As the effects of Covid-19 continue to be felt it is more important than ever to consider your social media presence. Whilst many charities shy away from the widespread use of social media it can be a great tool in promoting your impact and even as a vehicle for the recruitment of volunteers and/or trustees.
Using a number of simple steps you can take your social media from zero to hero and really embrace the opportunities it provides…
Step 1: Create a strategy
Although scary sounding, creating a strategy can be a simple exercise and can really help define the direction of travel. Unlike other strategies, your social media strategy doesn’t have to be a 50 page document full of layers and layers of detail, but instead can be a simple bullet point list setting out the content you want to post, the frequency of post and perhaps a number of aspirational goals (e.g. gain 100 more followers).
Step 2: Understand your audience
Understanding your audiance is actually one of the most important considerations when engaging with social media. By understanding your audience, you can tailor your content, tone and frequency so that it really makes an impact. Good examples of this are often relating to LinkedIn and Instagram. For example, with regards to LinkedIn it is often good to position posts more closely towards the business end of the spectrum, perhaps considering how the platform could be used as a recruitment tool.
Step 3: Understand yourself
What are you trying to achieve? What impact do you create? What does your organisation actually do? Whilst all these questions might seem as if they have obvious answers, it is often very clear when organisations don’t have good answers to them. The content you produce and post on social media should align to the answers of these questions and should look to promote the great work of your organisation.
Step 4: Be authentic and maintain your values / identity
Again this may seem obvious, however, there are countless examples of organisations jumping on fads and posting content which is not true to their values and identity. As such it is often good to produce a list, even if it's on a scrap of paper, of what your organisational values are and how best these can be translated to social media? The easiest starting point is perhaps to do a series of posts literally highlighting your organisation's values and impact.
Step 5: Time
When is the right time to post? This often comes up when we’re producing marketing and communication plans. In all honesty, there are no easy answers as this is often highly dependent on the types of people who follow your organisation and where they’re based. More information regarding the specific of this can be found on the analytics function attached to most social media platforms. That said, as a rough guide it is often good to post late afternoon/ early evening as people leave work and check their phone. It’s also worth avoiding Friday/ Saturday evening as these tend to be occasions in which people go out and thus are less likely to check their social media accounts.
Step 6: Connections and Community
Social media isn’t all about you! Yes, when you post you are attempting to convey something about your organisation, but more importantly you’re trying to build a following, or rather community, which supports you. Other than posting regularly the best way to build a community is to engage and share. When followers comment on posts, the easiest thing to do is reply and/or react. You might ask why this is so important, but it really does show your followers that your organisation is listening and appreciates their support.
It would be great to hear if you found this useful? Did you manage to create a strategy? What goals did you set?
Hodwell Associates undertakes work which involves analysis of marketing and communication channels and has experience developing accompanying strategies.. If you’re still stuck then email stephen@hodwell.co.uk and let’s see if we can create something together.