How nonprofits can use ChatGPT to write social media posts.

ChatGPT and social media go together like two peas in a pod, like milk and cookies—they just work well together.

The fleeting nature of social media paired with the constant demand for new content means keeping up with with your nonprofit’s socials can be pretty demanding on your time. That’s where ChatGPT comes in. ChatGPT is a literal machine at outputting as many social media posts as you want.

Here’s how.

‍

Create a social media content calendar for your nonprofit. (Plan ahead.)

This one’s a big time saver—and maybe even the best piece of advice in this list. ChatGPT makes it almost fun to fill in your nonprofit’s social media calendar for the week or month. All you have to do is:

• Decide on the theme(s).
• Provide some basic content and context.
• Indicated how many of each type of post you want. (You can even ask ChatGPT to: “Generate a social media content calendar for the next week [Nonprofit’s name] on these topics: [list of topics].”

ChatGPT will use the information you give it to output some pretty impressive first drafts. (You might even be able to use some of them as is.)

‍

Let ChatGPT know which platforms your nonprofit uses.

As you know, each social media platform has their own set of guidelines that they update annoyingly often. Twitter has a 140 character limit. Or is it 280? Or 4,000?¹ Facebook has different suggested character limits depending on the type of post you’re sharing. (Organic posts are around 80 characters.)² LinkedIn is pretty open-ended, so is Instagram.

Telling ChatGPT which platform you’ll be sharing your nonprofit's post on lets it do the character counting, hashtag-ing, etc. for you.

‍

Ask for character limits.

The more information and context you give ChatGPT about your nonprofit the better. And, the good news is, you can ask it to revise its work. So, if you think the LinkedIn post it proposed for your upcoming fundraising event or announcement is just too long, you can ask it to rewrite it to fit within a certain character limit. It’s a simple as that.

‍

Let ChatGPT know who you want to talk to—current donors, past donors, etc.—and how you want your social post to sound.

ChatGPT is an impressive tool, but it’s also a lot of fun. So, let’s say it’s halloween and you want to share a terrifyingly awesome post to announce your nonprofit's haunted house fundraising event. You input all the relevant information into ChatGPT and ask it to propose a few social media posts.

Honestly, those would work as is. But, let’s have some fun and ask ChatGPT to rewrite the posts as Dracula.

And, if you need another version that addresses past donors directly (or you’re just less into halloween), ask for it:

‍

Use a call-to-action to direct donors to the right place.

ChatGPT is pretty good at adding a call-to-action (CTA) into your nonprofit's social media posts all on it’s own—it has been trained on a lot of past social media posts after all. But, just in case it forgets or you have a specific CTA in mind, you can always ask ChatGPT to include one.

‍

Create social media posts for your nonprofit from existing content.

Okay, this trick is really useful. Let’s say, for example, you need to share a recent article or study or even law on your social media platforms but, like everyone, you’re not a big fan of writing summaries. Well, that’s where ChatGPT comes in. All you have to do is:

1. Copy and paste the link to the article, study, law, etc that you want it to summarize.
2. Ask it to create a social media post (as many as you need on the platforms you want to share on).
3. Look over the proposed options.
4. That’s it.

‍

Share what's important about your nonprofit with ChatGPT.

We’ve been showing examples of the difference being specific and providing context makes throughout the article. But, it’s important enough to mention again. The more information you provide about your fundraising event, nonprofit or message the more accurate ChatGPT will be. Here are a few pieces of information you can include:

• The name of your nonprofit.
• The event information. (Date, time, location, etc.)

‍

‍

• A target audience. (Past donors, new donors, moms and dads, marathon runners, Halloween enthusiasts, etc.)
• A specific tone or style. (Write a social media post as Dracula or in the style of Ryan Reynolds.)
• A quote from an article. (Just provide the link to the article.)

• A character limit.
• The social media platforms you use.
• The number of posts you would like.

‍

Remember to use images.

This one almost doesn’t count because ChatGPT can’t really help you with this one. It’s just a friendly reminder that when you include images with your nonprofit's social media posts, it usually performs better.

‍

Revise. Revise. Revise.

Last, but definitely not least, revise the work ChatGPT proposes. Why? Because it’s not even close to being perfect just yet. The ephemeral nature of social media means typos might go unnoticed, but dates, facts, and other anomalies are worth correcting before sharing.