How to Create Social Media Content that Moves People

Nonprofits and other social good organizations have some incredible stories to share, from fighting child sexual exploitation to saving the environment. Social media is a great platform to engage your audience with your cause. But how can you produce social media content that actually drives people to take action?

Here are 5 tips to inspire your audience to share, engage, and take action for your cause:

1. Make it visual on all platforms.

Visuals are not just for Instagram and video sharing platforms: visual content performs better on all social platforms, including Twitter. Tweets with images receive 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets. An image really is worth a thousand words. It can draw instant attention, touch your audience emotionally in ways words hardly can, and make people feel compelled to share. So, find ways to use and reuse visuals to tell your story on each platform.

2. Be relatable.

Think about how your organization relates to your audience. Are you solving a problem that keeps them up at night? What language does your audience use? What pop-culture references can you utilize for your cause? We love us some Taylor Swift, so when we saw this ‘Shake It Off’ parody, we just had to share it from our client’s ‘Flu Near You’ account. This is a great example of an organization using pop-culture references to share their message. It makes something serious like the flu more fun and relatable, and our audience loved it!

3. Make it easy to share or take action.

If you want your audience to share your message or take a specific action (like making a donation or asking their friends to join the cause) make it easy for them to do so. Share inspirational, actionable content that your audience wants to share, in a way that makes it easy for your audience to share it with their followers.

Remember to add a clear call to action: TELL your followers what you want them to do. Here’s a great example of a post from Flu Near You – it is crystal clear what they want your friends to do and why.

4. Realize it is not about you

To tell a story that resonates with your audience, it should not focus on your organization. Your story is about your audience and, most importantly, about the victims of human trafficking, the people dealing with diabetes or arthritis, or the animals whose habitat is threatened. Tell the story of how your audience is impacting the lives of your beneficiaries, or how your audience’s lives are transformed by your community.

For example, Flu Near You reporters are tracking the flu because they want to help save lives, avoid getting sick, and get rid of influenza. They are not necessarily focused on helping scientists gather more data for their research.

5. Share the love

When your audience does engage with you, share the love. Show them how much you appreciate them. Amplify their voices by sharing their messages (e.g. retweet their tweet about you). People want to be heard and recognized, and many people want to know they are not the only ones who care about your organization.

Looking for more social media tips? Contact us, or follow us on Twitter.

Next: read our tips on how to create a stronger messaging strategy.

The post How to Create Social Media Content that Moves People appeared first on Media Cause.