digital support

At LimeGreen Marketing we love creating multi-channel, all-singing, all-dancing digital marketing campaigns, but we know that not every organisation has the budget for this.

For all of our clients the main objective is predominantly the same, to promote their business, engage with their target audience and maximise the potential of their online presence.

LimeGreen can provide different levels of consultancy and support to suit all budgets, but what if you have no budget? That’s exactly the problem Home-Start Monmouthshire had come up against.

An independent registered charity, Home-Start Monmouthshire supports struggling families, with at least one child under five, living in the county. The scheme is managed by a board of volunteer trustees, but the day to day running is administered by a small staff team of four. The small but dedicated team then recruit, train and supervise 45 volunteers, each typically giving two hours of their time each week. The charity is responsible for raising all its own operational costs.

Home-Start Monmouthshire wanted to raise the profile of their local charity and the great work they’ve been doing, but weren’t quite sure how to make the most out of the free social media resources that were available to them.

Their aims were to recruit volunteers, attract potential donations and engage with service users, while utilising the skills of their recently appointed ambassador, author Julia Gregson. Raising awareness of their work would be paramount in order for them to fundraise and continue helping families in the area.

LimeGreen were only too pleased to visit Home-Start Monmouthshire and provide their staff and trustees with a crash course in marketing and a few hints and tips on using Facebook over a cup of tea and a well-earned biscuit.

We put together a quick guide for making the most of the Home-Start Monmouthshire Facebook page, most of which the team were already doing.  Here’s what we had to share…

  • Post regularly. An active account will always receive more interaction.
  • Include images with every post if you can. This makes them more eye-catching and therefore it’s more likely that people will engage with them.
  • Try to use images of people where possible, real personalities where you can see a facial expression are easier for people to relate to and this humanises what you do which is especially important given your charity work.
  • Don’t forget to include links to relevant pages of your website, in your Facebook posts from time to time to drive traffic to your website.
  • Don’t be afraid to add some personality to your posts – where appropriate. Celebrate your team. Your work is important but it doesn’t all need to be a hard-hitting serious stuff.
  • Mix in some facts and figures every now and then to show what Home Start Monmouthshire has achieved. Infographics are a particularly useful way to communicate this without using masses of text.
  • Join as many relevant Monmouth/Monmouthshire groups as possible so that you can like and share your page information and reach out to more people.
  • Share industry relevant content and engage with similar organisations.
  • Look for national days and awareness weeks to engage with on social media.

We also shared some great links to free resources to help make their Facebook posts more engaging…

Canva enables you to create visual content for social media and print using pre-designed templates. It is a user friendly platform with lots of great free content and, if your requirements are basic, can prove to be quicker than using a design tool such as Photoshop.

There are lots of websites with brilliant high quality imagery which has been authorised for reuse and is completely free. This Hootsuite article has a list of 20 of them. – https://blog.hootsuite.com/20-free-stock-photo-sites-social-media-images/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=owned_social&utm_campaign=social_hootsuite&hootPostID=da6a94b470da2fbdf64cad03cb39e4af

You can follow the team at Home-Start Monmouthshire on Facebook here.

To find out more about our consultancy services head over to the Digital Support page of our website. Alternatively, if you’d like to speak to one of our team about your own social media goals, get in touch.