The power of social media for nonprofits is astounding, particularly for nonprofits in the second decade of the twenty-first century. Nonprofit websites have become many nonprofits’ online home base and online headquarters. And we can’t forget about the importance of social media to nonprofits’ social change efforts in the digital age, because social media has played a critical role in many of today’s most significant social change movements.
Nonprofits are increasingly using social media as a platform for advocacy and outreach, as well as as a tool for data gathering. As more nonprofits use social media, data on nonprofit social media use is becoming more readily available. Nonprofit organizations have a lot of options to choose from when it comes to free social media monitoring tools — and can narrow their search even further with the help of such free online platforms.
As a nonprofit, you may be looking to explore how social media platforms can help boost your organization and communicate with a larger audience. We have compiled the best free social media management tools for nonprofits, as well as some low-cost options for those on a tighter budget.
Social media has enabled nonprofits to further their cause and increase awareness of their services beyond what was possible even ten years ago. Today, organizations are able to reach a global audience with their efforts. Engagement is built into online communities. Don’t let engagement happen without you: use free social media monitoring tools for nonprofits.
What is social media listening?
Social media listening means how you track conversations on social media about and around your organisation or brand name, relevant keywords, your peer organisations.
Once you know what customers and supporters are saying about your organisations, you can then use these free tools to respond to questions, help resolve any issues, and respond to positive or negative feedback and comments. Social media listening is often the responsibility of social media and community managers or customer service staff.
Instagram Insights
What it does: Instagram Insights provides you with all basic statistics you need to make sure your efforts on Instagram are reaching the right audience – and producing the result you want. If you don’t have the time and resources to try out additional tools, or if you’re not sure Instagram is even the way to go in your marketing strategy, start by using Instagram Insights.
You’ll have access to free analytics once you’ve set up your Instagram business account – which you’ll absolutely need in any case. The app will show you total impressions of your posts, their reach, profile views, and website clicks, and also the basic demographics of your audience and their top locations. You can also see the times of the day most of your followers are online, which can be extremely useful.
Available options: Free once you’ve set up your Instagram Business account.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most popular and widely-used social media management tools, due to its ease of use, accessible pricing, and variety of features.
Key Features: Hootsuite allows you to manage your presence from all major social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube from one dashboard. They also offer integrations with several other platforms. Hootsuite allows you to schedule up to 350 social media posts at once. You can also schedule Instagram posts, including regrams.
My favorite feature is the ability to add the Hootsuite button into your browser, so you can schedule a tweet, Facebook post, or LinkedIn post with one click.
Pricing: Free for one individual user and 3 social profiles. Other paid plans available if you need to add more team members or profiles. Hootsuite offers 50% off on all of their plans for nonprofits.
Buffer
Buffer is my favorite social media scheduling tool, mostly because I love their fun and friendly brand voice, and their blog is the best in the business.
Key Features: Similar to Hootsuite, you can schedule posts on all the major social media networks, access analytics and reports, and use the browser extension to quickly and easily add content to your posting queue.
My favorite feature is the ability to schedule retweets that look great and pull in the original photo. If you are like me, you go on Twitter during certain parts of the day, and you don’t want to flood the feed with tons of retweets. Buffer integrates with Twitter when you want to retweet someone, so you can schedule it to be spread throughout the day or week.
Pricing: Free for one individual user per network on the Individual plan. Note that Pinterest is not included in the free plan. Like Hootsuite, paid plans are available if you need to add more team members or profiles. Buffer offers 50% off on all of their plans for nonprofits.
Later
If you are a heavy Instagram user and you want to build your community and engagement on that platform, then Later is for you.
Key Features: The most unique features are the ability to plan and schedule posts in a visual calendar view, which is useful to a visual person like me. You can also preview posts as they will actually appear on the platform. I especially love the Visual instagram Planner, where you can see your entire feed on desktop and mobile, which helps to create a consistent look and feel, as well as plan longer campaigns.
Pricing: Free for one individual user per network on the Individual plan, with a limit of 30 Instagram posts per month. Through the Later for Nonprofits Program, they offer a 50% discount on an annual subscription for our Premium plan to qualified nonprofit organizations.
ViralTag
ViralTag advertises itself as “the #1 social media marketing tool for sharing visuals.” if your nonprofit has active accounts on Instagram and Pinterest, and you are looking to create and share more visuals, you should check out ViralTag.
Key Features: Like many social media scheduling tools, you can manage multiple social networks, schedule unlimited posts, recycle evergreen content, collaborate with a team, and analyze performance. What’s special about ViralTag is their “visual marketing calendar”, where you can create and schedule multiple Pinterest pins and Instagram posts.
Pricing: 14 day free trial. Individual accounts start at $24/month. I could not find specific information about nonprofit discounts on their website, but since their competitors all offer this perk, I suggest contacting them directly to see if you can get a discount.
Sprout Social
If you want to explore your social media analytics, schedule posts across platforms, and monitor engagement, Sprout Social is a great all-in-one social media management tool. The platform allows you to analyze your social media data beyond the built-in analytics offered by Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also track engagement on keywords and hashtags, identify influencers, build custom dashboards, and more. Sprout integrates with all major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+), as well as other systems including Bitly and Google Analytics.
