Marketing, Marketing & communications, Direct and digital marketing

Charity Digital Marketing: seven practical tools

Our marketing team uses these tools, so we know how handy they are.

Whether you work in a large marketing department or you are a ‘1 person band’, these resources can help you improve your digital output.

Canva

Do you need to create simple social media graphics? Well, Canva has pre-set templates that you can use for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and everything in between. Canva is a really useful tool because it has a library of photos, stickers, and fonts that you can use to create a simple graphic for social media.

Canva works with charities to allow them to use their paid version for FREE! It’s called Canva for Non-Profits. It will enable you to upload your logo and font and create designs that fit your house style and branding.

Monday

Monday is here to help your team stay organised! Essentially, it’s a work-load management platform where you can plan, execute, and track projects, no matter how big or small.

Our marketing team uses it as a content planner, where we can plot and track our content ideas. Every member of our marketing team knows what’s coming up, when it’s scheduled to go out and who’s anchoring it.

Oh, and did I mention that this platform is seamless and super user friendly! For all you meticulous planners out there, you will love this. You can make it colour coordinated, add lots of labels, dates, project names, notes, you name it – it’s every planner’s dream.

You can use Monday for free on an individual basis.

Heatmap

Knowing what the most clicked on part of your website can be important, especially when gathering data. Heatmap creates a graphical representation using colours starting from green all the way to bright red to show the activity of users.

Knowing where your user’s click allows you to understand what they are interested in with your site, whether that is publications you offer, a blog or information that explains more about your cause.

Heatmap also offers its ‘Premium’ plan for free to charities.

DotDigital – Charity Digital

Set up your e-newsletter with DotDigital! Communicating with donors and beneficiaries is one of the most important things for charities and this platform makes it a whole lot easier.

It’s challenging to know where to start when setting up your newsletter. But don’t worry, DotDigital has pre-made templates that are ready to be used, so there’s no need to stress about formatting. You can also add your own images, colours and logo, so it fits with your branding,

This platform is an excellent tool if you have important news to share or just want to promote what you’re doing.

DotDigital offers a free account with support during the setup.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a scheduling tool for social media, which is particularly useful if you’re using multiple social media channels. As I’m sure you can agree, it can become a handful to remember to post sometimes – especially if you’re juggling other work responsibilities. What’s great about Hootsuite is that you can spend a set amount of time a day scheduling posts in advance.

Hootsuite uses data to tell you when the best time to post is – fab right?! It also produces analytical reports on your engagement, click-through rates and any increase/decrease in followers. This data is really useful for forming a social media strategies.

Hootsuite offers a free version where you can manage up to 3 social media profiles and schedule 30 messages in advance.

Pexels

Need images for your social media channels, website and newsletter? Pexels provides thousands of free stock images.

BuzzSumo

Know what’s popular and find out what people are talking about. BuzzSumo is a service that helps you know what content is popular by topic. Search content insights to gather information on what topics are gaining the most attention and where certain topics are being discussed.

BuzzSumo also allows you to monitor influencer information, seeing who are the people that others listen to the most. You can also set up a keyword alert, so you are updated when relevant content is posted or updated.