The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge of 2014 raised $115 million. This is the kind of success every nonprofit wants. If you don’t remember what the challenge was about, here’s a video you might enjoy.
 

 
The most important part of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, was that it made people aware of the ALS Association, and the disease they were collecting donations for, amyotropic lateral sclerosis.
 

For any nonprofit that wants the kind of attention that ALS received, the biggest struggle is coming up with a viral nonprofit marketing campaign. Once that’s accomplished, its a matter of utilizing video to promote it.

 
There’s different messages for videos that an organization could utilize to: kick off a fundraising campaign, thank participants, create awareness of problem, or to inform viewers what your organization is all about. The most important thing about these videos is that they are unique to the nonprofit, are honest, and aren’t forced.
 

Interactive

 
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is what you would call an interactive campaign. It enables participants to create their own content promoting the campaign, and also the non profit.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fl1I17Srh8
 

Popular Culture

 
An organization might use popular culture in their campaign to leverage what their audience is already familiar with to draw attention to their message. A great example is when the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock created a video of their patients lip syncing to Katy Perry’s Roar.
 
Another great example is when the Salvation Army used #TheDress to draw attention to a campaign to #StopAbuseAgainstWomen.
 

Infographic Campaigns

You’ve probably seen those infographics that present information in a fun way. Those work for nonprofits too. Infographic videos are great for sharing facts about an issue, or about an organization in general. There are many people who simply can’t absorb a message unless it’s laid out visually.
 
Charity Water does a great job illustrating facts and figures as well as telling a story in this campaign.
 

 

Storytelling

 
What grabs people the most are stories. Viewers will remember what emotionally moves them. And these videos make the situations tangible. Save the children accomplished just that in their viral campaign.
 

 
Viral campaign planning isn’t easy, particularly if that’s what you’re aiming for. Your best bet is find something that resonates with your cause and organization. Talk to the people your organization supports to find a story, or an idea. You never know where the next big hit could come from.
 
Here’s an example of a Thank You video that then kicks off a new campaign. Charity: Water does a great job at inspiring action.
 

GIFs (which stands for Graphics Interchange Format) have become a major way to communicate. Twitter announced in June of 2014 that GIFs are now supported by their social network. What are GIFs? Although they are just now starting to pick up steam, GIFs have been used on the internet for years.
 

 
Tumblr, a microblogging site popular with teens and young adults, rules the social media arena in GIF usage. Other sites like Facebook and Twitter have been playing catch-up to Tumblr, but since employing the usage of GIFs, have seen quite the success. But why are they popular all of a sudden?
 
People see GIFs as an easy way to respond. Twitter has a 140 character limit. Why finagle your response when it can be said in one image? The saying goes that pictures speak 1,000 words. GIFs speak volumes because they’re that line between still images and videos.
 
GIFs aren’t just used by teens and young adults. Major brands are joining them.
 
Starbucks

🍁 🍂 🍁🍂………………..🏃 #FallisComing #PSL pic.twitter.com/27DDokr68o

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) September 19, 2015

 
NASA

Look up! Check out our @Tumblr post to find out what can you see in the sky this month: http://t.co/tUbDyMvLAG pic.twitter.com/m0o9quEnVN

— NASA (@NASA) October 2, 2015

 
Pixar

All walks of life welcome. #WalkToSchoolDay pic.twitter.com/70LnkOCfLt

— Disney•Pixar (@DisneyPixar) October 7, 2015

 
GIFs have evolved into more than just flames or waving flags. They’ve become a complete art form. Even the NY Times have written about its sudden prevalence in social media by a growing number of brands, not just consumers.
 
Use GIFs to show off a new product, or use it to promote science, or film, or art. But be careful about your usage. Don’t just use GIFs to use them. Make sure they’re relevant to what you’re posting. Like this elephant waving goodbye. See you next time!
 

 

Being on social media is all about working smarter, not harder. I’ve written about different tools for analytics, hashtags, and posting tools. Let’s look at 5 social media hacks to make your job even easier.

1. IFTTT

If This Then That is an app based on recipes to make your life easier. These recipes are connections between apps. For example, I use a recipe that will check the weather app each morning and tell me to bring a jacket. Talk about having a great personal assistant right in your pocket!
 
There are two kinds of recipes, IF and DO. IF recipes will connect apps like: IF I posted an image to Instagram, THEN save the images to Dropbox. See? IF _________, THEN ________. DO recipes are  even cooler.
 
Have HUE lights that you want to turn down? There’s a DO recipe for that. These recipes are more direct. With the touch of a button, it’ll do what the recipe says and dim your lights from your phone.
 
They have plenty of social media related recipes to make your life easier, so don’t just use IFTTT for changing your lights from the couch. Explore and create your own recipes!

2. Grammarly

If you write blogs or any kind of online content in a browser, you don’t usually have access to a grammar check. Most browsers these days will check for spelling errors, but grammar isn’t part of that package. Grammarly has your back.
 
Grammarly is a free browser extension for Chrome and Safari will check for 150 different types of errors. If Grammarly finds errors in your writing, it will flag them and make suggestions for grammar, spelling, and vocabulary.

