4 Creative Ways to Use Social Media

When using social media to promote your volunteer abroad Crowdfunding campaign, the sky’s
the limit. We’ve already given you the basics on how to use platforms like Facebook and Twitter to help
you connect with potential donors. However, there are still plenty of other creative ways you can use to
reach a larger audience. Granted, many of these ideas are a little more work-intensive than just giving updates to a Facebook group, but I think you’ll find them worth the effort.

1. Create a Tumblr Page for your Campaign

Tumblr is one of the most versatile and user-friendly platforms that I’ve ever used- and it has a
great potential as a way for you to reach out to donors that you’ve never met. There are many
ways that you could use Tumblr for your Crowdfunding campaign, but it might be easiest to
make an issue-based Tumblr page. For example, if you are planning on volunteering abroad for
community development in Ecuador, you would want to make your Tumblr full of interesting
videos, images, and quotes from articles about the community needs in Ecuador. Your Tumblr
account should appeal to a wide audience- which means that it probably won’t be solely
about you fundraising to volunteer abroad. However, if you are able to insert yourself into the
conversation as an expert on say, community development issues in Ecuador, people are much
likely to trust your campaign and thus, donate a dollar or two to your cause.

2. Hold Google+ Hangouts With People Interested in Your Project

No matter how great social media becomes at connecting people, there is still nothing like face-
to-face communication. Using a video chat tool like Google+ Hangouts or Skype is a great way to
jump across time and distance to connect personally with an audience that it would have been
hard for you to reach otherwise. Your video chat session could be in the form of a presentation,
question and answer session, or even just a chance for people interested in your project to
talk face-to-face with you. The point is to be able to explain, face to face, just what you want
to accomplish with your volunteer abroad project. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to
convince a past volunteer from the project or even a member of staff to help you stress the
importance of your project’s cause.

3. When you hold events, use social media to amplify them

Though you will be doing the bulk of your fundraising online, you should try to add some
substance to your campaign by having events, whether they be real-life or virtual. Whether
these events are for the purpose of fundraising, letting your family and friends know about your
project, or even just raising awareness for your cause, use social media to amplify them online.
Attach your events to hashtags, Facebook events, or even video chatting tools to grow your
audience beyond those who attend your event. All of these virtual tools can help you get out
your message and track just how far that message is getting out.

4. Make creative content for your campaign- and push it out often.

Creating and curating content is probably the most important way for you to increase the
effectiveness of your social media Crowdfunding campaign. It doesn’t matter if the content
is a video, photograph, or graphic- you are going to need more things to share than just your
Volunteer Forever campaign page to keep your audience interested in your campaign. Creating
content doesn’t have to be difficult- it can be something as simple as posting a picture of you
holding a chart of your donations goal or even a map with the locations of your donors and
project. The possibilities with content are endless- use your (or your friends) creative skills to
make content that will explain your mission, present it in an interesting way, and connect you
to a wider audience. What you want to do is to give yourself multiple tools for reaching your
audience- and varying the way that you reach them. If you do create video or graphics, know
that Tumblr is an excellent way to host them so that you can post them on other social media
sites.