Digital Strategy: July 2021

(rough and quickly produced work in progress)

Note: this was built in two hours for the Charity Digital #BeMoreDigital Strategy Day in using free things (mainly Google Analytics/social media platforms’ own insights tools) – to show how you can quickly build a simple and effective strategy as a smaller charity! Feel free to borrow anything/everything. Any questions? Email me at michael@covidaidcharity.org

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Our website: https://covidaidcharity.org/

Purpose

covid:aid launched as a charity on May 26 2021. June saw extremely promising growth across our digital channels.

At this stage we want to continue this upward trend and ensure that an increasing proportion of this audience joins our growing community – and that this community becomes our core.

Now that we are proactively publishing advice and information, and that we have began our National Lottery-funded research to produce a Long Covid toolkit for other charities and organisations, we also want to begin fundraising so that we can build our capacity to build and deliver services.

Where we are

Where we want to be

By July 2022

• The leading UK Covid-19 charity
• A go-to destination for those needing support
• A strong and vibrant community
• Well known by the public
• An established presence in the conversation around Covid-19 and post-pandemic life
• A well regarded vibrant charity seen to be here for the long term

Our audience

Website headlines (June 2021)

• 84% from UK
• 140% increase in UK audience from month before
• Audience skews younger
• Almost half aged 25-44
• 53-47 female/male gender balance
• Majority now coming through organic search
• 52% from 6% last month – clear benefit from SEO/Ad Grants approval

Our audience

Social headlines (June 2021)

• Overall: also mostly UK-based, distinct upwards trend once we began original content publishing
• Twitter: video content (from podcast interviews) shared by Dr Nisreen Alwan MBE, one of our most prominent panel members
• Facebook: 70% female, almost 50% between 35-44
• Minimal amount above 55 but should be key part of audience
• LinkedIn: Reaching Senior employees, strong potential for corporate outreach
• Insta: Content interaction up 44%

Digital fundraising

Headlines (June 2021)

• We paused any fundraising activity since pre-launch so a limited amount of data to be gained
• Any donation CTA [call to action] posts didn’t result in any upswing in donations, so clear our messaging or appeal can be stronger
• Majority (54%) of income through events (JustGiving)
• Planned approach required to test and learn and build income

Strategy

Our shift in June towards content publishing has shown a strong positive swing in audience numbers across website and social media.

However, when matching our audience to that of the UK (and social sites themselves), clear that there is an opportunity to reached a broader age range. We should ensure that services and targeted messaging delivers this.

In short, our tactics in June worked for growing our audience: now it’s time to expand our scope. Now we have an audience we also want to lean into our aim to become a community.

User journey: from top down to bottom up

We were previously using a donation funnel model, but aiming to be a community-led charity, there an engagement pyramid (as used by Greenpeace) seems more appropriate to fulfil our aims:

(Graphic from Paul de Gregorio Tweet)

Tactics: channels

Overall: With messaging think about how to involve audience, invite them to be part of the conversation (and through that the community)

Newsletter: Launch first newsletter in July, promote across existing channels and put signup on website Home page

Facebook: Structure posts to invite engagement, drive towards email signups

Twitter: Keeping engaging prominent Covid advocates, use podcast clips to show authority and position charity as a primary voice

LinkedIn: Ensure posts aimed at a professional audience. Think about corporate fundraising directly on this channel, how to persuade senior-level employees to consider covid:aid

Instagram: Keep using related hashtags to grow wide reach, think of new topics to mention to expand audience range

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Tactics: content types

Podcast: Continue using video clips and content to boost media use across social channels, diversify interviewee list to ensure broader reach

Video: Limited ability to shoot video, how can we post more content using high-quality free stock footage – or design tools such as Canva?

Graphics/imagery: Look to get expertise on board to produce more bespoke infographics and strong branded content

Tactics: engage, support, fundraise

Support through engagement

• Through JustGiving clear some people will fundraise due to experience of Covid
• Look to emphasise this through messaging
• Recognise and reward those supporting

Fundraising through support

• Fundraising is not primary purpose – building community is
• Can naturally fundraise when community is stronger and established
• Look at membership models

Tactics: campaign

Use our commonality to build popular campaign:

• Most popular activity has been about acknowledging amazing work of Long Covid groups and other heroic individuals
• Let’s launch a popular campaign which allows everyone to nominate and recognise those who have done amazing things throughout the pandemic
• Use a multichannel approach thinking about all content types – and how as a user journey to drive towards community participation

Actions

Tangible next steps:

• Increase capacity for video production (volunteer recruitment)
• Refine social media activity, engagement the priority
• Build more diverse podcast potential interviewee list
• Investigate membership models for building community & income
• Form collaborative campaign working group to deliver campaign (for August?)

Measurement

This a beginning to our Key Performance Indicators [KPIs], we will add and refine these in the months to come for a more nuanced approach – right now (very) broad strokes are fine.

covidaidcharity.org

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Questions? Email michael@covidaidcharity.org