Charity learns how to use social media to reach more people
Carers Support Service turned to Karen at Evolve BD to help them grow their social media presence and become a more recognisable brand both on and offline. The service has branches in North and North East Lincolnshire. Karen began by managing the social media for both North Lincolnshire Carers Support and North East Lincolnshire Carers Support. She then trained charity staff so they could start running the social media themselves. Karen has also stepped in to successfully handle the social media coverage of major events on the charity’s calendar, including the visit of Princess Anne.
Initial meeting
David Wilson, Operations Manager at the Carers Support Service, approached Karen for her help in developing the charity’s social media strategy and branding. She met with David and the charity’s two CEOs.
“I approached Karen and told her what we wanted in terms of brand consistency and help with managing our social media. During the meeting, she learned more about the charity. She understood what we wanted to achieve, the kind of organisation we are and the support we provide to different people in the community. This would help her craft the messages we wanted to get across to people and the kind of questions we ask.
“We support unpaid Carers, but, for most people, when you say the word Carer, they think of care workers of personal support assistants because most people who are carers don’t identify themselves as carers. We have to ask questions like ‘Do you look after somebody who can’t manage without you?’”
Activity
Social media management
To start with, Carers Support Service commissioned Karen to manage the social media for both North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. “We needed someone to manage our social media,” said David. “We thought, let’s just get somebody who knows what they are doing, who doesn’t need training.”
Karen spent a day on each branches social media using information from charity staff to coordinate the content.
“She created the wording and images for us and would plan it all a month in advance. The team knew anything they wanted on social media, they needed to get to Karen before the set days she would be working on it for us, and that worked really well.”
Training
“Karen has been working with specific team members providing them with training so she could hand the social media back to them,” said David.
“She spent two full days with four members of our team who all have different responsibilities when it comes to social media and marketing what we do. Karen made sure they understood how to use Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn.
David added: “She made sure they had a good grounding in those platforms, how to use them, and the target audiences for those different platforms. She also showed us how to look at analytics in the background to see which posts worked well. She also went into creating posts and making sure the messaging was right and how to use Canva, the online tool we use for all of our marketing.
The trained staff are now running social media, and Karen holds monthly hour-long sessions with them to coach them and ensure they are confident with what they are doing.
Conference
When the Carers Support Service held a conference during Carers Week, Karen covered it on social media. She spent the day providing a live feed.
“We had over 100 delegates, and on the day, Karen went around the different activities taking pictures and talking to people,” said David.
“She was able to get information from them. She asked questions, listened to conversations, and summarised what people said. She could live feed during the event, and that was fantastic. We’d never done that before where we’ve had an event going on, and at the same time, we’ve had somebody on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram putting out posts as it’s happening. We got a lot of engagement through that.”
Royal visit
When Princess Anne visited the Carer’s Support Centre in Grimsby, Karen provided the social media coverage. Royal protocol meant that Karen could not do a live feed, but she ensured she gained the engagement the charity wanted.
“Karen knows what she is doing and the messages we wanted and needed. She was able to go around and talk to people and get quotes. The local newspaper was interested in the visit, so Karen was able to give what they needed on our behalf. She could do all that for us, so it was really good and really helpful” said David.
Branding
Karen has helped ensure the Carers Service is a recognisable offline and online brand.
David said: “When it comes to marketing online and in the physical world, we have our social media feeds, information booklets, posters, banners, letterheads etc. As an organisation, we want to have a brand that stands out, a recognisable brand and for that branding to be consistent across all those mediums.
“Karen has been really helpful and useful in helping us to develop that consistent branding, to make it more recognisable and bring it up to date.”
Karen has produced a style guide for the charity with brand guidelines, information about which templates to use and when to use them, the fonts to use and the words staff should use and which to avoid.
“That’s really helping us to make our branding consistent and develop us into a stronger brand,” said David.
“Karen is really friendly, and naturally inquisitive. She is the right person to get to know an organisation and naturally wants to know about stuff, which makes her really good at her job.”
