5 social media tips to help your nonprofit fundraising event sparkle

Imagine that you’re fast approaching your biggest nonprofit fundraising event of the season, you’ve spent six months making plans and attendance looks like it’s going to be exceptional, there’s a real buzz about the event and your online audience who can’t attend are hoping to still share the excitement. How can you best use social media to help spread word about the success of your special fundraising event?

Back in May I wrote this post about how to best use social media in planning for such an event – and today I wanted to provide the top five tips to make your fundraising event via social media on the day itself.

Social media comes into its own during events with the advantages of sharing information in real time coming to the fore. You’ve probably managed numerous events in the past but how can you make it even more special for those who are in attendance or following proceedings from afar? With this five tips taken on board before your next fundraising event I guarantee that your donor audience will feel more informed and be more likely to be engaged with your organization than ever before.

 INTERACT

Within the avalanche of excitement, activity and planning during a special event social media managers often forget to stay interactive with those commenting, looking to help or ask questions in real-time. Don’t overlook the value of interacting on the day, after all social media was founded on that idea. Connect to those at the event covering it themselves via Instagram, Facebook, Vine or Twitter. Get your feet dirty and tweet, comment, share and favourite to your hearts content. Make a note of the new connections you make on the day too – these can become wonderful relationships and followers for the future.

 INSPIRE

You’ll be in the middle of all of the action on the day of your event and from your unique position you can truly inspire both your audience and the participants themselves. Inspiring story-telling should be at the heart of all that you do on the day, use photographs, video, quotes and event summaries to inspire your audience. Find out the names of those you speak with, where they’ve traveled from and perhaps who they work for – share their profiles and link to their companies (if they don’t object) as you thank and encourage your volunteers and donors. You can send out so much positive energy from the event by providing unique updates and images that capture the excitement and effort of everyone involved.

image courtesy sage.co.uk

 ENJOY

Yes you’re there to share what others are missing and inspire them to connect with your charity for today and beyond but don’t forget to have fun too. Not every word you type has to be incredibly serious and tied directly into your mission, have fun, be funny and entertain – those who follow your event live will be more likely to stay connected if you mix it up to some extent. Remember that photos and videos are so much more likely to be shared, liked etc. than just text – so take some photos that capture the passion, personality and sense of fun at the event.

 HASHTAG & BRANDING

Hopefully from my earlier post and your own research you know that the key to building awareness for the big day can be greatly aided by consistent use of #hashtags and branding for your audience to share and follow. Don’t lose that momentum on the day itself, make sure that your followers know that they can keep current with the action and share it online via the hashtag that your organization is using. If your attendees and volunteers want to share their own updates via social media – post friendly reminders with the correct hashtag for them to use so that the event becomes even more viral as it happens.

 FIND BALANCE

This might be the hardest piece of advice to follow. If your concentration is buried deep into your phone, tablet or computer on the day you might actually be missing some of the greatest moments as they happen. Ideally have a social media team, let one individual collect quotes, photos, video while the other shares the information in real-time to your online audience. Don’t forget to rotate duties, spending 12 hours just adding updates and you will feel that you missed the fun. Too much information seems like it’s not possible – but it is – plan what you want to focus on during the event and build out a schedule of tasks, duties and social media output.

I hope that these suggestions help at your next nonprofit fundraising event and if you have other recommendations please add them in the comments below.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.