Social Media Strategy Ideation for a Community-Aimed Non-Profit
Our client is a private outpatient care facility situated in a growing east-coast city aimed specifically at those who have received treatment from a nearby renowned cancer institute.
The client aims to provide patients with stress-free, community-driven care through its affordability, encouraging culture, and remedial environment which is key to an effective recovery.
Situation
Prior to the global pandemic, our client operated on an extremely local basis, receiving funds largely through grants. There is a single part-time employee tasked with running all social media platforms, on top of other duties that often take priority (planning events for key shareholders).
Since COVID-19, our client realized that they are lacking an online presence, which they fear could harm them specifically in terms of visibility to the community and potential Donors.
The client voiced major concerns about creating a social media presence, highlighted by a lack of experience in running social media on any platform, let alone three different platforms simultaneously.
Challenge
Our client’s challenge surrounds social media strategy. Their current social media has been inconsistent, unplanned, and lacking engagement from end-users. The client tasked Rem and Company with creating a consistently branded and strategically formulated social media strategy that would allow the client to deliver quality content with a common theme. This highlighted the need for an actionable plan that is easy to follow, opined with fact-based research surrounding posting strategies and overall best practices.
Overall, the client sought to increase consumer engagement across all social media platforms (ie. Facebook/Twitter/Instagram) but experienced difficulties with creating effective messaging and branding techniques from the onset of the coronavirus.
Approach
The team worked to create a consistent omni-channel social media strategy, complete with fact-based research. This research dived deep into how to reach a specific end user with curated content.
The research phase of the engagement split into two specifically aimed prongs. One group of strategists began creation of a posting calendar deliverable. The goals of this calendar tool is to provide our client with a reference point and a guide to a rolling 5-week period, where the client can continually check in to make sure content is on schedule and aimed correctly (correct post, on the correct platform, engaged with the correct end-user); as well as, plan ahead and eventually use themselves to add new themes into.
The tool encapsulates all three of the most common social media platforms (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram), and utilizes a colored cell structure (popularized through Gantt Charts) to show specific action items for any given day in the 5-week cycle. Besides the calendar, the other prong in the research phase had a group of strategists looking higher-level at research surrounding social media posting in general. Both of these components come together to form an actionable, straightforward schedule for our client to follow and the research to fill the schedule with consistent quality postings.
Impact
Small businesses often rely on small teams. During the pandemic, many employees were laid off and the disadvantages of being short staffed were only amplified. Given our main contact point worked only part-time and had multiple responsibilities within the organization, there was a need for consistency and standardization.
The scheduling deliverable helped develop a social media strategy. The tool was extremely easy to follow, as well as that it showed all three platforms on the same screen. Overall, the tool shortened the weekly time devoted to social media, as much of the decision work has already been completed ahead of time. Given that posts now follow a concurrent theme and utilize a better color scheme and posting schedule (among other things), there is expected to see an increase in engagement.
Team Breakdown
Team Lead: Xavier McKinley
Strategist: Daniel Belfer
Strategist: David Ramirez
Strategist: Sydney Harper
Strategist: Rebecca Trang
Relevant Background Information
Business Type: Nonprofit Organization
Industry: Health Care Services
Location: Durham, NC
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