Deep-dive: What Works on Tušti narvai Social Media

Over the years, Tušti narvai had quite a few successful fundraising or other types of campaigns that generated results from social media (paid ads and organic posts). 

For example, in the End of Year 2025 campaign, we got 210 regular donors for 80.80 euros per donor (including taxes), and in the End of Summer campaign, 102 regular donors for 68.96 euros per donor (including taxes). 

Here are the things we learned from all of these campaigns that help to achieve our set goals and make our social media useful 🔥⬇️

For our social media to work, we have to post high-quality content (both organic and paid). That’s why we have requirements for the content we share. It’s not always possible to meet every requirement below, but if our content meets all of them, it has a better chance of succeeding and prompting people to take the action we want.

6 requirements for good content: 

1. Newsworthy or entertaining (or both)

There should be a reason for a person to consume your content. It should bring them some added value, so they'd stop and engage with your content. It's very important to ask yourself if the content you are planning to share will have something new or entertaining for your audience. If not, the content probably will not catch their attention.

2. Should make people feel emotions

Emotions drive people's actions. If your content doesn't bring out any emotions (either negative or positive), people will not take the action you want.

3. Story to tell

Stories paint a picture for people and help to create the emotions that lead to actions. A content with a clear story will connect and stay with your audience more than a post without a story.

4. Easy & short text

The text of your post, ad, or reel should be easy to read and understand. The text can be longer if there is a story you need to tell, and it is not just empty words, but keep the sentences short. The good tip for crafting your text: it should be understandable to a five-year-old or your grandma.

5. Great visuals

Great visuals are not only high quality and emotional, but they also clearly connect with the topic you're telling. Always try to find visuals that connect and add to the story you're telling, bring out emotions, and help create a cohesive image in people's heads.

6. CTA

A call to action is a must for any post or ad. If you tell a good story that brings out people's emotions, they will have an urge to do something about it, and you can't leave them hanging. That's why you need to give them a tool to take that action: sign a petition, become a donor, share a post, comment their opinion, or something else.

Here is an example of the post that matches all the requirements ⬇️ This post is a bit older, but at the time when it was posted, it organically gained a lot of signatures for a petition, so we also boosted it (sadly, I can't find an exact number of signatures it generated, but it was really successful).

HORSES BEATEN BEFORE A LONG AND PAINFUL SLAUGHTER

In the slaughterhouse, the horse stands in a narrow tunnel. He watches as a worker drives the horse in front of him into the pen. He flinches when he hears a loud bang, and the horse in front of him falls to the ground.

he realizes that now it is his turn. He is afraid, so he does not take a single step forward. Suddenly, he feels a strong blow to his back. Then a second, and a third. He has nowhere to go, so he finally runs into the pen. He sees the worker reaching out his hand. He feels something being pressed against his forehead. And then he hears another shot.

The pneumatic gun used to stun horses is not designed for horses, so the horse remains conscious. He feels himself being hung by his legs. He feels a knife piercing his throat. He feels hot blood flowing from his slit throat. Finally, he loses consciousness.

This is the fate that awaits every horse that ends up in a slaughterhouse.

Do you agree that such noble animals should not end their lives in a slaughterhouse? Sign the petition for laws that protect animals.

Most people may already know these requirements well, but after working for a long time, these principles can be forgotten, so it is incredibly important to remind yourself of them, and when the content isn't working, to step back and take a look if your content meets the requirements and other communication principles that your organization has. 

To have a successful campaign on social media, preparation is the key. Here is what we do before launching a new campaign on our social media:

• We establish the core message that we will communicate throughout the entire campaign on social media, as well as in other channels.

• We lay out a clear plan for posts and ads (what goes out and when, in line with the overall plan of the campaign).

• We set goals and benchmarks for the maximum we are willing to spend per donor/email/signature/contact. Usually, we decide that based on the results and prices of our previous campaigns. 

• We prepare ads in different formats before the campaign launches. The more different ad formats we have, the greater the chance that more people from our audience will find the ad that captures their attention. Usually we make 6-8 ads of one format.

Examples of different formats of ads in our current campaign asking people to donate 1,2 % of their personal income tax (all of these concrete examples are generating good results so far, they cost us less than 15 euros, which is our benchmark, per exit to the platform where people can make their tax donation) ⬇️

Examples of different video ad formats we use ⬇️

Raw footage video  (147 exits to the platform for 12.70 euros at the moment)

Contrast video (14 exits to the platform for 15.30 euros, so we already turned it off)

Video with the head of Tušti narvai where she speaks about a specific problem (59 exits to the platform for 12.08 euros at the moment)

❗️NOTE❗️ Usually, ordinary and statement ads work the best for us when it comes to fundraising. But we still try to add new and different formats so our audience wouldn't get too fatigued with the same ads, especially during longer campaigns on social media. Even though a bigger portion of the other format ads do not work, the few that end up working bring equally good results.

