Getting your story out into the world is a key part of creating change and utilising the online space can be a great way to reach lots of people – this is even more important now, when COVID-19 limits our ability to tell our stories in person! In this week’s SHiFT Community Hub session, eXXpedition Digital Content Assistant Mads St Clair Baker led the conversation on how to use your social channels to make the biggest impact.
The Power of Social Media
The power of people shouldn’t be underestimated and with 3.96 billion people using social media, we have this massive platform that we can now use to influence others. Historically we’ve only been able to influence the people around us, the scope of our influence was limited. Now we have this incredible ability to influence others not just in our direct sphere but across the globe. By influencing others, we can shape the conversation online and we can leverage these communities that we build to actually create change. – Mads St Clair Baker
We session attendees what messages they wanted to put out into the world via social media. Here’s what they came up with:
“Every small step that every human takes makes a difference”
“Getting the message out to kids and educating them while they are young, so that they grow up already having the really good habits and them knowing what impact they can have”
Defining your brand
Mads also shared insight into how important it is to define your brand, in order to stand out or to be remembered. Some ways to do that are through:
- Defining your tone of voice
- Finding your personality
- Are you funny, serious or casual?
- Choosing colour/font/aesthetic branding
- Consistency
Practical tips
Mads gave some tips on how to increase engagement on social media. These tips are mainly focused around Instagram, but can also be applied to most of the other platforms too. These tips can help you get started with your social media, increasing your engagement but also about having fun.
- Try using Instagram stories – talking to the camera is a great way to get your voice over to your audience.
- Try an Instagram live session – these are great to create engagement, even if not many people attend the Live session they can be saved and uploaded at a later date as a mini podcast or a Q&A
- Create a slightly longer video for IGTV – you could make a mini documentary, you could create a video all about plastic tips.
- Make a short video for a “Reel” – this is a much shorter video between 15-30 seconds.
- Create informative graphics in spark.adobe.com or canva.com, these are free softwares. Graphics are a great way to get your message across.
- Use a free scheduling software to plan content in advance (later.com) – planning and scheduling post is a great way to keep up your consistency.
- Use Linktr.ee to add multiple links in your IG bio
- Don’t forget to tag people/organisations
- Use a hashtag generator to find relevant hashtags for your posts
- Use analytics tools to learn when the best time to post is
Panel discussion
Q – With regards to posting at certain times, how do you handle an international audience?
A – Great question – the number one aim is to try and get your content seen by the most amount of people. Which would mean posting at times when engagement is high. You can find out using the analytics what time your main audience is online and engaging.
Q – What do you suggest on how much to post?
A – Knowing how much to post depends on your time management and also the message you’re trying to convey. If you are starting out with social media, I would try and aim for 3 posts a week. If this is too much then post once a week. But the key thing is consistency.
Q – Can you suggest how to get your account to be featured/discovered ?
A – Regarding instagram, definitely utilise “Reels”. This is one of instagram’s newest features therefore they are really pushing that content to be featured on the discovery page.
SHiFT Community Hub events are exclusive to our ambassador community network. Are you an eXXpedition ambassador? Access past and upcoming events through your SHiFT hub login.
Thank you to 11th Hour Racing who are supporting this work.
