#GivingTuesday was started in 2012 in New York by the organization 92nd Street Y in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. Since then, the movement has inspired over 10,000 organizations all over the globe to take part. #GivingTuesday challenges consumers via social media to take a day, after the madness of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, to give back and support their favorite causes. This presents a great opportunity to engage with your supporters. Here are four ways you can engage these donors:
Launch a social media campaign
Social media is a proven way to get your audience’s eyes on your content and on your website (roughly 7% of our clients’ traffic comes from social media). By launching a social media campaign, you are focusing on the single topic and creating interesting posts to lead your potential donors to the donation page on your website.
To launch a social media campaign around #GivingTuesday you first must come up with a plan – something that works for your specific organization. Create a schedule around the posts (once a day for a week, twice a day for two weeks, etc.) for each social channel that you use and then create the posts beforehand so they are ready when you want them published. The posts should be interesting, direct, and they must include a call-to-action in the form of a link to your donate form.
Create a landing page
In concert with a social media campaign, it would be beneficial to create a landing page for #GivingTuesday. This would be the page that you link to from your social media posts, email marketing, or other campaigns, and it would live on your website. The job of a landing page is to focus the user on a single call-to-action: in this case donating. To do this, all aspects of the landing page should support this action including the content and design. If you are able to, include a donation form directly on this page. If your donation platform doesn’t allow for that then create a clear call-to-action to link them to your donation page and form.
Run a contest
Contests are an effective way to increase traffic to your donation form both from an organic search perspective as well as from social media and referrals. Running a successful contest works for a few different reasons: You are offering an award to a winner which entices your audience to participate, you are interacting with your audience making them feel included, and you are directing your audience to your website making it more likely that they will explore and ultimately donate to your organization.
Publish dynamic content
All of our clients experience increased website visits when they publish more blog posts, resources, media releases, or other dynamic content. Crafting dynamic content around #GivingTuesday can get more eyes on the content and therefore on your website. Include calls-to-action throughout this content to your donate page. Express the reasons you are asking for donations as well as how the donation would help.
#GivingTuesday is a great time to interact with your audience and ask them for donations. By effectively engaging interested people, you will certainly be able to increase your donations and help reach your fundraising goal for the season.