Should my non profit be on LinkedIn?

"LinkedIn is all work, work, work right? Why would I waste time posting there; surely the more outside-work channels are better for reaching my audience?”

There is a common misconception about LinkedIn that its members just talk about their jobs and industries, and that it's really only worthwhile to engage if you're looking to make a career move. This couldn't be further from the truth!

Let's break it down - as a non profit, what are you looking to do on social media? Most likely you are looking to increase your brand awareness by reaching new audiences, nurture your existing community and bring in donations/funding. So, how can LinkedIn help you achieve your goals?

Increasing awareness by reaching new audiences

Let's think about the potential life cycle of a LinkedIn post. Say you're about to launch a new fundraising campaign and you write a post explaining why this campaign is so important to you, tell a story about a beneficiary that inspires you and share some of the creative from the campaign. It takes you 10 minutes to put together because you live and breathe this campaign. You tag your colleagues in it and include relevant hashtags. Each of those colleagues and a few other connections like and comment on the post, which tells the algorithm that it's of interest and it pushes it out to a wider audience. All your colleagues share your post to their feeds and add their own stories, so suddenly you're getting in front of their connections too. Someone on the creative side of the industry likes your campaign creative and shares your post too, and now your content is in front of a whole new audience. Now, that's not to say that every post will get this sort of reach, but I hope this demonstrates the potential for how far your message can extend, for free and with minimal time commitment.

Nurturing your existing community

One of the unique things about LinkedIn is that because people post from their personal profiles you can really get to know the people behind the charities. You get updates on their highs and lows, their joy at releasing new campaigns or hitting goals and the challenges they share. This kind of content really helps people to get an inside view of the workings of your non profit and to understand that there are people on the ground really trying to make a difference. It's a brilliant way of building that know-like-trust relationship with your audience.

The other benefit is that LinkedIn is unique in that you don't need to create a video or graphics, or even include a picture for your post to grab attention. A strong hook, a focus on storytelling and relevant hashtags will get your content much further. This takes a lot of the pressure off when it comes to content creation, which is so important when you're juggling a lot.

Bringing in donations/funding

Reaching new audiences and nurturing them automatically opens up new opportunities to increase the support you receive. And funny enough, when you see a donation request post from an individual (rather than an organisation), it almost feels like less of a big ask, because you feel on some level that you know that person. After all, you see them every week on LinkedIn, so you know not just how passionate they feel about their cause and what they're working on, but also the fact that they're juggling childcare in the school holidays and recently got a new dog. It feels more personal.

So, while I'm not advocating giving up any social channels that are working well for you, don't disregard LinkedIn as a potential source of new audiences - there's a bustling community there of people interested in learning more about those around them. Remember that your focus should be on building familiarity, telling stories and putting human faces to your organisation; these are key if you want to make social media activity work as hard as possible for you.