Leveraging Social Media for Your Ground-Up ProjecT

1. Establishing a social media presence

 

Firstly, finding your suitable social media platform. Identify where your target audience is. Instagram and Tiktok are popular platforms to reach youths — but if your aim is attracting middle-aged participants to attend your workshop, for example, Facebook would definitely be a better option as such demographics are more active there.

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Next, creating consistent branding is important to establish a recognisable brand and allow your audiences to associate certain features to your project. This can be in the form of creating a consistent logo, colour scheme, and tone across all your feed or even multiple platforms. One project with a very clear branding is Project Obscura, a photography start-up aiming to create and preserve memories for the underprivileged in Singapore. Below is a glimpse at their Instagram feed, with consistent fonts, colours and the hues of the photos that even make the events easily distinguishable from one another:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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You can achieve a consistent branding by picking features you wish to associate with your project, or colours associated with your cause. Think of what values and vibes you wish to emanate with your ground-up. For example, you may want to pick rounded fonts and warm colours if you wish to express a welcoming space, or you may choose to have a blue feed if your project is specifically about marine conservation. For example, YCDI has a yellow colour scheme consistent in our logo and branding, which was chosen to representoptimistic and youthful qualities.​

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2. Content strategy

 

Now that you have a general idea of how you want to “market” your project, the next step is to plan what you wish to share on your social media. Is the aim of your social media to attract volunteers? Raise awareness of your cause? Promote your events or fundraising products? Choose to post according to your goals and what would make the most impact for your specific project. Some ideas are: educational posts to raise awareness about your cause, volunteer spotlights to inspire others to join your team, or interviews with your partner organisation. 
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Some story content ideas to keep up with regular posting include:

• Behind-the-scenes (“Prepping for our first workshop!)

• Polls (“Guess what we are doing!”)

• Countdowns (“D-2 to our event!”)

• Quizzes (quiz your follower’s knowledge on your project’s cause!)

• Emoji slider (“How excited are you for our game?”)

• Tiktoks/Dances with your team

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A project that does this well is Project Heal Hearts, a YCM project that works with Singapore Cancer Society to support and uplift cancer patients. Other than being aesthetically pleasing, their Instagram page covers a variety of content, including educational posts, event promotions and recaps, and interviews with cancer warriors:

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3. Building an online community

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“Hey besties! Time to enter your artsy era.”

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This is the hook National Gallery Singapore used in their recent viral video, as they participated in this trend of “letting gen z write the marketing script”. This video quickly garnered 5.2M views and over 400k likes, a much higher reach as compared to their usual posts. Other than considering your target audience in every piece of content you put out, you may wish to analyse current trends to produce potentially viral content.

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Engagement is also a crucial part of building an online community, which requires a significant amount of time and effort from your project’s social media team. This can be achieved through regular posts and stories, intentional content such as polls and hashtags (unique to your project!), as well as personal engagement such as responding to comments, messages and mentions. A specific example for a beach cleanup project could be, for example, #[project name] #savetheseas #marineconservation
 
By engaging with your audience, you not only stay relevant but build an active community from your social media. 
 

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4. Strategising based on engagement data

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Lastly, the most overlooked feature of social media would be the built-in analytics tools that allow you to track your engagement, reach and follower growth. Based on your performance, your project can adjust your current content strategy to better meet your audiences’ preferences and increase impact.

 

You may be asking, “How can I apply such data to improve my content?” Let’s look at a sample of Instagram insights for business and creator accounts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Here, you can see that 6pm or 9pm is the ideal time to post on a Wednesday for this project’s account, as this is the time where most of their audience is active. Beyond that, other insights such as gender percentage can help you in planning your content to target certain groups. 

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Conclusion​​​

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Managing social media for your ground-up project doesn’t have to be hard. It can be a fun way for you to interact with more people and allow your target audience to find you. Keep these tips and tricks in mind, and most importantly, don’t forget to have fun!

 

​We hope the tips outlined here will be useful for you! Feel free to reach out to us via email if you would like to chat further, and do fill in our feedback form to let us know what other topics you’d like us to cover. Thanks for reading :)

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to YCDI and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any of the organisations mentioned. YCDI has obtained prior permission from these organisations to feature their accounts in this article.