Rock Your Social Media Strategy With Part-Time Resources with Ally Global Foundation’s Jamie Watson

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This episode is presented by Feathr – Nonprofits of all shapes and sizes use Feathr’s digital marketing tools to increase awareness, engage donors, promote events, and hit fundraising goals. Feathr provides a central place to manage digital advertising, email marketing, and peer-to-peer campaigns, as well as build ads, landing pages, and more. Click here to learn more.

Within just one year, Ally Global Foundation raised $1.8 million dollars to prevent human trafficking and help survivors find healing through safe housing, education, and aftercare. How? By investing in telling their story and building community.

I’m so excited to bring you this inspiring conversation with Jamie Watson, who truly shines leading their small, yet mighty marketing team. 

Jamie shares how she took a grassroots approach to building a monthly giving community, the creative sign-up strategy behind their annual peer-to-peer campaign “Move for Freedom”, plus her approach to building a strategic, annual social media plan.

Prioritize social media to build a community of support around your cause

From the get-go, Ally Global Foundation has always prioritized social media as a means to build momentum and excitement around the work they’re doing to prevent human trafficking.

Jamie leads their marketing team part-time with one full-time creative manager who takes her words, strategy, and direction and creates visual magic. They also have an additional staff member who plays more of a marketing admin role, supporting their social media campaigns, uploading Instagram Stories, and engaging with comments.

So how do they create their social media strategy?

Jamie sits with her team and they thoughtfully map out the year in advance, setting aside important dates like Human Trafficking Awareness Day, key fundraisers, and campaigns that they’re running. Participating in the conversation that others are naturally going to be having is key. Eventually, their planning trickles down to determining the “filler” content – anything meaningful (statistics, impact moments, etc.) that doesn’t have a specific day in mind that it has to go out by. 

With the full year in mind, they know where they’re headed and what their priorities are. If a follower only gets one takeaway from their social media posts in a single month, it’s important that their focus is clear.

I love how tactical this is!

Inside the creative sign-up strategy for Move for Freedom

The concept for Move for Freedom was inspired by movement. Ally Global Foundation asked themselves, how can we create an event that has impressive results that leads to so much impact, prevention, and aftercare?

Participants can choose any way they want to move, whether it’s paddleboarding, biking, running, or walking and on a specific Saturday in August, they’ll do that for two hours. Leading up to the event, they’ll launch their own fundraising page and raise money by asking their friends, family, colleagues, and classmates to support their goal.

In 2021, Move for Freedom had over 3,000 donors and 515 participants across Canada! This year’s event takes place on August 6, 2022. Learn more and sign up here.

To motivate participants to join last year, Jamie designed a calendar with a bunch of early bird prizes. For example, if you signed up within two weeks of registration, you were entered to win a Yeti cooler or later in the process, t-shirts were given to everyone.

Sharing stories of supporters and past participants kept their social media content strategy fresh, while also generating plenty of excitement around the event. 

The magic of SMS marketing and promo videos

SMS marketing is a powerful way to beautifully and effectively drip short messages and reminders to your donors and participants.

While Ally Global Foundation are in the early phases of testing this for effectiveness, they see text messages as a compliment to the email newsletters that they’re already sending out. For example, on Human Trafficking Awareness Day, they could attach a sharable social media graphic, or during the weeks and days leading up to Move for Freedom, gentle reminders could inspire participants to raise more funds or prepare for the big day.

Jamie also shares her favorite piece of marketing advice for a nonprofit that’s just getting started: invest in a quality promo video that shares your mission in a compelling way.

Having a video that you’re proud of builds donor trust, builds momentum and excitement, and defines the key messaging and language that you want to talk about. Your mission will always be evolving. But if you get to a place where it’s good enough and concise enough, you can use that for at least a couple of years.

And once you master your key, foundational pieces of marketing? Get into Instagram reels!

 

Notable Quote from Jamie

“Social media is how we build a sense of community amongst our supporters. We build momentum and excitement for the healing and the restoration and the prevention that’s actually taking place overseas and here in Canada.”

 

Resources & Links

This episode is presented by Feathr – Expand your reach, further your mission. Use Feathr’s digital marketing tools to increase awareness, boost online donations, promote events, recruit volunteers, and ultimately do more good. Learn More. 

FREE Webinar: The Top 5 “Set It and Forget It” Marketing Tips for Building Momentum During the Summer on May 19th at 2 pm ET | 11 am PT with Feathr’s President and Co-founder Aidan Augustin and Dana Snyder. Click here to RSVP!

Learn more about Ally Global Foundation and their important mission to help survivors of human trafficking, and check out The Refuge, their monthly giving program.

Move for Freedom takes place on August 6, 2022. Discover more about Ally Global’s fundraising event.

Watch the film The Twelve Thousand, based on the true story of one survivor.

Jamie suggests following @newstorycharity on Instagram, especially their reels.

Are you making costly mistakes with your social ads strategy? RSVP to my new masterclass, How To Attract Recurring Donors Without Posting On Social Media and learn my #1 secret for copy and content inspiration.

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you.