• We prepare a document with extra ideas for ads in case the already prepared ads don't work. This is a lesson we learned the hard way. Last year, we ran a tax campaign during which we tested many different ads, but they were all extremely similar: the same format, similar wording, and so on. We could see that things were no longer working, but we had no other options, simply because we had never created ads of any other type before, aside from video. That's when we decided to create a document with ad ideas that we keep adding to, so that when a situation like this arises again, and nothing is working, we could immediately grab a new idea and try it, rather than burning time while searching for something new.

• For each post and ad we create a separate UTM link and add it to a tracker where we monitor visitor numbers. We do not rely on Meta's results, as they are very often inaccurate.

• Calculate the preliminary daily ad budget in advance. Usually, when you have a goal, a benchmark, and know how long you will need to run the ads, it is not difficult to do. We divide our overall goal into daily goals, then multiply that daily goal by our maximum benchmark we are willing to pay for the results, and that's it. You can also do it like this if you have a time period and an overall ad budget for the whole duration of the campaign, but no clear goal. Of course, you modify the budget later on depending on the situation and the actual price of the results, but this is a good starting point if you don't know how to divide your budget at the start. 

Here are the key things we do during our campaigns to be on track, react quickly, and reach our goals: 

• We fill in our ad statistics sheet every single day. We record the overall daily statistics as well as the individual statistics for each ad. This does take time, especially when you have several dozen ads running, but it is the only way to clearly see which ads are costing more than you are willing to pay, which ones aren't working, which ones Meta isn't favouring, and which ones need to be turned off. This way, we know that we are not burning our money away, and can make quick and informed decisions. 

Example of our statistics sheets during End of Year 2025 campaign ⬇️

• We base all our decisions on data. We check whether an ad is costing more than our benchmark. If we don't have a benchmark, we A/B test ads against each other and keep the best-performing ones. That said, having a benchmark is really helpful in understanding how your campaign is going and whether you can increase the budget or you already need to lower it.

• Throughout the campaign, we launch new ads when we notice that existing ads are becoming more expensive (we put them in the ad plan before the start of the campaign and have them ready in advance). This is especially important for campaigns running over several months.

• We try to make use of things happening around us in the real world during the time of the campaign: the recent case of animal abuse, mistreatment, or some politician saying something for/against animals. We try to incorporate it into our communication on social media as it livens up and adds relevance to the campaign.

• We boost all the posts connected with the campaign. With the way the algorithms work, you don't know the full potential of the post till you boost it. And really often they bring in even better results than ads (especially the posts telling concrete stories about animals suffering or cruel practises).

• We change and experiment with different audiences during the campaign if we see that ads are underperforming and the original audience is not responding. Even if everything is running smoothly, we try to release some ads to the audiences we haven't shown anything to before.

• We interact with followers and manage our comments. This helps to boost engagement and is one more way to ask people to take action directly, if they comment something positive. Otherwise, we try to keep our comment section presentable, as anyone can open it and create their opinion about our organisation and the problem we are talking about.

• We use urgency, scarcity, and social proof at every given chance during our campaign. It helps to push people to take action now. We use posts, ads, stories, and messages on the Instagram channel for it.

Examples of different formats of ads we use for urgency from different campaigns ⬇️

❗️NOTE❗️ Overall, when we have a deadline approaching, or only a few people are missing from our goal, we post text posts to Facebook about it and boost them. They pretty much always generate really good results and often are cheaper than other ads. Their format screams urgency, so it really works well for things like that.

The most important thing after the end of your campaign on social media is to analyse results, see what has worked and what hasn't. Here is how we do it:

• We create a sheet with the cheapest/most expensive ads and posts, as well as the ones who brougt in the most donors or achieved some other results we need. This type of sheet is super helpful when preparing for your next campaign: you can clearly see what pieces of content work and what you can repeat.

Example of results sheet from our End of Year 2025 campaign ⬇️

• We analyse the top best and worst performing posts and ads, see what they have in common (maybe text phrasing, specific stories, concrete animals, coloring, or something else). This is also very helpful in preparation for future campaigns.

• We also do the whole team reflection: this way you can also discuss, and pinpoint which practises were useful and what you need to change in the future. Also, people from your organisation that doesn't work with social media can give useful insights on what to improve in the future or what was good on social media from their viewer position.

• After the end of the campaign, we try to post different and lighter content for a while. At the end of the intense campaigning, our organic reach and engagement on social media are way lower than usual because we boost pretty much all of our content. So to get it back up, we try to post a bit lighter, more engaging, or shareable content (fun facts, reels, stuff about celebrities working for animals, good news, and so on) with a call to action asking people to comment or share the post. We also ask our employees and volunteers to engage with our content. 

In Tušti narvai, we approach social media and campaigns on it with 3 things in mind:

1. Repeat what worked well previously

2. Improve and change what didn't work

3. Test something new

We always try to test and try out some new things: from different ad formats to different posting times. Right now we are testing automated links to people's DMs when they comment a keyword on a post, we are looking into the possibilities of AI usage in managing ads and their results, and so on. 

Social media is constantly changing, so it is very important not to stay stagnant and try to find new things that work. And the only way to find out if something works is to test, test, and test! 🔥