Is your nonprofit on Pinterest yet? Pinterest can be a powerful tool for spreading your message, connecting with potential volunteers online, and creating brand awareness. Pinterest has more than 70 million users—that’s a huge audience that your nonprofit could be reaching out to! In fact, as far as social media avenues go, Pinterest is definitely in the lead: Pinterest generated more referral traffic for businesses than Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn combined. The power of Pinterest is threefold: it helps brand your nonprofit by giving it a visual identity, it spreads awareness of your nonprofit, and it encourages users to click directly from your pin through to your website. Start with these 6 steps to use visual storytelling on Pinterest to engage your supporters, increase your reach, and even encourage donations.

Strategize Before You Start

First, figure out what you can achieve with a Pinterest account. Pinterest is more than just recipes, crafts, and travel photos. What visuals do you have on hand? With whom do you want to connect? Choose a direction and a story for your Pinterest account. If you need some guidance about how to use Pinterest, browse the topics in the Pinterest Help Center first. Next, segment your goals into topics. Pinterest allows you to create up to 500 boards, but that doesn’t mean you should go straight for quantity. Start with a limited number of high-quality boards you first join—you can always add more if you need to.

Make Your Nonprofit Unique

What sets your nonprofit apart from the rest? Choose an aspect of your nonprofit that no one else can replicate, and create pinboards around it. Do you have celebrity ambassadors? Pin photos of them with captions about their histories with your organization. Are your t-shirts popular? Dedicate a board to your nonprofit’s merchandise. Are your fundraising events the place to be? Take photos or find others’ from the events and pin them. Does your organization have a rich history? Chronicle it with images from the past.

Create Unique Visuals

Another way to set your nonprofit apart on Pinterest is to create your own graphics. Start by using your nonprofit reports and statistics to put together compelling numbers that show how your organization is making a difference, and what users can do to get involved. You can use the same approach to unique content ideas for your blog, and generate photos, videos, and infographics that no one else will have.

Promote Your Cause

Because Pinterest users have a dynamic newsfeed as their homepage, you have a great opportunity to consistently update your followers what your nonprofit is doing at the moment. Create pins about events you are hosting, ways to donate, and upcoming ways to volunteer. Make sure those pins link to a webpage that offers a full rundown of the event or opportunity so pinners can learn more when they click through.

Pin What You Already Have

You don’t have to create brand new images every single day. Repurpose what you already have, and reuse what you generate day-to-day. For example, blog posts, white papers, event coverage, press releases, and employee bios are all things that you already have or are creating. Once they’re up on your website, just pin them to your Pinterest, too!

Reach Out to Others

The best thing about Pinterest is that it allows you to actively engage with users. To do this, follow, comment on, and repin from organizations and influencers in your field of interest so your pins will reach more people.

How have you used Pinterest to leverage your nonprofit? Want to read more about nonprofits and social media strategies? Let us know in the comments sections below!