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3 Quick Tips for Time-Strapped Charity Marketers By Florence Bell (Shakespeare’s Globe, ex-Young Vic)
Introduction
If you’re a charity marketer juggling multiple responsibilities, social media can feel overwhelming. With limited time and resources, how do you make the biggest impact? Florence Bell who previously ran social media for Young Vic and is now doing the same at Shakespeare Globe shares three practical tips to help you get the most out of social with the time available.
1: Do one thing well, instead of five things badly
If you’re working in charity marketing and covering a broad scope of activities, you likely won’t have the time to really invest in building strong presences across lots of different social platforms
Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with duplicating the same post across Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., but most social platforms are very different places. Case in point: the content you see on LinkedIn is totally different from what you see on TikTok. If you’re working with limited time and resources for social media, it’s often more effective to build a strong, well-developed presence on one platform while scaling back on others. Rather than spreading yourself thin across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube, focusing your efforts will likely have a greater impact.
Scaling back on other platforms could mean going from two to three posts a week to one post a month with key updates and bits of news. If you need internal buy-in to do this, set a clear length for a trial period, communicate how you’ll measure whether it works, and make sure the people you work with know what you’re doing. This means colleagues don’t get a nasty surprise when they hear that you won’t be doing five Facebook posts in one day about their new project, event etc.
2. Shout about your successes
If something’s gone well, brag about it.
Don’t feel like you need to spend hours delving into social media analytics to do this. Just keep an eye on how things are going, and if you notice that an Instagram post has got more likes than usual, or that your Facebook followers have jumped up overnight, email your colleagues and let them know.
This might feel vainglorious and self-centred, but you should reassure yourself that:
a) People like hearing about it when things go well where they work.
b) Your colleagues are doing it too.
Increasingly, charity leaders (I’m generalising here) are viewing social media as a place with as much risk as potential reward, largely thanks to Elon Musk and the potential for crises to emerge and pick up steam. Communicating when things go well to the people you work with can help colleagues understand the positive side of social media—and potentially encourage leadership to consider putting extra resources and budget into social in the future.
3. Say NO!
Sometimes, you just have to say no to stuff—and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.
Someone wants you to copy and paste a three-page press release into an Instagram caption? No.
You’re being asked to ghostwrite your colleague’s LinkedIn posts for their massive audience of three connections? No.
Your organisation needs you to post a two-hour-long video of an event filmed on a grainy camera with bad audio? No.
Setting up a clear strategy and internal expectations around how much time and resource you can put into social media (as well as what works well on social and what doesn’t) will go a long way in helping you say no to colleagues and will probably result in an environment where you don’t get so many madcap requests. Safeguard your time and sanity by saying no—politely, and when appropriate.
About Florence Bell?
When Florence joined Young Vic in spring 2022, their social media presence was solid but had room to grow.
At the time, Young Vic were averaging monthly:
- 15,000 engagements and 609,000 impressions across all platforms.
A year later, those numbers had climbed to:
- 33,900 engagements and 1.5 million impressions.
By the following spring:
- 50,900 engagements and 2.1 million impressions.
Follower growth was just as impressive:
Facebook: 53,000 → 117,000
Instagram: 86,000 → 107,000
TikTok: 0 → 13,000 (growing TikTok took significantly more effort than doubling Facebook followers).
FARRER worked with Florence to maximise their impact across paid social and the Google Ad Grant, helping Young Vic. Here is what Florence had to say.
The Farrer Charity Programme is committed to helping charities maximise their impact through paid media. If you’d like to discuss your current strategy or anything covered in this post we’d be happy to help.
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