February 2025: Navigating Social Media Right Now
The past month has been heavy. While watching the new administration ravage people's jobs and safety in the U.S. and abroad, my little family got hit with the Norovirus, RSV, and COVID triple threat.
Meanwhile, our daycare closed with one day's notice—but a group of parents saved the day! We just got an article published about it if you want to read a local stick-it-to-the-man story.
I pledged to write this month's newsletter about social media because I knew I needed to carve out a few hours and process my own thoughts on the topic.
I'm a selective social media user. I post on LinkedIn 2-3x per week and read a few other posts each time I'm there. I hop on Instagram for a scroll each day to keep up with friends and the news. I've never had a TikTok account, I wish I didn't have a Facebook account (but have to for work), and I haven't touched Twitter in a decade.
I managed nonprofit social media accounts for many years. I even wrote Smokey Bear's content for a while!
Now, I focus on the paid side. Meta advertising is a big chunk of my business. I also run LinkedIn, YouTube, and display ads for clients. And I do try to keep up with what's happening on the organic side.
Tall coffee in hand, here are my thoughts on how a nonprofit might approach the rapid changes in this arena—both organic and paid.
A quick lay of the land:
72% of the US population is on social media. 68% use Facebook, 47% use Instagram, and it tapers from there. If you consider YouTube a social media platform, it receives FAR more traffic and engagement than all the rest.
In terms of who spends time on each platform, it really is a mix.
While the 55+ age group unsurprisingly spends the most time on Facebook, 25-34-year-olds make up the largest percentage of global Facebook users.
25-34 year olds are also the most popular demo on X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube.
On Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, you'll find more 18-24-year-olds.
Of all the platforms, Pinterest is the only one that skews wildly (76%) female.
The recent hyper-politicization of social media
Unless you're living under a rock, you know that Elon Musk owns X and is playing President of the United States.
You also know that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and majority shareholder at Meta, has buddied up to Donald Trump again. Last month, in partnership with Trump and without consulting their oversight board, Meta did away with third-party fact-checkers and adopted the same “community notes” system that X has. Tech experts are very concerned that misinformation and hateful content will surge on Meta as a result.
Around the same time, Meta announced stricter restricted advertising categories. I expect nonprofits will start to see more frequent ad rejections and audience targeting restrictions in the coming months.
Last but not least, last week the TikTok ban in the U.S. was lifted. Nobody knows if it will hold.
How should a nonprofit handle all of this?!
Tips for your organic (unpaid) social media program:
Be where your people are.
In a recent LinkedIn poll I ran, most nonprofit professionals admitted they don't know which social media platforms their donors use. Here's how to find out:
Ask them! Run email and social media polls to ask your supporters' preferred platform(s).
Check your website analytics. Which platforms are driving traffic?
Use social listening tools to track where conversations about your cause are happening.
Check whether your CRM has a social lookup functionality to find your supporters' social media profiles.
You may find that your supporters regularly use an established platform like Pinterest or LinkedIn where your nonprofit could be doing a lot more! On the flip side, maybe you've been posting on Facebook or Twitter/X every day and none of your supporters spend time there.
I wouldn't invest a lot in newer players like Bluesky or Threads just yet unless you have the team bandwidth to learn those platforms and how to do them right.
If you're in the common camp with an aging donor base and very few younger supporters, it's also important to be active on at least one platform where your future donors are (like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and/or Snapchat).
Work with the algorithms.
If your organic social content receives very little engagement, you're not alone. A few remedies:
Partner with micro-influencers
Post videos and carousels more than static images
Encourage your employees and followers to comment/save/share your posts
Optimize your post times
Post 3-5x per week if you can
Turn your top-performing posts into ads to reach even more people
LinkedIn has the highest engagement rate of the major platforms. If your nonprofit only posts on LinkedIn once in a while, this is a huge missed opportunity.
Bring back the “social.”
For some nonprofits, it makes sense to host a Facebook Group, LinkedIn Group, Subreddit, Slack Channel, or some other kind of free community where people can ask questions and relate about their shared experiences.
This was the initial purpose of social media, after all, and facilitating true connection is an investment of time that could pay off 1 million times over. Being the convener positions your organization as a thought leader and a friend.
Tips for your social media advertising:
We all need to prepare for Meta Ads to become (more of) a problem. Meta currently makes up 75% of social media ad spend and 20% of ALL digital ad spend. As advertising restrictions get tighter and content on these platforms gets yuckier, many nonprofits may need to take their ad dollars elsewhere.
Where is “elsewhere”? Depending on your cause and donor personas, it might be YouTube. TikTok. Snapchat. Pinterest. It might even be Reddit. Reddit's daily active users have increased by 47% in just one year, and advertising costs are comparable to Meta.
LinkedIn ads are very expensive, so I don't typically recommend them, but there are specific instances where it's very helpful to target people based on their job title.
Across all platforms where you have a strong following, I recommend running lead generation ads to capture your followers' emails and phone numbers. As social media continues to (d)evolve, this first-party data will matter more and more.
I'm going to write a future edition about SMS. For now, I'll say: Don't sleep on collecting phone numbers.
Top 3 action items:
This moment may not mark “the death of social media” but it's undoubtedly getting harder to wield social media for nonprofit marketing and fundraising.
If I worked at a nonprofit, I would prioritize these 3 action items in the coming months:
Conduct informal research to uncover where current and ideal supporters are most active on social
Based on the research, evaluate whether to scale back existing accounts or create new ones
Run ad campaigns to collect contact information from followers and people “like them”
Whew. I hope this was helpful. If it was, please share it with your colleagues and friends.
When social media platforms (and their leaders) get under my skin, I remind myself that good people still spend time there, so helping nonprofits make contact with those people is still a good thing.
Let's make this a conversation! Please comment with your thoughts/experiences.
Until next time,
-Caroline
