Imagine you are launching a new positive impact project- a Nutrition program in Bangladesh, a labor rights project in the Middle East, or a Climate Research Project.
Part of the project strategy may include communication with audiences in the online space, including on social media.
Too often, social media is viewed with indifference or apprehension. Project funders may ask for something like a Facebook community, Twitter account, LinkedIn company page, YouTube channel, or Instagram account.
Somehow, all of these accounts are expected to perform to high expectations in very time-bound circumstances. Apprehension turns to overwhelm.
Questions arise. What will we say online? How often? Who will produce the content? Budget and resourcing? Will we strike the right tone? How do we moderate uncomfortable online conversations? Will social media get my project into trouble?
Amazing content for several channels may need significant time and resources. Meanwhile, projects are generally time-bound, so they might exist for only a year or two.
You may need time to build a responsive community. The first 6-12 months might be spent preparing content for a very small audience. It takes time to find your voice and also complete project work to share with your audiences. By then, a time-bound project may already be 50% completed.
So, quite often, our team starts with reassurance and encouragement. You might not need to communicate across so many channels. After all, each channel will have its own requirements, analyses, adaptation, and analytics reports.
Instead? Pick a channel, or two, and double down.
Research your audience during project inception, and identify channels that will engage your audience most effectively.
Your project might communicate very effectively with just a LinkedIn account and newsletter. Now, good social media performance might feel much more manageable.
Professional audience? LinkedIn. High potential for visual content? Instagram. Opportunities to communicate research in small videos and animated shorts? YouTube or TikTok.
We have coached several project teams to success by helping them focus on high performance on one or two channels. This approach can, of course, work for your organisation, too, as well as your project.