We’ve talked about how to expand your social media reach to drive awareness, engagement, donations, and donor retention. But when planning your social media strategy, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the day-to-day work of managing a social media presence. Fortunately, there are online tools that make utilizing social media much easier.
While many of these tools offer premium plans, we know that nonprofits must be careful with their budget. So, we’ve found the best tools at everyone’s favorite price point: free! These options are straightforward and accessible, helping your team feel capable of managing social media effectively without extra costs.
Canva
Designing posts that are right for each platform can be challenging. Canva has hundreds of thousands of templates, photos, and graphics available so you can create eye-catching posts that are perfectly sized.
Unsplash
Finding the right picture to capture the spirit of your mission and the need for your campaign can be challenging. If you don’t have a good photo of your own, and Canva’s library isn’t turning up anything, try Unsplash. They have a deep library of high-resolution and high-quality images that are constantly growing, and a great search engine, so you don’t waste time looking for the best possible pictures. There’s no licensing fee, just a request to display credit for the photographer.
Pixlr
Each social media platform has its own quirks in how it displays images. To avoid getting awkward crops on your image or graphic, you’ll want to make sure you size it for each platform. Once again, Canva’s templates will help with this, but if you’re creating something custom, Pixlr is like a mini-Photoshop with all the features you’ll need to resize, crop, and adjust the canvas size to get what you need for your social media posts. You can also touch up images, add layers, and do other more advanced tricks. Like Photoshop, the more you experiment with it, the more you’ll learn, and soon you’ll be an image editing wiz!
Hootsuite and Facebook Business Suite
Once you have your content ready, scheduling posts with tools like Hootsuite and Facebook Business Suite can help you reach your audience at optimal times, boosting engagement and visibility.
You can use HootSuite for scheduling tweets on Twitter. The free version only lets you schedule 5 social media posts at a time and limits the number of platforms you can schedule to, but you can save posts as drafts before scheduling them. HootSuite can also post to LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and other platforms and includes a mini-photo editor for cropping images to recommended sizes.
For Facebook and Instagram, you can use Facebook’s native Meta Business Suite. We recommend linking your two accounts to give both more access to Business Suite analytics and functionality, including scheduling posts to both channels. There is no limit to the number of posts you can schedule, and you can choose to schedule to both Facebook and Instagram with a single post or to either one.
Google Analytics
Finally, how did the posts do? Each social media platform has its own native analytics dashboard worth using. Google Analytics can give you deeper insights into how people land on your website or donation form, helping your nonprofit see the bigger picture and feel more in control of its growth. With GiveSmart, Google Analytics is a direct, easy-to-use integration available to all customers.
Each of these tools offers a fantastic way to take the next step in social media. As you try them out, they should inspire you with new ideas for posts. Progress at the pace that is most comfortable for you, so your team feels confident and supported in growing your digital presence.
At GiveSmart, we help nonprofit organizations create and manage successful digital fundraising campaigns, raise more money, and strengthen donor relationships. Request a free demo with one of our fundraising experts to learn, step by step, how GiveSmart can help set up your campai