3. Canva.com

 
Ever want to create a beautiful graphic, but you’re not a graphic designer, or don’t have one in your organization? Never fear, here’s a way to get you started with the basics!
 
Canva is easy to learn, and provides you with templates for whatever type of graphic you’ll need to make. Need a new Facebook cover photo? Don’t worry, Canva has a template that even includes where your profile picture is.
 
There are plenty of free elements to Canva, including fonts, backgrounds, images, and templates. And there are some paid pieces too – but they are $1. You don’t even have to use the paid items unless you really want to. Its easy to find the free objects, or import your own for your nonprofit or small business.

4. TED Talks

 
Ever need inspiration? Or maybe you want a video on a specific topic? TED Talks are the best source for great videos about a wide variety of subjects. They make great pieces to share and engage with your audience.
 
My favorite is “The danger of a single story,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Some of the videos are long, but often times, they’re worth the watch. And there’s a few quick stories that are excellent conversation starters.
 

5. Personality

Social media is all about relationships and interaction with people. Don’t focus on promoting your product, or your company all the time. Its okay to use social media to express your company’s culture and personality. You’ll have a more genuine image.
 
Share that beautiful sunset photo from last night, or the office pet napping under your desk. People want to know that your organization is run by humans, not robots.
 
Life hacks are here to make your life easier. And these are some easy ways to help with your productivity and inspiration. Sit back and get hacking.

Remember those analytics tools I wrote about? Hopefully you have some statistics from your social media networks that have pointed at some posts that have performed well. Based on those numbers, now is a great time to create a social media content calendar if you haven’t already.

Not sure you need a social media content calendar? Here’s a few reasons as to why they are the most useful tool to your social media strategy.

1. You’ll know what needs to be posted

You don’t need to post every day of the week, but say there are days you want to post but don’t always have the time? Social media is about working smarter, not harder.
 
It’s Monday morning, and you need to post on your social media accounts for your organization. But what do you post? If you have a calendar, all you need to do is check out what’s on the schedule and get to posting.
 
If you have an upcoming event, this gives you an easy way to have reminder tweets scheduled in the days or weeks leading up to the event. And then the thank you posts scheduled for after everything is finished.
 

2. Going on vacation?

If you’re stepping out of the office for a few days (and don’t want to post on the road) your coworker can pick up the slack. By having a social media calendar, this gives your colleague a guideline to your social media. They can check the calendar you’ve set up and easily make their own post.
 

3. Hashtag Days

Every day of the week there’s a hashtag or two that people post to. Mondays are #musicmonday or #motivationmonday. Thursdays are #tbt or #throwbackthursday.
 
Daily hashtags are a great way to help structure your calendar if you post a lot on Instagram or Twitter.
 
Pick two or three hashtags for the week, and use those as a base structure. Maybe every week you’ll post to: music Monday (#musicmonday), women crush Wednesday (#wcw), and Caturday (#caturday). On these days you can easily do a photo to Instagram. And then on the off days, you can share articles, or have a blog post scheduled.
 

4. Advanced Scheduling

Don’t want to worry about some of your social media posts for a while? Content calendars make it easy to schedule content well in advance. After that, its just a matter of checking on the analytics to tweak posts based on those numbers.
 
Social media calendars make it easy to manage the variety of content you could post for your organization. Maybe women crush Wednesday outperforms music Monday by a landslide. Then you could adjust your calendar to highlight people instead of music.
 
Managing social media for a small business or nonprofit isn’t as scary as it might seem. These tips will take a huge burden off your shoulders. We’ve got your back.
 
HubSpot has a social media content calendar template available as a free download. Check it out here.
 

Twitter and Instagram thrive on hashtags. They make searching for specific content easy, whether its a tweet, image, blog, video, or to make commentary on a specific event. But how do you go about choosing the perfect hashtag? Here are some tools and tips to make it easy.

As you create your hashtag, here’s three great tips to keep in mind:
 

 
During the summer, I would live tweet games during the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and used #FIFAWWC, which was created by FIFA. This was an easy hashtag to remember, and keep up with the conversation.
 
But how do you know you’re picking the right one?
 
Here’s some free tools you can use to research hashtags so you can optimize your engagement.

1) Tagboard

This website tracks hashtags from the Big 3 social media platforms. Type in a hashtag and you’ll get Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram images. On the right hand side, you’ll see a few graphs. One is a line graph on how many posts a hashtag receives by the minute or hour (depends on how active it is). It will also give users an easy to read pie chart about what the content is like: Is it positive, neutral or negative?

2) Rite Tag

 
Are you a more visual person who likes a lot of color? Rite Tag analyzes hashtags for your accounts and divides the hashtags into four colors:
 
Green – Hot now
Blue – Long life
Red – Overused
Grey – Underused
 
The different colors are a great guidance between all of the posts to determine what will expand your reach.
 
Rite Tag connects to Buffer, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Facebook, and Twitter.
 
Do you struggle with finding related hashtags or determining which hashtag is more popular? The Coach bar located at the bottom of the page will analyze multiple hashtags together and break down the numbers for you. For each unique hashtag, you’ll get the number of unique tweets or retweets per hour, the number of views per hour, and the number of tweets with images, videos, links, or mentions. You’ll get a whole page of stats, or all related hashtags via a colorful spiderweb.
 

