like Boomerang, Hyperlapse, and Prisma.

People love to see that there are actual humans behind the logo, so try to show faces where possible.

Here are a few ways to use these apps:

• Showcase what happens behind-the-scenes on Thanksgiving week at your office
• Share what you are thankful for in a mini-campaign 5 days of gratitude
• Have a staff contest to see who can create the best image
• Promote your Giving Tuesday campaign pitch and tease out the campaign messaging

5. Create a Pinterest board.

Many nonprofits underestimate the power of Pinterest for marketing and fundraising.

People are willing and able to impulse buy items directly from Pinterest – so that leads me to believe that they would be comfortable making impulse donations as well!

Here are a few ways to use Pinterest on Giving Tuesday:

• Create a unique Pinterest board showcasing the various donation levels of your Giving Tuesday campaign – what does a $10 donation get, $25, $100?
• Showcase your donors with Donor Spotlights if you have them
• Add some of your best impact videos
• Share testimonials and stories (with visuals of course)
• Add infographics on the cause and the issue. You do not have to create these infographics; you can search for them within Pinterest.
• Add valuable, helpful information about the cause and the issue that you are working on from other sources – it creates good karma but also helps establish you as a go-to, trusted resource.

What questions do you have about creating a dynamic, attention-grabbing Giving Tuesday campaign for your nonprofit? Post them in the comments.