Five Tips to Ramp Up Your Nonprofit's Fanpages

Your nonprofit may not be raising much money off of Facebook, but fanpages are useful tools in helping nonprofits build community with their supporters. Here are five tips that any nonprofit can utilize to drive up engagement via fanpages.

Provide links to additional resources

Your nonprofit is competing with many other Facebook user updates, fanpages, groups, etc so get to the point fast. Provide links to additional resources so fans can click to read more if they are interested in learning further details.

Take advantage of polls and contests

Nonprofits typically use Facebook fanpages to post the latest news about their organization’s issues and campaigns but often forget that people in online social networks like interactives such as taking a poll or participating in contests.

Be responsive

Social networks were meant to be “social” so make sure your nonprofit is truly engaging your supporters by having two-way (not one-way) conversations. Carve out time to respond to supporter’s comments, questions, thank them, etc. At the end of the day, social networks is about building relationships.

Cross promote

Does your nonprofit have an active presence on Twitter, MySpace, or LinkedIn? Make sure those other social networks are prominently highlighted on your fanpage. Chances are, fans are part of those social networks and can join you there too.

Boost Your Nonprofit's SEO. Secure a Vanity URL

Brand your nonprofit on Facebook by securing a vanity url. For example, Planned Parenthood secured the obvious url http://www.facebook.com/PlannedParenthood which is the perfect url when users are searching for them on Facebook. Over 20,000 Facebook pages have a vanity url.