It’s easy to get started fundraising with Instagram, and there are multiple ways to spread the word on a shoestring budget. Let’s get into it.

1. Upgrade Your Profile

If you’ve been using your personal social account to fundraise, it’s time to go public! Create a business account for your organization. Complete all the required materials, making sure to include a link in your bio to a landing page for your fundraiser.

With each post, direct people to the link in your bio or a simple shortened link where they can take the action you want them to take. Your bio is prime real estate; spend some time and thought to write an effective Instagram bio. Your profile, visuals, and links should be aligned with the “why” behind your fundraising efforts. What’s the cause, and how can you tell that story through your profile? You need to.

2. Have a Fundraising Strategy

It’s always important to have a strategy. With social fundraising, your end goal may be simple: raise a certain amount of money. However, the approach will differ between organizations, and each step along the way may vary.

Think about how you will communicate your mission and goals, what action you want people to take as your deadline approaches. What media types are you using in your campaign? Does your strategy involve photos of people in action, short product videos, interviews, or something else?

Have you mapped out who your support base is? It may seem as simple as driving awareness, but successful fundraising on Instagram requires a strategy aligned with your cause.

3. Use the Right Hashtags

You’ll want to have a catchy, easy-to-share hashtag for your fundraising efforts. Common fundraising hashtags include: #fundraising, #fundraiser, #gofundme, #charity, #instagood, #donate, #foracause, and #bethechange.

Rival IQ makes it very easy to analyze your Instagram hashtags. Use the data to find the top-performing hashtags in your landscape, include them if you are not doing it already, and increase your reach on the platform.

Even if you aren’t running your campaign through these channels, you can attract audiences interested in giving to the cause they support. Hashtag best practices suggest not exceeding 10 hashtags per post to deter the perception that your post could be spam. (Bonus tip! Copy the above hashtags and save them to your phone for the next time you’re fundraising with Instagram.)

Look to create something fun for your own fundraising campaign that speaks to the cause. The Keep a Breast Foundation uses #checkyourselfie to encourage young people around the world to perform monthly self-checks for breast cancer.

4. Utilize Instagram Stories

Instagram + Snapchat = Instagram Stories. Because Instagram Stories expire after 24 hours, it’s key that you choose your moments wisely. Some of the best times to utilize Instagram Stories include the launch of your fundraising efforts when any in-person or real-time events happen, and at the end of your campaign.

Dig into the latest Instagram Stories Benchmark Report.

Grab your copy here

Instagram Stories are best for events and “hot off the press” moments. Behind the scenes looks, sneak peeks, and the story of your cause are just some of the types of content you can share. Earlier this year, CNBC reported that Instagram Stories now has more than 250 million users per day. For comparison, that’s more than Snapchat at 158 million. If you’ve seen success on Snapchat with a series of content, it’s likely you’ll be able to replicate those efforts for Instagram Stories with success.

Instagram also recently rolled out donation stickers within Instagram Stories to make it easier than ever for supporters to donate to a cause they care about. Nonprofits can track the success of these campaigns within Stories, and encourage supporters to use these stickers to raise money on their behalf, similar to Facebook Causes.

5. Create Story Highlights

Instagram Highlights enables your Stories to be viewed past the first 24 hours. With Instagram Stories Highlights, you have complete control over what kind of topics you want to focus on and which Stories to include. This makes them a powerful marketing tool for communicating to current, new, and potential followers. While fundraising on Instagram, use Highlights as a way to highlight and showcase your fundraising campaign and encourage your followers to donate to your cause.

In the image below, observe how the nonprofit Treehouse has a Giving Tuesday highlight saved in its Instagram profile, making it easy for users to engage with all its Giving Tuesday-related content.

For more tips on utilizing Highlights, dive into our Ultimate Guide to Instagram Stories Highlights and take your Stories and fundraising goals to the next level!

6. Share Your Progress

Share your progress throughout your fundraising campaign and updates and photos posted from supporters (if available). In addition, think about how you can best present exciting milestones and encourage your current supporters to help raise even more money. This can help keep your campaign going strong.

7. Have a Momentum Strategy

We’ve covered the necessity of having a basic strategy. Then what? While going viral is never a guarantee, having a momentum strategy in your back pocket is beneficial. Are you prepared to pivot if things pick up? Do you have a plan if things slow down?

Being prepared for momentum shifts is a must when it comes to fundraising. Can you leverage your paid team? Will you have assets on hold for the turns of the tide? A momentum strategy can help keep your campaign going strong. Consider planning for outcomes at both ends of the momentum spectrum.

Successful Social Media for Nonprofits

Watch the webinar recording →

As you head into prime fundraising periods like #GivingTuesday and end-of-year appeals, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on what other nonprofits are doing. Use Rival IQ’s free Live Social Media Benchmarks for Nonprofits and get up-to-date metrics, hashtags, and social content in a few simple clicks!

8. Elevate Your Paid Strategy

Outside of awareness-focused paid social media campaigns, spend some time thinking about how you are going to retarget your audience for fundraising. You can retarget your donors using social ads on some of the most popular platforms, including Facebook Ads, Twitter, and Instagram.

With Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram, the remarketing/retargeting options are stronger than ever. You’ll need to place a Facebook Pixel on your site and create your custom audience before dropping in assets and copy and kicking off the campaign. It’s straightforward to do, and you could have a paid campaign up and running in no time.

9. Spend Time Shopping

Or, at least use the shopping feature of Instagram. If possible—and if relevant—give the shopping functionality of Instagram a try. If your fundraiser involves multiple products, such as bracelets, water bottles, or some other types of swag, this feature could be highly beneficial.

Once a business account has a product catalog connected to the account, you can tag that product in your post and drive your Instagram followers to where they can make a purchase and contribute to your fundraiser. Use great product photos that speak to your Instagram audience.

10. Work with Influencers

You don’t need to work with the likes of a pro athlete or model, but you can work with micro-influencers. Instead of hundreds of thousands of followers, these micro-influencers will often have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers.

Micro-influencers require a smaller budget from the organization looking to work with them and often have relevant audiences you may want to tap into. They can be more cost-effective. These micro-influencers may have higher engagement, may be more willing to create multiple pieces of content, and maybe seen as more trustworthy by the audiences you want to reach.

Bonus! Another benefit to working with micro-influencers is they often have platform crossover which can help boost your fundraising efforts on those other platforms.

11. Get #inspo from other Nonprofits

A little inspiration can go a long way. If you are aware of other nonprofits in your niche that do a stellar job of fundraising on Instagram, scroll through their feed for some ideas. With Rival IQ, you can create a landscape of the nonprofits you want to keep an eye on in quick, easy steps and dig into some heavy-duty content analysis.

Instagram is just one of the tools in your toolbox that you can use for fundraising. In fact, fundraising with Instagram is a way to reach new audiences through stories, micro-influencers, retargeting campaigns, and more. The tips we’ve covered can be executed on smaller budgets and larger budgets, and for a wide variety of campaigns with success.

This blog was originally posted on October 12, 2017, and has since been updated.

The post 11 Actionable Tips for Fundraising with Instagram appeared first on Rival IQ.

Often this means tapping into our audience’s emotions. We take turns leveraging happiness, nostalgia, sadness, surprise, curiosity… the list goes on and on. Study after study has shown that certain emotions drive specific behaviors.

In social media marketing, we can use the results of psychological studies to help guide our strategies, content, and campaigns. Here are five psychological studies that will boost your social media marketing.

Tap Into the Halo Effect

In 1920, psychologist Edward Throndike published his findings from an experiment where commanding officers in the military were asked to give ratings of various characteristics of their direct reports. The researcher was interested in learning how impressions of one quality impacted perceptions of other personal characteristics. What the researcher found was that when people had a good impression of one characteristic, those good feelings tended to affect perceptions of other qualities positively.

Tap into this Halo Effect when you’re marketing products or services. If your customers are particularly fond of one of your products or a particular feature, you can spotlight that product or feature more often. If you’re running paid social media campaigns, you could use the Halo Effect of a product to generate more positive perceptions around your other products.

Be warned! This effect goes both ways. If your customer dislikes one aspect of a product, they could have negative perceptions of everything about it.

Takeaway: When sharing something new, look to lean on products, services, or features you already know your customers love.

Leverage Social Proof

Social proof is not a new concept. The chances are that you’re probably already leveraging social proof in your social media marketing. Social proof is a psychological and social phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect (what they perceive to be) correct behavior for a given situation.

The rise of influencer marketing ultimately comes down to social proof. For example, one study’s results indicate that if people see a social influencer they identify with share something about a particular product, they may be more likely to purchase that product. Customer stories and testimonials are other examples of this.

Takeaway: Look to leverage customer stories and social proof content in your social media marketing efforts.

Explore the IKEA Effect

Have you ever had the chance to build your very own coffee table or desk from IKEA? If so, you’ve likely experienced joy and a sense of accomplishment when seeing the final product standing astutely before your eyes. When the time comes to sell, do you have a hard time letting go? The IKEA Effect explains this.

A group of researchers conducted a series of studies that looked at the how we tend to increase the valuation of self-made products. If we build something ourselves, such as an IKEA desk, we tend to hold that item in higher value. How does this apply to social media marketing?

Look for ways to include your customers on social as you build a new feature, evolve a current product, etc. According to the IKEA Effect researchers, involving your customers in the creative process can lead to a higher willingness-to-pay. Keep in mind this is only the case if the customer is aware of their impact. If you’ve asked your users to contribute to something, either through product feedback surveys or social polls, let them know on social.

Takeaway: Share the direct positive impact your customers have made, and they may find your company more valuable to them.

Draw on Self-Categorization

According to multiple studies and texts, people often like to self-categorize themselves into groups. For example, someone who regularly hits the gym may say “I do CrossFit” or “I’m a powerlifter”—these are two types of lifters, but people who perform CrossFit or who powerlift often identify with only one category. Research indicates that “categorization concepts [are] useful for a variety of types of consumer-driven categories and for a variety of marketing applications.”

When drafting target audiences and messaging to reach those target audiences, consider the categories you are placing those audiences in and whether or not those audiences will self-identify with the content you’re serving up. The information in your social copy or assets should be sufficient in helping customers draw the connection between their self-categorization and your product.

Takeaway: Help your customers categorize themselves into a group that would best benefit from your products.

Loss Aversion

This one is a bit more straightforward. The idea here is that once someone has something, they will take action to protect that something since they don’t want to lose it. Behavioral Economics explains, “It is thought that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining, and since people are more willing to take risks to avoid a loss, loss aversion can explain differences in risk-seeking versus aversion.” Where do you think FOMO (fear of missing out) is rooted? That’s right, loss aversion.

The concept of Loss Aversion plays into industries such as cybersecurity and products that have “protection” of some kind as a key feature or functionality. Every day marketers can tap into loss aversion as well by encouraging their customers to take action with a “don’t lose what you’ve earned/got” approach. For example, “Don’t let your hard earned progress slip away. Sign up for boot camp on Saturday!” This can be a risky approach, depending on your business and messaging, so it’s important to proceed with caution.

Takeaway: Your customers want to keep what they have. Remind them that you can help them do just that.

These are just a few of the psychological studies that can help boost your social media marketing. Before using one of these studies for your social media efforts, consider how it ties into your overall strategy. You can build campaigns around a psychological study, but it should not be the core focus as you may lose your way from whatever your organization’s true objectives are. The psychological aspect of a campaign is another tool in your toolbox, so use it for the right projects as you build up your social strategy.

The post 5 Psychological Studies That Will Boost Your Social Media Marketing appeared first on Rival IQ.

Sure, social media can be used to promote your products or services, build brand awareness, and create a sense of community. Simple enough, right? However, it’s often not so simple to run truly great social media campaigns. You can probably think of one or two campaigns from your favorite brands that called out to you. Why is it that certain social media campaigns just seem to stick?

To help you in creating your next great social media campaign, here are ten things great social media campaigns have in common.

1. Great campaigns are strategic

While you don’t need to have every tweet, Facebook post, and Snapchat planned, you should plan and create your high-level strategy with a timeline from inception to day-of execution. When running a social media campaign, you need to consider:

• Who is your audience?
• Which social networks is your audience is most active?
• What do you want to accomplish with this campaign?
• How can you best get your message across?

There are many types of social media campaigns you can run, from sweepstakes and paid campaigns to hashtag campaigns and live-tweeting an event. Different campaigns yield different results, so it’s crucial to spend some time thinking about your campaign’s strategy. What are you trying to achieve?

2. Great campaigns do more than tell a story

Good campaigns tell a story. Great campaigns bring in BOTH show and tell. Instead of simply telling your story, show it too. It’s the essence of social media.

Do you remember REI’s #OptOutside campaign? At the surface, this campaign said two things: first, REI stores would be closed on Black Friday; second, consumers have the option to “opt outside” on one of the biggest shopping days of the year.

While these two things told the story, REI was also able to demonstrate to their customers that they understood them. The REI audience would likely rather spend a day outdoors than waiting in line on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. REI took their audience and brand commitment to heart. In doing so, they did more than just tell a story.

3. Great campaigns are timely

Location can mean everything for a great social media campaign. While not necessarily a social media campaign, a popular Marie Callender’s paid campaign can serve as inspiration for the effectiveness in running a timely campaign.

Marie Callender’s captured our attention when they created dynamic ads for their pot pies on an unexpecting domain: Weather.com! When it was raining, snowing, or freezing, Marie Callender’s served up copy and designs that put their pot pies front and center for consumers when they might want the food most. This campaign was so compelling it won an IAC “Best Food Industry Online Ad” award.

