Utilizing Social Media To Help Your Business Give Back

Giving back this year may not look the same as it did in previous years. Volunteering in person may have additional barriers (depending on the state you live in). Getting your office together on a weekend to help the less fortunate won’t be as feasible. Attending a gala for charity is unthinkable. These activities that so many Americans take part in this time of year won’t be a possibility, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to give back. Social media is a powerful tool and if utilized correctly, can be a great resource in helping you and your business give back this holiday season. Here are 3 ideas on how you can implement social media to do good:

Giving back doesn’t always mean donating money. If there is a cause your business typically supports or that aligns with your brand, try finding content that you can repost to your profile so you can build awareness for the cause. Better yet, try creating content that adds value and can be “share-worthy”. Implementing a simple design, with eye-catching stats, and a call to action is all it often takes. By doing this, you increase the chances of other profiles sharing your post, which creates a snowball effect of their followers sharing the post. This will create good buzz for a cause many people may not have heard of.

Of course, there is no such thing as a selfless good deed, so your business will also benefit from this. Your account will look like a good community member, will see high engagement from all the people sharing your post (hello brand awareness), which ultimately tells the algorithm that people are interested in your content and will help your future posts appear at the top of people’s feeds. Of course, this isn’t the reason why you are doing this, but it is a perk.

Another way you can use social media to do good is to raise money for a charity or organization. Create a campaign and make sure to include a donation goal as people like to quantify how much their donation will put you toward achieving the goal. As for raising the money, there are many creative ways to incentivize people. You could match all donations that come in until your goal is met, you could raffle off a good or service (we recently did this!), or partner with another business to have them match donations. Whatever works best for you! Instagram and Facebook have a donation feature that allows people to donate right there on your account. They do take a small fee per transaction so if you have another form of accepting donations you like better, make sure to mention that in your post. Lastly, make sure you announce once the campaign is over how much you raised! This officially closes the campaign and showcases to your friends and followers the good everyone did by donating. 

We all remember the ALS ice bucket challenge. That is the textbook definition of a successful social media challenge bringing awareness to a cause. You and your business can do the same! Brainstorm with your team a challenge you could post about to benefit a cause your business supports. Challenges perform best when it has a simple ask. For example, take a picture with your pet and challenge 3 friends to post theirs to support animal abuse. Challenges are great because it encourages other people to post, which again creates a snowball effect of awareness for the cause. Whatever the challenge is that you come up with, we highly encourage implementing a specific hashtag so you can see all the submissions posted. With the challenge, we recommend adding a link in the caption of the post that helps meet your challenge’s goal (link to donate or a link that helps educate people on the cause). This is a fun way to do good as it involves challenging friends to participate as well.

We hope we’ve given you some ideas of how you can incorporate social media to give back this month. If you have any questions or would like to inquire about our social media services, please feel free to contact us here.