Social media has established itself as one of the most permeating yet divisive phenomena of our time. We can’t deny its influence on mental health and the erosion of real-world relationships. Even so, social media can be a vehicle for widespread positive change. Want to use it to make a real difference? Here’s how to start!
Define Your Cause
Before spreading your message on social media, you first have to define what that message is. Start by identifying the societal problem you feel needs fixing. Is it a global issue like racial inequality or an ordinance negatively impacting your community?
Spend some time researching the problem, then articulate your concerns and how you believe social media can help. You’ll also want to start thinking about which concrete results your efforts should produce. A donation drive should have a monetary amount in mind. The success of awareness spreading is harder to gauge, but shares, mentions, and lively discussions are all encouraging signs.
Pick Your Audience(s) and Social Media Platform(s)
Once you have a clear mission, it’s time to assess the stakeholders. Who will benefit most from our efforts? Which groups and allies does your cause resonate with the most? Knowing your target audience will help you come up with more impactful materials once it’s content creation time.
Picking the right platform is equally important. Facebook is reliable and has wide appeal. However, you’ll reach younger people more effectively through TikTok and Instagram, while LinkedIn provides the best opportunities for contacting sympathetic businesses and professionals. Which platform(s) you choose will define what type of content to focus on.
Develop Your Narrative
Motivating people to support a cause hinges on awareness, empathy, and the belief that their actions matter. The best way to satisfy all three criteria is to craft an insightful and engaging narrative that ties all the content you’ll eventually create and spread together.
Point out specific plights you hope to address. If you’re helping specific groups, tell their stories in an empowering and respectful way. Emphasize the need to take action and offer concrete ways for the average social media user to get involved.
Create Impactful Content
Now that you know who to target and how it’s time to reach out. It’s a good idea to study prominent online activists and NGOs to draw inspiration and guidance. You should also take note of successful social media marketing campaigns and the tricks they use to generate buzz.
Strive to make the most high-quality content your skills and budget allow. Its form will depend on the platform – inspirational articles for LinkedIn, entertaining short-form videos for TikTok, etc. The more diverse the content, the more people you’ll galvanize.
Cultivate a Community
If you follow the above steps, solitary striving will quickly turn into a collective effort! At this stage, it’s crucial to nurture your new connections and get to know the people who may soon become cornerstones of a broader movement.
Do so by engaging with them in the comments and encouraging them to contribute to your channel pages with their own input. Borrow another page from the marketer’s playbook by featuring user-generated content. People who feel their message is finally getting attention will be eager to participate more and bring their friends along too!
Get the Ball Rolling
The only way to enact change through social media is to get traction. One way to reach a wider audience is to develop a viral campaign, something like the wildly successful ice bucket challenge. Another is to reach out to influencers or prominent organizations with whom your efforts overlap and secure their support.
Once the general public and media get involved, your chances of succeeding will skyrocket.
Don’t Neglect Your Online Safety
It’s easy to get caught up in the momentum of a good cause and neglect cybersecurity fundamentals. Being passionate about your cause doesn’t mean you should share personal details or unconnected opinions with people you wouldn’t come into contact with otherwise.
People with the best intentions aren’t the only ones noble causes attract on social media. Some of your followers may spread misinformation or try to influence the discussion with their agendas. As your cause’s influence grows, so will cybercriminals’ interest in exploiting it.
Securing your social media accounts goes beyond tinkering with settings on each platform. Specifically, you should ensure the login details for each account are unique and protected. Password managers help by generating long, complex passwords resistant to hacking. They also come with multi-factor authentication which further prevents the possibility of tampering.
Conveniently, you can optimize a password manager for Chrome and other popular browsers via extensions. These let you fill login credentials in automatically without saving them to the browser’s local storage and endangering them.
We already mentioned limiting your exposure on social media. This includes leaving out personal contact or identifying information. There’s also an option of using services such as Incogni data removal to delete information that shouldn’t be out there.
Finally, you might eventually need to create a website and email address if your efforts grow into an organization. Be wary of phishing emails that disguise malware behind potential donations and other opportunities.
Conclusion
Social media can give voice to the oppressed, rally people the world over for worthy causes, and push for impactful changes. Now that you know how, use its awesome power to help make the world, or at least your corner of it, more humane.