3) Iconosquare Tag Cloud

I’ve mentioned this enough times for Instagram, that you’ve probably figured out this little site has a lot of useful features.
 
In the optimization section, you can view a Tag Cloud. This is a collection of your most used hashtags for Instagram, compared to the app’s Top 100 most popular. Use more of the hashtags in the Top 100 cloud when they’re relevant to your Instagram in order to expand your reach.
 
Hashtags can be confusing. But they’re one of the most useful search tools on social media that increase visibility and engagement. Grab a piece of blank paper and start brainstorming.
 

Social media success lies in doing more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. So, how do you know what’s hit or miss?

Take a look at your social media analytics. These numbers are more than just likes or retweets. They’re the quantitative facts to help direct your social media content.

Once again, let’s assume you’re using the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
 
1) Facebook Pages Insights
 

 
This nifty feature is the most useful for anyone promoting their nonprofit or small business via a Facebook Page. The overview will give you some quick facts: Page Likes, Post Reach, Engagement, and then some stats on your five most recent posts.
 
Explore beyond just the Overview section under the Insights tab. You’ll find a lot of helpful numbers.
 
Out of any sections under the Insights tab, the three most useful are Reach, Posts, and People. Reach gives you a graph about post shares, likes, and comments, along with your organic post performance. In the Posts section, you’ll find a useful graph that tells you when your consumers are most active online by day and time, and what posts have the most engagement. And when you click on People, this is all of your demographic information.
 
It’s a good idea to take a look at the Posts section on a regular basis, and take note of which posts people are engaging with. Since it lets you know how many clicks something gets, you can understand your audience’s behavior even if they don’t hit the like button. You’ll notice that a post with lots of clicks has a reach that is higher. Take note of the posts that get more clicks and have a higher reach, and think about why it got those numbers. It could be the type of content, the subject matter or even the time of day it was posted. Then think about how you can do more successful posts, and less of the posts that get nothing.
 
2) Twitter Analytics
 

 
Ever want some numbers to go alongside your retweet notifications? Twitter Analytics has all of the information you could ever want. Updated daily, you can always check with how you’re doing at the top of the Analytics page by skimming the line graphs at the top.
 
With a month to month analysis, Twitter Analytics pulls up Tweet Highlights and a summary. You’ll be able to see your Top Tweet, Top Mention, and Top Media Tweet (which had a photo, video, or gif). The monthly summary will be your Tweet impressions, profile visits, mentions and new or lost followers.
 
3) Iconosquare
 

 
I mentioned this tool last time, but its so useful, I had to bring it up again. Iconosquare analyzes your Instagram account engagement. Look under the Engagement and Optimization sections to make the most of your stats.
 
Engagement is an overview of your most liked posts, where your likes come from, and the posts that receive the most comments.
 
In Optimization, you’ll find a graph on your posting habits, which filters have the best impact on your likes or comments, and a hashtag cloud.
 
We’ll talk about engaging hashtags in the future, so stay tuned!
 
Numbers are only as scary as you make them to be, even just starting out. Its okay to be nervous. Make some tea. We’ve got your back.
 

Social media is all about participating in the conversation. Initially, managing social media will be time consuming. But if you put in the hard work early – get organized and plan ahead – managing the wide variety of accounts will be a cup of tea.
 
Ultimately the social media tools you use will depend on the sites you’re using. However, let’s assume you’re using the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Each has a range of demographics, and can help you target a different audience.

Here’s some social media tools to help you manage each like a pro:

1) Buffer
 

 
With the smallest learning curve, Buffer is a robust post scheduler for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and Linked In. If you’re trying to promote your nonprofit or small business through a Facebook Page and Twitter, its easy to hook them both up and get to adding articles, images, or posts to your queue. Set the number of posts or tweets you want to publish per day, and Buffer will handle the rest. The browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari, make filling your queue easy with a click.
 
We’ll talk about analytic tools in a later post, so for now let’s just focus on management.
 
2) Tweetdeck
 

 
This tool is ideal for those that want to manage Twitter, but aren’t quite sure where to start. Tweetdeck uses a column system that is easy to customize and view all the information you could ever want, all in one window. After your home column, a simple set up is a column for notifications, scheduled posts, follower lists, and trends. Try out what layout works best for you!
 
Tweetdeck doesn’t have a limit to scheduled posts, so feel free to schedule some tweets well in advance. I once had a whole semester’s worth of posts queued! That was a huge relief off my plate.
 
3) Iconosquare
 

 
Ever want to know which filter you use that gets the most likes? What about most popular tags in your posts? This tool is ideal for managing Instagram.
 
Iconosquare analyzes your Instagram account’s content, engagement, community and optimization to provide important facts to guide your posts. Find out which filter or hashtag impacts your engagement the most in the optimization section. Respond to comments, or like posts from your followers.
 
To a nonprofit or a small business, the social media pool seems daunting to dive into. Its okay. Take a deep breath. We’ve got your back.