Why is Digital Branding Important for a Charity?

Unlock the Power of Digital Branding to Transform your Charitable Organisation! Why is Digital Branding Important for Charities/Voluntary Organisations?

We just returned from a trip abroad and one thing stood out for us, that thing my grandmother always said. Show me your company and I will tell you about your life journey. And how you show up and why that impacts other people. I am talking about consistent and congruent digital branding that works. 

 

Why? Well, I have been showing up on social media and digital streets since 2014 with content, and value ideas, tips, and hacks that work for business owners in the digital space.  Almost everywhere we went, someone came up to me and said they loved my content or knew me from somewhere… Social Media? Ding ding

 

We have thousands of Facebook Videos and more on our YourTube Channel. More recently we post Tik Tok videos and IG Stories/reels. All this content is meant to cover the 3Es of digital branding success: 

• Educate
• Empower
• Entertain

Over the last 2+ years, we have been working with various voluntary organisations and charities; many of them think they do not need an online presence, despite covid-19 and the subsequent global lockdowns!

 

Still, a few did catch the vision and decided to get websites built and some lackluster social media profiles that have inconsistent content posted as and when it suits… Or maybe when someone has a moment to breathe and post.

 

Usually, such posts do not serve these amazing organisations, serving humanity in the trenches.

 

So, today’s article is all about: “why digital branding is important for charities?”  So, let’s go:

 

 

Unlock the Power of Digital Branding to Transform Charities!

Digital branding is an important tool for charities and voluntary organisations to use to spread their message and connect with their audience.

It is also a pretty essential strategy to create or showcase your reach and impact to stakeholders, potential donors, and funders.

Let’s unpack this s’more…

 

Digital branding can help charities/voluntary organisations reach large numbers of people quickly and cost-effectively. After all, it’s the world wide web, right?

 

Proper digital branding can and will also help you raise awareness of your cause, engage with supporters, and build trust and credibility.

 

When done properly, digital branding can also help your voluntary organisation to track your progress and measure the success of your campaigns on and offline. Finally, digital branding allows charities to connect with potential donors and encourages people to donate and become involved in the cause.

 

For example: if you, for instance, run a Facebook campaign promoting your upcoming charity run. Maybe even put some ads dollars behind it with a proper giveaway. Your target is to attract runners from a specific demography so you target your campaigns and use the right keywords, hashtags, and lookalike audience.

 

You could attract both participants and stakeholders like companies supporting the cause and even encouraging their staff to participate.

From that campaign, you could attract match funding for another run or the cause for which the charity run campaign was carried out. Plus, you get to attract and receive more referrals of beneficiaries or people in need of your services.

See how that works?

So, by utilizing digital branding, charities can create a strong and unified message that resonates with their target audience. 

Don’t ever let your organisation down by not keeping an eye out on your Digital Brand PR aka brand reputation

But what is Digital Branding for Charities?

We hear you asking. And it is simple as this:

Digital branding is the planning, crafting and development, of your brand online.

It can be done via a mix of digital marketing tools, resources, and tactics like a website build, subscription or even free apps, social media marketing, and content development like video content.

All the above must follow a clear strategy and plan or you miss the target way off and feel like Billy-no-mates online even as you work wonders in your local communities.

By the way, you can download our complimentary Digital Marketing strategy today.

What I like about it is it is downloadable and amendable to suit/fit your exact brand needs and goals. Go a step further and get the pro-strategy and you get to take your brand to a whole new level with professional support from K-web Social.  Download It Now

 

Why get a professional in, especially if you are new?

Simple, you want to start as you intend to carry on. DIYing everything means waiting for your results as you try out various ways to get your beneficiaries, funders, donors and stakeholders’ attention. And even buyers. None of them are quite fully developed — very frustrating! 

 

Yes. Some charities and voluntary organisations also sell merchandise, and run charity shops or even full-blown commercial enterprises to raise funds for their causes. For instance, Support for Action and Women’s Network – SAWN runs a Furniture bank in Oldham.

The British Red Cross, Bernardo’s, etc have charity shops all over the UK. You too want more customers for your charitable cause, right?

Then, get your brand defined professionally, and get your digital brand identity clear. That will in turn deliver a strong digital presence that attracts desired end goals. The name of the game is consistency and congruence.

“A strong brand is congruent across the various digital platforms.”

We are talking colours, fonts, logo, graphics, and messaging. All these matter for various reasons that we will touch on briefly.

 

Brand Congruence: People are on their digital gadgets almost 24/7. During lockdown 66% of the world population woke up to the fact that they needed to get online to stay connected and relevant.  So, the average internet user spends 60%+ of their time online, especially on social media. Is your messaging touching their pain points or desires?

Are your colours and fonts recognisable by your target audience or are you using any old colour and font any day?