Pricing: Sprout Social starts at $99 per month, but they do offer a 30-day free trial period so you can give the platform a test run.
Canva
Canva is a graphic design program that makes creating professional graphics and presentations easy — no graphic designer experience required. With Canva, you can create a social media graphic (at any size or dimension) using your own images or any of the millions of themes, graphics, icons, and fonts in Canva’s arsenal. You can also save your creations if you want to make a recurring series using the same branding.
Pricing: While basic Canva is free to use, pricing for access to more features begins at $12.95 per user per month. Canva also offers nonprofit organizations free account subscriptions.
AgoraPulse
If you’re looking for a simple and easy-to-use scheduling tool, AgoraPulse may be for you. AgoraPulse is a social media management tool geared towards creating, editing, and scheduling posts, monitoring engagement, and tracking the success of your posts. It supports many of the major social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube).
Pricing: Monthly and annual pricing starts at $39, but AgoraPulse offers a free trial and discounts for nonprofits.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content and influencer identification tool for social media. It offers content performance insights, influencer identification, content alerts, and competitor analysis insights. This tool is great for A/B testing content to see what type of content performs best, who’s sharing and engaging with the content, and what’s working for other organizations.
Pricing: BuzzSumo starts at $79/month, but they also offer heavily discounted nonprofit subscriptions to BuzzSumo Pro.
Awario
Awario is a social media monitoring and listening tool which tracks every mention of your brand or cause on all of the major social media platforms and the broader web. Thanks to the baked-in analytics, the mentions are then transformed into data insights such as sentiment, reach, major topics, locations & languages, platforms, etc.
Best for: Tracking your reputation, finding opinion leaders and donors, researching causes and communities.
Pricing: $29/mo for the Starter plan, $89/mo for Pro, and $299/mo for Enterprise. Saves 2 months with a yearly plan.
Non-profit discount: 50% off Pro and Enterprise.
Mention
As the name suggests, Mention is a social media management and monitoring tool which scans social media for all the conversations around any chosen keyword. Along with these mentions, you get crucial metrics such as sentiment, influence score, volume, etc. In addition to this, Mention offers social media management features.
Best for: Identifying trends, interacting with the media and influencers, developing engaging content.
Pricing: Solo is $29/mo, Pro is $99/mo, and Enterprise is $450+/mo. All yearly plans save you 2 months.
Non-profit discount: 20% off yearly subscriptions.
Keyhole
Keyhole is an AI-powered social media monitoring tool. It offers non-stop brand and campaign monitoring, advanced performance predictions, and machine learning-based content suggestions. Similar to other social listening tools, Keyhole keeps you updated on any buzz around your topic, as well as key figures and trends.
Best for: Brand optimization, campaign monitoring, crafting high-performing content.
Pricing: Professionals is $199/mo, Corporations is $599/mo, and Agencies & Enterprise is $999+/mo. Annual plans save you up to 50%.
Non-profit discount: 10% off real-time data subscriptions (no historical data).
SmarterQueue
SmarterQueue is an all-in-one social media publishing tool. It lets you sort content by types, recycle evergreen posts, get unlimited content suggestions, and even analyze and learn from top-performing social media profiles. SmarterQueue boasts an advanced visual social media calendar to help you plan way ahead and manage your content effortlessly.
Best for: Thorough content curation, smart recycling of evergreen content, social history analysis.
Pricing: Custom and Solo are $19.99/mo, Business is $39.99/mo, and Agency is $79.99/mo. All annual plans save you 15%.
Non-profit discount: 50% off all plans.
MavSocial
MavSocial is a social media management tool. It offers content publishing, social media listening, one-inbox message management, and real-time performance monitoring.
With MavSocial, you can also track your engagement history, perfect team collaboration workflow, and fine-tune your publishing even further.
Best for: Discovering user-generated content, and promoting outreach.
Pricing: Advanced is $19/mo, Pro is $78/mo, Business is $199/mo, and Enterprise is $499/mo. Save 2 months by going for annual billing.
Non-profit discount: up to 50% off Advanced, Pro, and Business.
Why is social media listening important?
Social media listening is vital if you are focussed on building a positive brand reputation and being aware of what conversations are happening online that you can take part in.
Social media listening involves tracking usernames, keywords and hashtags, on one social media platform or across several.
Using the insights gained through social media listening, you can:
- Create more relevant content for your supporters
- Plan more targeted social media campaigns
- Improve your social media strategy
- Provide better customer service
- Create new products or services that your customers are asking for
Conclusion
Social media monitoring tools are a critical aspect of nonprofit marketing and communications. Organizations of all types can use social media monitoring to improve their online presence. With so many choices for social media monitoring, however, determining the best option for your nonprofit can be a challenge. The good news is that new options are emerging that are specifically tailored for not for profits.
There are tons of social media monitoring tools that can be used for a variety of purposes. As you might imagine, many of them are geared toward marketing teams and advertising agencies, since social media is becoming an increasing popular place for ad identification, lead generation and customer service. But some of these tools are actually really useful to nonprofits, as well!