Using Social Marketing to Attract, Retain & Convert Supporters with the NAACP & Red Cross

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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Who says TikTok and Instagram are just for dancing videos? And more importantly, how do you create an impactful social media strategy to retain your supporters?

Haley Correll, Senior Director of Social Engagement, has helped the American Red Cross go completely viral on TikTok, amassing over 800,000 followers and 14 million likes! 

And in just 3 years, Trovon Williams, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications for the NAACP grew their Instagram following from 12,000 to 1.8 million by honing their authentic voice.

Both Haley and Trevon are breaking EVERYTHING down in this episode – from their strategies, to how they create content and hire their teams. This episode was previously recorded when I was moderating a panel at Classy Collaborative. I can’t wait for you to tune in!

In This Episode:

• How the Red Cross came up with a unique content strategy for TikTok to attract a Gen-Z audience
• Trovon’s secret sauce for scaling the NAACP Instagram account to 1.8 million followers in just 3 years
• The breakdown of Haley and Trovon’s social media teams (and why it’s absolutely essential to have someone focusing solely on analytics)
• Why storytelling is a fundamental attribute of success in a social media role
• Social media is no longer a “nice to have” – it’s a necessity, and it’s a reputational issue
• How the NAACP and the Red Cross are creating digital advocacy and retaining donors

Notable Quotes from Trovon

“We’ve made it a strategic point to be unapologetically Black in these spaces, unapologetically about our culture. And the engagement has been outstanding from our communities from all platforms.”

“Social media is no longer a nice to have – it’s a necessity. You are not doing your organization any justice if you don’t take advantage of the opportunity to expand your audience, communicate with your audience in different formats, and then also I can’t stress this enough the metrics associated with social, it’s so telling.”

Notable Quotes from Haley

“We don’t want to just be your Grandmother’s nonprofit of choice, right? We want to start creating relationships with Gen Z, with younger audiences. We want them to be volunteers and to donate blood.”

“I largely view social media as a dotted line to every other line of business. As much as we would love for every single person to go to redcross.org, at the end of the day, how many websites do you yourselves type in? Not many, so we have to meet people where they are. Your audience matters. And for social media, it’s a whole different ball game. You can’t treat it like a regular media strategy. It takes a certain set of skills.”

Resources & Links

Follow @americanredcross on TikTok and @americanredcross and @naacp on Instagram.

Check out the tools Trovon and Haley recommend for social media and digital strategy: Sprout Social, Rival IQ, Brandwatch, CrowdTangle, and Google Analytics.

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. 

Episode Partners:

We’re so grateful to our partners for this episode: Feathr and Hustle!

Feathr is trusted by nonprofits of all shapes and wing-spans — including Hiway 80, who used Feathr to launch new retargeting ads and email campaigns. The result? They reached 36,000 new people and brought in $13,000 in donations, 300% more than their original goal! Don’t rely on magic to hit your goals next year. Use Feathr to elevate your digital marketing campaigns and grow impact in 2023. Click here to learn more.

Meet Hustle’s Conversational Video Platform. Their person-to-person video and text message marketing suite empowers your organization with the tools you need to humanize communication, maximize engagement efforts, and build meaningful relationships with your audiences. Click here to try Hustle today & use code POSITIVEEQUATION to receive free MMS and video messages for your organization!