The SaGG Foundation is a charity dedicated to empowering girls in The Gambia through sponsored education. This report will include a social media audit of the charity, along with goals and recommendations for their future strategy.
Social Media Audit
Looking at the overall activity on social media, there are some discrepancies in terms of branding. The content published on active platforms is repetitive, while other channels seem to have been abandoned with no content being posted in recent years. Engagement is quite low across all platforms, likely due to a lack of strategy. However, one Tweet recently did very well, earning 42 retweets and 45 likes, which has increased the average engagement rate.
Looking at the audience report for Facebook and Instagram (Appendix 1), we can see that The SaGG Foundation’s audience are mostly male on Facebook and female on Instagram, predominantly in the 25-44 age bracket. It’s important to note that the audience is in the UK, parts of Europe, the US and The Gambia. We can use this information when it comes to planning the type of content created and posting schedule.
For the purposes of this audit, we will look at the two main channels with the most followers.
The SaGG Foundation is doing a lot of things right on Instagram. There are keywords in the name and description, highlights for new audience members to learn about the charity and frequent visual posts on the grid.
A better call-to-action in the profile bio could encourage more people to visit the website and donate. Reels are also heavily weighted and encouraged by Instagram, who are keen to push them on the platform so including them in the content strategy would benefit the charity and help to increase the reach of their content overall (Shedding More Light on How Instagram Works, 2021). Instagram Stories are encouraged to build a relationship with the audience and increase trust. A hashtag strategy would also work well here (see Appendix 2).
According to Later, engagement rate can be found by dividing total number of likes and comments by follower count and multiplying by 100. Looking at the engagement over the last 10 posts, we can see that the engagement rate is quite low on average at 0.41%, with an average of 1 comment and 5.8 likes per post. In comparison, according to Phlanx, the engagement rate on Instagram based on all posts is 0.35%, which is well below average for the size of this account (Appendix 3).
Again content is very similar to other channels and not customised for the audience specifically on Facebook. This is reflected in the engagement, which is 0.15% on average based on the previous 10 posts with an average of 0.5 comments and 3.9 likes. Although Facebook is known for lower engagement rates, there are some things that could be improved.
For one, the logo is set as the profile photo and banner. Changing the banner to a personable photo of some of the girls would connect more with the audience. Another issue is that the profile is not easily searchable. To fix this issue, some work could be done with optimising the profile using keywords. The copy is currently being cut off in the description and the about section doesn’t seem to be completed.
Competitor Analysis
When conducting a social media audit, an important aspect is to review similar competitors that can act as a benchmark. For this audit, we looked at Street Child, CAMFED and Educating The Children who have a similar mission and content.
Street Child UK shares a lot of content on Instagram about the girls they help, with a handful of Reels. They have a larger following, but a similar engagement rate. It’s expected that a larger following will result in a lower rate. While on Facebook, they share recent news that is relevant to their audience. CAMFED collaborate quite a lot on Twitter and are involved in a lot of educational events. This is likely why they have managed to grow a large following, though their engagement is quite low in comparison. Educating the Children share a mix of images, videos and documents on LinkedIn, covering a range of topics suited to the business-led platform. This includes educational pieces, engaging content such as polls and questions as well as behind-the-scenes posts promoting the bootcamps that they host. The SAGG Foundation would benefit from adopting some of these tactics for their own strategy.
Recommendations
The main goal is to increase reach on social media. This could be achieved by posting informative and educational content that explains the importance of girls education in Africa. This would also help to position The SaGG Foundation as an authority on this topic.
1. Content planning and repurposing
Creating a content plan and scheduling content in advance would allow the charity to stay consistent and measure success of each piece of content in order to figure out what works best on what platform. Content repurposing is a must for small businesses on social media, however it would be better to customise the content slightly for each platform. This would ensure the content is ideal for the audience who will consume it.
2. Experimenting with content
According to Charity Digital, one of the main aspects charities should be focused on when it comes to social media is storytelling. SaGG Foundation could benefit from sharing more real stories – this could be from the girls that need sponsorship, from the founders about how and why they got started, and from other sponsors about why how and why they got involved.
In order to again position the charity as a leader and improve engagement, they could collaborate with other organisations or authority figures within this space through Facebook or Instagram lives, using the collaboration feature on Instagram to promote or educate audiences across two accounts, or get passionate influencers involved as brand ambassadors.
While it is not recommended to be active on so many platforms that you cannot keep up, TikTok may be a good one to add as it can be a great place to engage with a younger audience and raise awareness (Not Just for Dancing Teens: Some Charities See Potential in TikTok Fundraising, 2021). This content could be repurposed to go on Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
3. Content strategy
Researching topics and frequently asked questions would give us a list of potential content ideas to start with when it comes to developing content (see Appendix 4). These could be answered and elaborated on in multiple blog posts. They could then be broken down into different pieces of content (through snippets, quotes, soundbites or videos for example) and posted to the social media platforms with the goal of driving traffic to the site to increase donations. Facebook and LinkedIn are suited to longer-form readable content whereas graphics, infographics and videos with bite-sized captions work well on Twitter and Instagram.
Finally, having a well defined tone-of-voice, a clear and concise message and consistent branding in terms of graphics, fonts and colours, would go a long way to ensure that the brand is cohesive across all platforms (Iseli, 2021).
References
- About.instagram.com. 2021. Shedding More Light on How Instagram Works. [online] Available at: <https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/shedding-more-light-on-how-instagram-works> [Accessed 30 March 2022].
- charitydigital.org.uk. 2021. Social media trends for charities to watch in 2022. [online] Available at: <https://charitydigital.org.uk/topics/topics/social-media-trends-for-charities-to-watch-in-2022-9582> [Accessed 28 March 2022].
- Flick.tech. n.d. Flick: Instagram Hashtag Tool. [online] Available at: <https://www.flick.tech> [Accessed 29 March 2022].
- Iseli, F., 2021. Social Media for Small Business : Marketing Strategies for Business Owners. Wiley & Sons Canada, Limited, John.
- Later.com. 2018. How to Calculate Your Instagram Engagement Rate. [online] Available at: <https://later.com/blog/instagram-engagement-rate/> [Accessed 28 March 2022].
- Philanthropy.com. 2021. Not Just for Dancing Teens: Some Charities See Potential in TikTok Fundraising. [online] Available at: <https://www.philanthropy.com/article/not-just-for-dancing-teens-some-charities-see-potential-in-tiktok-fundraising> [Accessed 29 March 2022].
- Phlanx.com. n.d. Instagram Engagement Calculator | Phlanx. [online] Available at: <https://phlanx.com/engagement-calculator> [Accessed 28 March 2022].
- SPONSOR A GAMBIAN GIRL | GIVE A LIFE | SAGG FOUNDATION. n.d. Sponsor a Girl Charity – Give a Life | SaGG Foundation. [online] Available at: <https://www.saggfoundation.org> [Accessed 28 March 2022].
Appendix
Appendix 1: SAGG Foundation Audience Report
Appendix 2: Instagram Hashtag Suggestions
Appendix 3: Screenshot of Phlanx Instagram Engagement Calculator
Appendix 4: Content Suggestions from Answer The Public