 

Look at that congruence; the colour palette, use of our logo, and font uniformity on our Facebook page content thanks to 99Social! The same goes for how all the voluntary organisations we work with show up, for example below.

You might be thinking, well you know what you are doing, where does a young charity or voluntary organisation without an effective digital branding strategy start?

 

 

How to Create a Digital Brand for Charities – Beginners

Creating a digital brand can be easy and rewarding if you know the basics. And we are going to share with you these.

1. Decide on your charity/voluntary organisation or brand’s purpose, values, and message simply by answering these questions:

• What does your charity/voluntary organisation do?
• Who do you do it for?
• Where do you do it?
• What are your charity’s values?
• Why does your charity/voluntary organisation matter? In other words, what benefits/results do your users/beneficiaries get when they are impacted by your organisation?

2. You’ll also want to have a unique logo, name, and colour scheme to visually represent your brand. Don’t worry, or allow yourself to be stuck on this step. These can and will change with time and brand growth. You can have a professional logo designed for you by a professional for as low as £45

3. Once you have the above elements in place, it’s time to build your presence online. We always say, start by creating your mothership: a website.

Or revamp and optimise your existing one via a local SEO package that will help raise your digital presence in the most effective way we know.

Your website should give your audience a great user experience, meaning? It should be uncluttered and easily navigable, especially for mobile devices. According to Google, over 80% or online users access websites via their mobile devices.

As shown before, use a colour scheme that complements your logo and brand’s colours plus fonts that are easy to read. Keep an eye on links, broken links cause SEO wahala challenges!

 

Your primary website and social media aim among others must be to BUILD A LIST of email subscribers and fan base.

 

And despite the huge leaps and bounds of social media reach for many, in our humble opinion you should be moving people from social, back to you your website, and right on to your causes on or offline.  The best way to do that is via your email campaigns. In other words, you should be inviting your audience to subscribe, and give you their email so you can keep them abreast of

• your good work,
• projects,
• events,
• reviews,
• campaigns,
• Ask for their views, and call to donate…

Emails still work wonders when it comes to building that relational capital online. So do write emails that are easy to read, contain images, and always have a call to action.

Not forgetting GDPR as a data controller, right?

 

 

What Else?

4. Then create 2-3 social media accounts or optimise your existing ones. We genuinely recommend you get someone to do the above for you. Otherwise, you could be chasing your own tail. Understand that your charity and voluntary organisation cannot afford to be without a social media presence, especially if you want to build a strong brand identity and digital presence.

You can genuinely create 1 piece of content and cross-promote it online using various images. We use this tool to resize our images for various social platforms and also scheduling and managing our social media accounts and track users’ engagement with our posts. You could do the same.

5. Then, develop and post content regularly to engage your audience and grow your following. Again, we know how busy you are so much that you barely have a moment to spare for content development. And take it from a pro, you want content that lifts your brand image and message to the right people. Content that speaks your message and serves your brand growth. And for as low as the cost of a family meal out, you can have several pieces of content created for you by Ghostwriters.

Oh no, they are not only for celebrities and loaded peeps. Your charity can get a ghostwriter or even a social media manager to create the content you deserve to reach the audience that is praying for your support to show up. Or for the funder itching to give back to a cause like yours.

 

Create content that will raise your organisation’s credibility to those who may not know about it. You can use blog posts, Video content via TikTok, Stories, YouTube you could share tips, how-to videos, recipe ideas, check-lists, Cheatsheet, audio content lime podcasts and other content to bring more people into your brand know-how and fold.

 

Word to the wise: if you think pumping out content and waiting for the results is all you have to do, you’re 15yrs late to the table. Why?

 

6. While content is the appetizer, content promotion and marketing are the main menu.

So, you need a solid content marketing strategy – how often will you post and where will you promote your content?

 

A solid SEO strategy – Incorporate local whitehat SEO to boost/raise your website rank/reach online and get more of that targeted digital traffic to your real estate for better/faster results.

 

I would even go as far as saying that you could invest in some digital Ads especially if you sell some merchandise as a means of raising income for your causes. Well-crafted and optimised social media and google Ads will get your products and inventory in front of more eyeballs and hands.

 

7. Finally, make sure you’re listening to your audience, beneficiaries, stakeholders, and customers, engaging with them, and responding to their feedback to keep your charity/brand up-to-date and relevant.

 

Truly, with the right approach, you can easily create an effective and impactful digital brand for your voluntary organisation and/or Charity. This will support you in your efforts to increase interest in your good works, and cause, build trust between your organisation and target audience as well as potential stakeholders, donors, and funders. All these will in turn cause more people to share your good works, sing your charity praises and attract more of what you are looking for in your digital brand – we call it brand loyalty.

 

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Julie Syl Kalungi

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