You can choose to tell the story via video (professional or amateur), a photo gallery, a blog post, an Instagram caption, and more.
If you plan to share the story on social media channels, a video is by far the most engaging and widely shared form of content. If you intend to write an in-depth blog post with photos, more planning may be involved than simply taking out your phone and pressing record.
Plan to collect the story in a variety of ways to give yourself options when selecting the channels on which to share it, which is the next step.
5. Choose Your Online Channels
Congratulations — you now have a compelling, gripping, emotional story to share with the world. Where you want to share it matters, because each online platform has its own etiquette, rules, and best practices. Gone are the days when you can just cut and paste the link into ten social media sites.
The story needs to be molded and formatted for each channel on which you choose to broadcast. The good news is that a great story can be repackaged and repurposed to reach even more potential supporters.
For example, you record a short testimonial from a client on your smartphone. That video file can be uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can embed it on your blog. The link to it can be included, with a clickable screenshot, in your email bulletin.
Choose the digital channels based on where you are already active, your staff capacity to manage, and your audience. Ask these three questions when selecting a new online platform:
- Is your target audience engaged there?
- Can you do something different on this channel? Can you add unique value?
- Do you have the staff capacity to learn the language and etiquette of a new channel, to create content consistently, to respond and participate, and to measure and improve?
6. Create Your Visuals
Each and every story you tell and share needs an accompanying visual, in the form of a photo, graphic, or video. (Or all three, if you are ambitious!)
Do a quick inventory of any and all visuals that you have at your organization. What can you repurpose and edit, and what do you still need to create?
There are many free and low-cost tools available to nonprofits for creating eye-catching visuals and video (no reason to pull your hair out trying to understand PhotoShop!).
Some of the most popular visual marketing tools are Canva, Animoto, and Exposure. Canva allows even non-techies to design formatted and perfectly sized social media graphics, blog photos, infographics, and more.
Animoto aims to help individuals and brands create short animated videos very simply — no video editing knowledge needed.
Exposure is a mobile-optimized online platform where brands can collect and share multiple stories around one issue or topic. Its beautiful aesthetic combined with ease-of-use make it an incredibly powerful tool for nonprofits.
7. Share and Promote Your Story
Getting that great story is just half the battle. Just because you created it does not mean anyone will go to your website, or Facebook Page, or YouTube Channel, to read or view it.
Sharing is the implementation phase of the campaign — where you have your story ready to go, and you need to get it on as many channels as possible for the most engagement and reach.
Use scheduling tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to make sure you are promoting your story while you sleep and work.
One expert, John Haydon, suggests organizing a nonprofit marketing or storytelling campaign using the 1-10 rule. For every story that you tell on your website and blog, publish ten social media posts and tweets.
The updates should be snippets or quotes from the story and a link back to the source. A link ensures that the tremendous effort you invest in collecting, crafting, and telling each story goes much further than a single blog post or email bulletin.
Consider putting some money behind your storytelling campaign by experimenting with Facebook Ads. You can promote a post on your Facebook Page and get more of your fans and their friends to see it, or you can create a standalone ad to reach even more of your target audience. Make sure to track the results, tweaking, and improving as you go.
One of my favorite aspects of using online marketing tools and Facebook ads, in particular, is that your target audience tells you if your storytelling campaign resonates with them. They will say to you via clicks, likes, shares, retweets, and comments so that you can make changes as you go.
EXAMPLE: The nonprofit 1,000 Days frequently uses Facebook Ads to promote its eye-catching pictures and stories, to draw people to the website where they can learn more, or sign up to get involved and make a donation.
8. Evaluate and Celebrate Your Success
Evaluation improves your storytelling campaigns. At the end of the campaign, reflect on the process and think about things you could have done it all differently. What worked and what didn’t work? What did you learn?
Did you achieve success? Go back to step one where you determined your goals. Hold yourself accountable and also pat yourself on the back if the campaign went well.
9. Plan Your Next Campaign
The content beast of online marketing and social media is always hungry for new stories. Build on the success of your storytelling campaign and use the momentum created to plan and carry out a new campaign.
In conclusion, nonprofits need to stop thinking that all they need to reach supporters is a great mission statement and an important cause.
Traditional marketing avenues are no longer enough to cut through the online clutter and motivate people to action. Storytelling puts a human, personal element into your marketing and creates a powerful way to deepen the connection with your audience, as well as bringing new supporters into the fold.
Julia Campbell advises nonprofits large and small about social media, storytelling, and fundraising.
She is the author of the new book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits.