You’re working on your 2021 digital strategy. You’re planning your content, engagement tactics, considering ways to shine a light on your cause to new audiences.
You already know the who (who’s your target audience), the what (what content to post), the where (what platforms to use) and the when (when’s the optimal time to engage your audience). Which leaves us with: The why.
I recently recorded a series of videos for AFP’s Microlearning Series entitled: The W’s of a Digital Storytelling Strategy. The goal of the series is to present you with the questions you need to be asking internally before you start posting and engaging.
You can view the previous episodes: The Who of Nonprofit Digital Storytelling, The What, The Where and The When.
The Why
There are two major issues related to “the why” of your nonprofit digital storytelling strategy. You can watch the video or read the transcript just below it.
The Why Of Nonprofit Digital Storytelling
Hi everyone. I’m Ephraim Gopin of 1832 Communications and today I’m continuing my W’s of Digital Storytelling series for AFP’s Microlearning Moments.
Instagram Stories
In our last episode, we discussed the when. Today we’re going to discuss the why. Storytelling is central and critical for fundraising and marketing. It allows you to tell your story and let people know who you are and what you do. But I want to concentrate specifically why two specific types of storytelling.
The first one is why Instagram Stories. Simply put, the data. 300 to 500 million people daily are looking at Instagram Stories. That’s quite a number and odds are your audience is in that number. They are scrolling, watching pentagram Stories every day. That doesn’t mean you stop posting in your feed. Of course you should post in Instagram feed. But you should be making use of Stories. Stories allows you to use images, video, quizzes, surveys and more to tell your story. I’ve seen plenty of nonprofits use quizzes to be able to tell people more about their mission and who they service and about the issue that they work on. So Instagram Stories absolutely has to be part of your content strategy and your storytelling.
Photo by Vladimir Proskurovskiy on Unsplash
Video
The second question is why video. So according to Mary Meeker’s 2019 Internet Trends Report, people watch on average 84 minutes a day of video and this is in the U.S. That’s not streaming TV. That’s video that could be on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. That’s a lot of time spent watching video. So why video? If a picture is worth a thousand words, video is worth way way more. And video opens you up to a lot of different opportunities.
You can make thank you videos for donors, you can have your beneficiaries talking, you can use it as a way to introduce your staff or you can do something like an Instagram Live or a Facebook Live or even go live on Twitter and you can introduce your work, your mission, bring in a field expert to answer questions in real time from people. Videos create engagement and that’s what you want. You want people to keep coming back for more and more because you’re telling an engaging story and videos and certainly Instagram Stories will help you do that.
Happy fundraising everyone. Have a great day.
Year-end fundraising campaign time approaches. Is your website content prepared? Email marketing strategy ready to be implemented? Social media posts planned out? If your nonprofit wants to strengthen relationships with donors and raise more money, then your website, email and social media need to be in sync and ready to go when your campaign commences.
Not sure how to pull it all together? Contact me and let’s plan a successful year-end campaign together!
