Digital Marketing offers a great number of possibilities for non-profit organisations.

However, the usage of some digital tools may require additional skills and financial means that are out of the reach for many non-profit organisations.

Luckily, there are plenty digital tools which remain free and easy to navigate.

We would like to present you some ideas of digital tools that are particularly suitable for charities (but not only) and can be quite easily implemented.

The usage of these tools will help you:

• Better understand your target audience and thus, give you ideas about new content;
• Easily and rapidly create quality visual aids for your publications;
• Save time and become more efficient in the management of your social media presence (without having to spend a fortune on it);
• Manage your projects online and cooperate on your content creation (while using a powerful, visual and free platform).

We have selected some of free Internet tools (or freemium) or those that require a slight investment, by means of which it is possible to engage in as many collaborators as possible.

1. Answer The Public

Answer the Public is a tool, which permits to make a research of key words on the basis of a compilation of search expressions entered on Google. It is great tool; however, you may need more information.

In order to be effective, digital marketing should reach the right target with a right message. Google research offers tones of information to answer the questions people often ask themselves.

In order to come up with ideas of effective communication, it is enough to monitor questions people ask themselves about your domain of interest (sector) and bring them useful answers. There exists a particularly successful tool which helps ‘read people’s mind’, and it is called ‘Answer the Public’. This website allows you to discover lists of questions retrieved from Google research according to the topic you have chosen. For example, let’s imagine that you’re doing a Google search on ‘make a donation to a non-profit organisation’ (with target location Belgium).

This is what you get:

On the basis of the search results, you see that you could create content which answers to such targeted questions as:

• How to make a donation anonymously
• Make a donation to a non-profit organisation supporting sports cause
• Donation and tax benefit

2. Canva : create quality visuals for your non-profit organization

Canva is an online platform which allows you to produce easily all kinds of graphic content.

Even if you are a beginner or need more practice at layout, you can still create very professional-looking visuals by modifying one from a bunch of recommended templates.

The only thing you need to do is to choose a background that you like and adjust it with your own logo, your font, your message etc.

Canva enables the creation of simple graphic content such as web banners or social media posts.

But you can also use Canva to produce more sophisticated content like animated posts, short videos, slides, ebooks, etc.

If you are running out of ideas for fundraising, charity event, awareness campaign (or any other action), don’t hesitate to check out Canva website to find a great number of inspiring templates.

Here is the overview of the platform:

3. OneUp

OneUp is an application that helps you manage the presence of your charity organization on social media.

Developing the presence of your organization on social media can be truly time-consuming. It is especially true if you have several social media accounts.

Considering the work it requires to publish posts, some charity organizations prefer to have profils on a limited number of social networks (or sometimes they neglect ones in order to be more active on another one).

The good news is that there exist programmes, which are simple to use, and which give you an opportunity to:

• Publish the same message on different types of social media at the same time
• Program to send different posts at a different time (which allows to publish a lot of posts at one time or to publish the same post several times).

The most popular computer programs are Buffer and Hootsuite.

However, these applications can easily become very expensive (especially if there are several members of your team that are using it).

If you are looking for a low-priced solution to manage the presence of your association on social media, consider OneUp:

OneUp allows you to publish on:

• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Instagram
• Google My Business
• Twitter

Advantages:

• OneUp is simple to use;
• One is one of the most low-cost solutions, with 12 dollars subscription plan (for an unlimited number of users) Free 7-days trial is offered;
• Integration with Canva graphics software;
• Opportunity to publish directly on Instagram;
• Opportunity to upload posts via CSV file (very useful, especially when you have a big number of posts to make);

Website: https://www.oneupapp.io/

4. Notion: a platform to improve organization process and collaborate with others

Create content and manage marketing campaigns require good organization and ability to collaborate with different people (who may be your colleagues or external partners). Perhaps you share documents on Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive already.

Perhaps you ask yourself if a list of volunteers is being updated? You are probably trying to find nice visuals to promote an event?

Like many other, you realize that sometimes it is hard to find files among a pile of documents that have been shared?

This is where Notion becomes useful. It is a convenient and dynamic platform thatcanbeusedto manage various projects online:

• Lists of volunteers, donors etc;
• Publication calendars;
• Lists used to manage projects and tasks;
• Etc.

You can create your own projects or start from an existing template:

Advantages:

• Notion is easy to handle;
• Notion is like a Swiss knife that allows you to do without high-priced and complicated programs (like CRM);
• Notion can be connected to other platforms such as Gmail, GoogleDoc, Salesforce, InVision etc.

Website : https://www.notion.so

5. Wave. Video : a tool to create videos in all formats suitable for social networks

You know well that video format works well on social media networks. However, making video scan easily become expensive or require extensive knowledge of video editing. Nevertheless, almost everybody can produce videos of good quality by using programs which help you adapt existing templates.

Wave.Video is a program, which is relatively easy to handle. It offers a special deal, which consists in opportunity to create 5 videos/a month (it’s already very good for a small or a medium non-profit organization).

There you will find a great number of video templates that can be adjusted according to your needs.

To customize your videos, it is enough to adapt your text and add some pictures (or choose pictures that are available in the database of Wave).

Advantages:

• Wave allows you to store your videos online;
• There exists an opportunity to collaborate with others to create a video;
• You can duplicate videos (to create new versions);
• There is an option to add subtitles to your videos;

Website: https://wave.video

Conclusion

Non-profit organizations may use different digital marketing tools to communicate effectively on various channels.

There is a great choice of tools at your disposal.

If some computer programs could be very expensive for certain non-profit organizations, there are others, which are much cheaper but still efficient.

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About the author

Tarik Hennen is a consultant specialized in Digital Marketing, based in Brussels. He assists corporate companies, charities and other organization in their digital transformation.