Apparo volunteer, Jennifer Hanly, Marketing Consultant and Founder of Connect Marketing Consulting, answers five key questions for nonprofits seeking to optimize their LinkedIn strategy.

1. How can LinkedIn help nonprofits increase visibility and engagement?

LinkedIn connects nonprofits with professionals, corporate partners, and potential donors who align with and support the organization’s mission. Sharing impactful stories, thought leadership content, and engagement-driven posts, can help raise awareness for the cause that you are working on, attract support (donors, volunteers etc), and build meaningful relationships.

2. What types of content should nonprofits post to engage a professional audience?

Best practices include sharing success stories, impact reports, industry insights, and behind-the-scenes updates in the form of articles, short posts with images, videos, and infographics to highlight your mission, showcase partnerships, and encourage interaction. Use ChatGpt to help create social media posts (it can help with hashtags too) for content that has been developed, this can significantly streamline the repurposing of existing content. Ensure that it still retains the organization’s “voice” – it is great for the heavy lifting, but can not replace the human element. Canva or similar can also help to create templates for posts, framing images, adding the logo or other imagery to help build awareness for the organization (visually).

3. How can a nonprofit grow their LinkedIn followers?

Consistently post valuable content, engage with the audience by responding to comments, and encourage employees, board members, and supporters to share your posts. Joining and participating in relevant LinkedIn Groups can also expand your reach. Tag partners and individuals in posts, this will encourage them to repost and or comment and expand the reach of the post. Look at other organizations in your network and see who they are following – are they a potential contact for you (from pure networking, support etc.)

4. How can LinkedIn help a nonprofit connect with corporate partners and sponsors?

Use LinkedIn to showcase the organization’s impact and align the mission with corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Engaging with company pages, sharing partnership success stories, and reaching out to key decision-makers can open doors to funding and sponsorship opportunities. Use LinkedIn as a way to research possible partners and the people that you may already have a connection with for introductions.

5. What are the best practices for managing a nonprofit’s LinkedIn presence?

Maintain a consistent posting schedule, use LinkedIn analytics to track engagement, and refine your content strategy based on what resonates most. Encourage employees and volunteers to interact with posts to increase visibility. Tag or collaborate on posts with corporate partners to increase the visibility of posts. For each piece of content, create a minimum of three posts, as the feeds on LinkedIn constantly move content down, you can not be assured that your post will be seen, use analytics to see when the best time of day is to post and schedule accordingly.