“Six-year-old Jenny gives two thumbs up as her wish to swim with dolphins comes true.”
“Nine-year-old Jeremiah grins from ear to ear as his wish to go on a shopping spree becomes reality.”
“Seventeen-year-old Karissa, who wished to visit Australia, stops to pose with a koala bear.”
[insert photo of cute wish kid who grins from ear to ear]
While working for a local non-profit I was tasked with providing daily Facebook updates for the Foundation. In general, finding things to write about was easy. We granted wishes for children facing life-threatening medical conditions. As long as the family had given the thumbs up for publicity, there was usually a recent wish recipient I could write about. The pictures we received showed children who had found hope, strength and joy during the wish process. It was easy to generate ‘likes’ from our fans, due to the simple nature of the mission we supported. But it was also easy to start sounding like a broken record.
In order to break up the regular posts featuring the wish kids I found other ways to keep our followers engaged. I wrote about donors. I wrote about ways our followers could get involved. I wrote about things going on around the office.
By working for a children’s charity we were always looking for excuses to dress up (or dress down). Basement needs cleaning? Guess we’ll have to wear jeans. Boss is out of the office? Sounds like a jeans day to me! Halloween is just around the corner? You better bet we’ll be tracking down the best costume in town. Festivus for the volunteers? Better pull out the ugly sweaters.
Then I had the crazy idea to turn that ugly sweater contest into a Facebook contest. I had no idea that we were about to launch our most popular post to date.
Each staff member wore an ugly sweater to the volunteer Christmas party, and then we posted pictures online and asked our fans to vote for their favorite. The ‘likes’ quickly added up. Volunteers, wish families and friends of staff members each had their favorite person in the office, and no one was going to let someone else win. Within 24 hours the voting slowed, but the Insights page showed activity on our page had skyrocketed. The post had nothing to do with the mission we all worked so hard to support, yet generated more online activity for the Foundation than any other post we had shared since the page was created.
Are you stuck in a rut with your status updates? Do you find that you are not sure what to share with your fans? Have you noticed that it’s the same group of people who ‘like’ each thing you post? Perhaps today as you wear your Halloween costumes to work you might consider posting your photos online and asking fans to ‘like’ their favorite. Want to get even more activity on your page? Turn the post into a contest for your followers; offer a gift card or service discount for one lucky person who votes for their favorite photo.
I’m convinced that a simple change from the regular posts you create each day will greatly help the activity on your Insights page. Be sure to report back and let me know how it goes – I can’t wait to hear all about it!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
Love this post Krachel!