5 Facebook Apps to drive engagement and grow the audience to your nonprofit fundraising page

When you assess your nonprofit fundraising social media strategies it can often be a case of balancing strategy with reward. Simply put, every effort you make using social media to promote your brand and profile should be measured in terms of the time spent and then quantified by measuring your growth in audience size and just as importantly their interaction with you.

The most successful social media campaigns are those that engage your readers but with Facebook there is sometimes a tendency to build a page, share updates and then sit and be patient. That approach can slowly build your audience but I bet you’ve wondered how other apps can bring both new and increase repeat visitors to your Facebook page while also improving engagement. Here is a quick look at five apps that can help to accomplish this. 

1 – ‘Event’ Facebook Apps – Any time you host an event build an app to help promote your activities to your audience. For simplification the built-in FB event app can get you started but do try third-party apps for special events that help keep your page fresh.

2 – ‘Countdown’ Facebook Apps – Do you have an anniversary coming up, a special event or milestone or perhaps a seasonal campaign that is key to driving your nonprofit forward? Build excitement for your readers by adding a countdown app to your page. Countdowns are a great, simple and fresh way to remind people to visit your page again and again.

3 – ‘Reward’ Facebook Apps – Perhaps not best suited to every nonprofit but few things create a better buzz for a loyal follower than recognition of their loyalty. You may have special offers or exclusive early warning of events that you can build out via a reward app that will share information only with your followers, or at an earlier date. If you enter into any partnered promotions it’s also a wonderful opportunity to create reward coupons. Be creative, each time a follower feels they have exclusive access to your news it will have long terms benefits.

4 – ‘Contact Us’ Facebook Apps – Sometimes overlooked but few things are more important than the ease of someone being able to contact your organization. Create new contact apps that allow page followers to send emails to specific departments. Make sure your new fan or potential donor is able to communicate with sales or accounting, press or customer support. One click contact apps will drive engagement and be sure to link to your app when relevant each you communicate on your wall with someone seeking contact information.

5 – ‘RSS Feed’ Facebook Apps – If you run a blog you’re already familiar with the value RSS feed subscriptions bring to your site. A natural partner to that strategy is adding an RSS Feed to your Facebook page to bring the blog to that feed market too. Remember many people ‘skim’ information and while you probably add each blog post to your wall your RSS audience won’t often take the time to scan your page. Feed them RSS – it’s exactly what they’re after.

There are literally hundreds of 3rd party Facebook Apps to choose from (click to enlarge)

Just consider how different your organization’s Facebook experience will be if you integrate all five of these apps over the next 12 months. Try and add one every few months and in no time you’ll have a more energized and engaged Facebook audience.

If Facebook apps are new to you – Take the time to visit the Facebook App Directory (just type your app type in the search box to learn about each) and search through for the Apps that provide the functionality you seek. These 3rd party tools are well-developed and maintained and typically have a detailed FAQ or forum on the page to get you started. It’s a modest investment of time to use Facebook apps and you’ll be able to monitor your results in real-time via Facebook’s improved insights. I’ll write more about those soon.

As always if you have any questions, comments or suggestions about Facebook Apps please comment below.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.