Similar to the Marie Callender’s ad, great social media campaigns are run in the right place—or on the right network—at the right time for when their customers would be most interested.

4. Great campaigns are customer-centric

It’s easy to get wrapped up in embodying your brand or business in tone and style. But remember that you’re also a customer. Would you want your favorite company to talk to you the way you are talking to your customers? Would you participate in the campaign you are asking your audience to participate?

Great social media campaigns speak to customers in the way the customers speak to one another. Being customer-centric in copy and tone can go a long way. Once you’ve determined who your target audience is and where they are on social, do some research into how these individuals communicate on the networks you plan to run your campaigns.

5. Great campaigns make engagement easy

How easy is it for someone who sees your hashtag or ad to engage in the dialogue? One recent campaign from Nike for #Breaking2 comes to mind. Many companies often want their audiences to engage, but they make it more challenging than it needs to be. Keep it easy and quick to engage with your campaign. 

Nike created quite a bit of content for #Breaking2, a 2-month campaign, which culminated in an (almost) 2-hour marathon. All their audience had to do was share the content to engage and then tune into the live event. This campaign was a success because Nike was able to show their commitment to athletes and innovation, as well as encourage their target audience to engage with the content they had created.

If we look back at #OptOutside and #Breaking2, both of these campaigns requested minimal actions from their audiences. Fresh content and the use of a hashtag is all it took for their target audiences to get involved across their social channels.

6. Great campaigns are inclusive and accessible

Men and women’s health isn’t always an easy subject to broach. Getting people interested and involved publicly is perhaps one of the biggest challenges the medical industry faces in social campaigns. However, the #KnowYourLemons Worldwide Breast Cancer campaign was able to turn a personal topic into a broader public service announcement.

This campaign was a success because they took a personal, possibly awkward topic to talk about and made it a bit quirky and light-hearted. By lightening up the subject matter with lemons, bright visuals, and an accessible approach, Worldwide Breast Cancer turned lemons into lemonade. My making people smile and laugh, they were able to get people to open up and talk about a tough topic. 

In fact, according to Digital Marketing Institute, the nonprofit ultimately exceeded their fundraising target by 317% on Just Giving. Accessibility to engagement is a large contributor to the success of the campaign.

7. Great campaigns play on emotions

Most of us can remember a Super Bowl ad featuring Budweiser and puppies, Betty White and Snickers, or another memorable ad. Great social media campaigns will play on their audience’s emotions. Choose one and stick to it. Nostalgia, humor, curiosity, or awe are feelings you can leverage in your own campaigns.

A few words of caution: opt to stay away from emotions such as fear and anger. While these feelings can be a driving force in motivating people to take action, it’s likely not an emotion you want to be associated with your brand.

8. Great campaigns have the right partnerships

In some cases, the right “partner” for your business can be as simple as utilizing the right network. In today’s social media world of insta-celebs and online influencers, finding the right partner could mean teaming up with someone new. For example, American Express teamed up with Tina Fey, and TD Ameritrade teamed up with Louie Vito, a professional snowboarder, during the Winter Olympics.

Even large corporations like Microsoft and Adobe team up during campaigns on occasion when both parties will benefit. Finding the right partner for your campaign could mean more budget is needed, but could also mean more coverage, more impressions, and more benefits for your brand.

9. Great campaigns have great visuals

Photos, and videos, and GIFs… oh, my! Opt Outside utilized awe-inducing nature shots from both their internal efforts as well as those from their audience. #Breaking2 involved classic Nike-branded content as well as live stream on Twitter during the event. In their partnership with Louie Vito, TD Ameritrade took their campaign to Facebook with graphics that appealed to the action sports audience.

Great visuals on social are a MUST for any successful campaign. While your focus could be photos, videos, live streams, or something else, you need your visuals to be geared towards your audience while still conveying the point you want to get across.

10. Great campaigns keep it simple

Last, but not least. After covering nine other things great social media campaigns have in common, this final point may seem a little out of place. However, keeping it simple is a trend among successful campaigns. They have a defined message, audience, and approach. Complex campaigns have their place, but in the fast-paced world of social media, things need to be kept simple to retain the attention of the social audience.

Creative and memorable campaigns often have one or two talking points that leave the rest of us on the outside wondering how things came to fruition. In this sense, great social media campaigns are simple. Hone in on the one or two things that will make your campaign memorable and keep these in mind as you make campaign decisions.

This blog was originally posted on September 9, 2017 and has been updated as of November 20, 2018.

The post 10 Things Great Social Media Campaigns Have In Common appeared first on Rival IQ.