Learn everything you need to know about social media appends with this guide.

Social Media Appends: Locating Your Supporters’ Profiles

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In today’s fast-paced world, social media is one of the most direct and effective ways to reach out to constituents. In fact, around 22% of social media users spend their time online to be a part of a community that values the causes and interests they care about. The vast online space allows them to connect with global, like-minded communities and interest groups by simply joining a Facebook group or following different Twitter profiles and topics.

If you want to take advantage of the social media world for nonprofits, social media appending can help you tap into those tight-knit communities!

Collecting data through accurate social profile appending empowers you to get to know your supporters, their ever-changing interests, and what drives them to support your cause. In turn, you can form deeper, more meaningful relationships that help donors, volunteers, and other supporters feel more fulfilled in their philanthropic lives by pushing your mission forward.

To help you start reaching prospects where they already are, we’ve put together this ultimate guide to social media appending. Here’s what we’ll cover:

Here at NPOInfo, we value effective data management. While our main focus is on other types of appends, we recognize that social media is an incredible resource when it comes to getting to know your supporters. When paired with other appends like those for email and postal addresses, it’ll help your marketing ROI skyrocket!

Let’s dive in so you can learn how to take advantage of the wonderful world of social media appends!

Get started with our social media appending services.

Let's review a basic definition of social media appending.

What is a social media append?

Social profile appending is the process of updating outdated social media information and pulling new details for contacts in your CRM. This allows your marketing team to do the following

  • Invite existing supporters to join your nonprofit’s groups
  • Encourage them to follow your pages
  • Dive into their profiles to learn more about their interests

Especially when stewarding deeper supporter relationships, being able to find them online will be incredibly helpful. Constituents’ interests constantly change, so you can’t rely on the same information they provided you at the start of their relationship with your cause!

Further, turning to a professional services provider will ensure you receive accurate social profile append results. They can extract the information for you, removing the time commitment for your marketing team.

All you have to do is provide them with identifying information, such as your supporters’ names, past social media profiles, postal addresses, contact information, and any other details they’ve shared with your team. They’ll locate as many supporters on different platforms for you and share that information with your team!

There are several benefits of social media appending.

Why use social media appending for your nonprofit?

Knowing where to find your supporters online has its obvious benefits, such as being able to interact with them and see what reels them into your cause. However, with the constantly-growing number of social media sites, it’s becoming more difficult to find supporters on every platform with a simple search.

That’s why we recommend turning to social media appending services. This allows you to pull supporters’ profiles in bulk by matching their information against a comprehensive database of social profile information.

Doing so will enable you to amplify your mission and forge deeper connections through benefits such as the following:

These are the benefits of social media appends.

Benefit #1) Tap into a global network.

There are more than 4.6 billion social media users worldwide, making it easy to find mission-oriented individuals who feel strongly about your cause. Connecting with your supporters online allows you to also leverage peer-to-peer marketing.

When supporters follow your pages, share your posts, or comment on your posts, this information will often pop up in their followers’ newsfeeds or notification centers, depending on the platform. This communicates that they feel strongly about your mission to like-minded individuals in their networks.

Benefit #2) Send targeted appeals and create tailored program offerings.

With social media being a part of most people’s lives, it’s an essential source of information to understand the likes, dislikes, and overall preferences of your target constituents.

By having your marketing team explore your committed supporters’ posts and likes, you can:

  • Create tailored outreach that speaks to their unique interests
  • Adjust your product offerings to fall in line with their values
  • Create different prospect profiles to guide who your team reaches out to support your cause in the future

Overall, you’ll be able to see who your supporters truly are and what they value, so you can make your nonprofit’s work a more prominent and meaningful part of their lives. In turn, you’ll cultivate valuable supporter relationships that drive real change for your nonprofit.

Benefit #3) Create an open line of communication.

Social media differs from many other digital marketing platforms in that it opens the door for two-way communication. Not only can supporters like, comment, and share your nonprofit’s posts, but your nonprofit can do the same!

Through your nonprofit’s profiles, you’ll be able to do the following:

  • Respond to and like their comments on your organization’s posts
  • Like, share, or comment on anything they post about your cause
  • Direct message them when relevant

This level of communication makes it convenient for them to stay in contact with your team and fold your cause into their everyday lives.

Benefit #4) Guide your omnichannel marketing strategy.

For one, a social media append gives you another outlet to communicate with supporters. However, you can also leverage the information you gather to inform your outreach on other platforms and make sure you’re delivering a consistent brand experience across multiple channels.

