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Leveraging social media for marketing purposes can be a daunting tasks for both businesses and charities alike. But those who have managed to tame the beast have seen great returns on their efforts in terms of increased donations, new supporters and a huge uptick in brand and cause awareness. Successful social media campaigns can really turn it around for charities in particular, as we’ll demonstrate with some examples below.

#LastSelfie

Back in 2014, the team at WWF saw an opportunity to borrow from SnapChat to raise awareness of endangered species. SnapChat famously deletes pictures after a number of seconds, and this provided the catalyst for the idea.

According to WWF, Snapchat in a way “mirrors real life — the images you see are transient, fleeting, and gone too soon”. The social media campaign captured this idea of transience in order to raise awareness of its cause.

Don't let this be my last selfie, a WWF campaign to raise awareness of animal extinction — WWF borrowed ideas from Snapchat to develop its #LastSelfie campaign

The campaign was tagged with #LastSelfie in order to make it recognisable to supporters and crucially, in order to measure its reach. WWF report the campaign had been seen by 120 million Twitter users in one week, reaching their monthly target in just three days. Though the charity neglects to detail any financial returns on this campaign, it’s probably fair to consider it a success in terms of yielding social engagement.

#DrinkLessEnjoyMore

Though not technically a charity, the team at Bluegg supported South Wales Police in a campaign to raise awareness of drink and drug driving. The campaign, beautifully designed with engaging messaging, utilised social media, motion design and print.

"Christmas morning will never be the same", a campaign to raise awareness of drink and drug driving — The campaign could be found across social media and print, and promoted awareness of drink and drug driving in Wales

The #DrinkLessEnjoyMore public awareness campaign was used by all four police forces in Wales, has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people and has been run consecutively for three years. Well done to the guys at Bluegg for their work on this fantastic campaign!

The Ice Bucket Challenge

No list of effective social media campaigns would be complete without a mention to the wildly successful 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge that took the world by storm. The act of participation needs no introduction, and the challenge itself managed to raise $41.8 million in donations from more than 739,000 new donors from July 29 until August 21 that year.

Bill Gates was one of the many famous individuals taking part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in 2014

Why? Because the campaign was fun, utilised video, and asked people to challenge their friends to engage — a move that was key to its viral success. The challenge has been revived every year since, albeit with less uptake.

#KnowYourLemons

Breast cancer has 12 symptoms, and the #KnowYourLemons campaign sets out to educate the world in an engaging and provocative way. The campaign, by Worldwide Breast Cancer, is ongoing and can be found tweeting important content on a regular basis.

The campaign’s graphics are simple and easy to understand, and there’s even a supplementary app to help women perform self-examinations, get risk factor information and book a mammogram. The campaign has reached over 200 million people in 19 languages.

Your turn!

Crafting a digital campaign isn’t easy but by digging deep and trying to find creative ways to express awareness of your cause, you can be the next viral sensation to grow your organisation over night. Good luck!