The benefits of social media appending run deeper than simply learning about supporters and asking them to follow your nonprofit online. Get creative with how you leverage your social media append results! Your services provider may also have a few ideas, so you can make the most of the information they provide you.

Benefit #5) Re-engage lapsed supporters.

A person’s social media profile gives you insight into who they are and how their values have changed over time.

If your marketing team wants to learn why someone stopped donating or volunteering with your nonprofit, take a look at their posts and the pages they engage with online. You might be able to pinpoint why they lapsed and find opportunities to connect with them based on their current interests.

Let's walk through different platforms you might append social media profiles for.

Types of Social Media Appends

Here's an overview of different platforms for which you might append social media information.

You might have an idea of which platforms are most important to your cause, but if not, it’s worth considering early on alongside your marketing team.

Depending on the social media appending services you turn to, there are different sites you might pull supporters’ information from, such as:

  • Facebook: Considering this is the most widely-used platform, you’ll likely want to append social media profiles for Facebook. Great for connecting with your boomer and millennial audiences, this platform lends itself well to local marketing and relationship building. You’ll be able to easily share photos, post links to your nonprofit’s website, post long-form posts, and livestream to your supporters.
  • Instagram: Particularly popular among Gen Z and Millennials, Instagram is a fantastic place to share photos with supporters, conduct polls on your Story, and tap into both eCommerce and organic engagement.
  • Twitter: Great for connecting with people between the ages of 25 and 49, you might want to append social media profiles for Twitter if your nonprofit often has news stories to share, wants to engage in discussions with supporters, or has a more playful voice.
  • LinkedIn: If you want to tap into more of a professional audience, consider social media appends for LinkedIn. This platform is great for learning about supporters’ professional backgrounds, identifying corporate giving opportunities, and sharing long-form content about your nonprofit’s work.
  • TikTok: Most popular among Gen Z, TikTok is great for nonprofits that want to entertain their audiences, share inspirational stories, and call attention to pressing issues that require a community to get behind.
  • Snapchat: This platform is most popular among teenagers and younger millennials. If you have a younger audience, consider social media appends for Snapchat! However, bear in mind that this platform lends itself more to paid and location-based advertising rather than organic engagement.

Before you start locating supporters online, you’ll want to determine which platforms are most important to your cause based on your target audiences. Then, find a services provider that will append profiles on those sites for you!

For instance, you may online want to append data for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In that case, you won’t have a bunch of extraneous information since that’ll only clutter your CRM. You’ll instead only append and only pay for the data you need, helping to maintain good data hygiene.

Here's how the social media append process works.

How Social Media Appending Services Work

When it comes to finding your supporters on social media, your best bet is to turn to professional social media appending services. Expert services are much more reliable than appending the data yourself or using a generic database you find online!

A professional team will help you identify only relevant accounts for your contacts and remove the ones that aren’t useful or are fake.

When you partner with a data append team, here’s how you can expect the process to go:

This graphic outlines the social profile appending process.

  1. You provide the existing data you have to your social media append team. This might include full names, email addresses, past social media usernames, or any other information that will help them identify the correct people’s profiles.
  2. They search their database of consumer and business contacts for your constituents. Often, this can be done by simply entering people’s names or email addresses. This helps them find profiles associated with that information.
  3. They return the appended social media profiles to your team. They’ll let you know whether they found a profile associated with each constituent and what their username is. They may even import the data into your nonprofit’s CRM for you.

It’s that simple! While NPOInfo doesn’t offer social media appends, we’re happy to match you with one of our partners in the data enrichment space.

As we mentioned, we also offer plenty of other data append services that will pair well with your social media strategies. Whether you’re looking to append email addresses, postal addresses, dates of birth, or phone numbers, we offer services that can take your multichannel marketing strategies to the next level!

Reach out to chat about our data enrichment services and how we can help you strengthen your customer profiles with insightful data.

Explore these additional resources to keep learning about data management beyond social media appends.

Additional Data Enrichment Resources

Social media is an incredibly powerful resource for learning about who your supporters are, why they support your cause, and how you can re-engage anyone who’s losing interest in your work.

If you want to more intentionally incorporate social media into your nonprofit’s marketing, social media appends will help you do exactly that! Turn to professional services to find your supporters online and reel them into your cause.

If you want to keep learning about data-driven strategies, the NPOInfo team is here to teach you all about effective data management! Get started by checking out these educational guides:

Get a free quote for NPOInfo's social media appending services.