Enhancing the Social Media Strategy of the Winch and the Belsize Community Library

​

Sponsor: The Winch and Belsize Community Library
Sponsor Liaison: Tamsin Marcus, Chitra Shanbhogue, Lucy Tefler
Student Team: Sage Curtis, Emilia Gutman, Matthew Maguire, Klaidi Varfi
Abstract: The goal of this project was to enhance the social media strategies of the Winch and the Belsize Community Library (BCL). To achieve this goal, we assessed current social media practices in non-profit organizations, evaluated the current social media strategies for both the Winch and the BCL, solicited the opinions of the staffs and followers regarding their current social media presence, and utilized the data collected to devise enhanced content strategies. Based on our findings we recommend the Winch and the BCL: advertise their platforms; improve engagement across platforms tailoring posts in terms of audience, timing, and content; and a social media committee made up of existing staff.
Link: Final report
Final presentation

Executive Summary

Introduction
The Winch is a children’s charity and non-profit organization located in the Swiss
Cottage ward in of the London Borough of Camden. Its subsidiary, the Belsize Community Library, is a community library located in the Belsize Park ward also located in the London Borough of Camden. The Winch and the Belsize Community Library have a long history of supporting their communities by providing programs to young people, families, and community members. In today’s digital age, the use of social media to engage, inform, and connect with the members and wider community of charitable organizations has become essential to their outreach and success. The Winch and the Belsize Community Library want to follow this trend and improve their own social media presence and increase engagement on all platforms operated by their staff to engage more of their users, patrons, and major donors.

The goal of this project was to enhance the social media strategies of the Winch and the Belsize Community Library. To achieve this goal, we established four objectives:

  1. Assess current and best practices in the development and delivery of social media strategies for non-profit organizations.
  2. For both the Winch and the Belsize Library, evaluate the current social media presence, following, and overall strategies.
  3. Solicit the opinions of the staffs and followers regarding the organization’s current social media usage and outreach.
  4. Utilize the data collected to develop improved content and strategies to enhance the social media presence and effectiveness of both organizations, particularly with potential donors, beneficiaries, and patrons.

Methodology
To assess the current and best practices in the development and delivery of social media strategies for other non-profit organizations, we conducted background research on best practice in social media strategies. We manually coded social media posts from different community centers and community libraries with similar functions to those of the Winch and the Belsize Community library to establish trends of reactions based on content type and posting methods.

Finally, we conducted interviews with the representatives of these community centers and libraries to ask targeted questions to understand their current use of social media.

To evaluate the current social media presence, following, and overall strategies of the Winch and the Belsize Community Library, our team first analyzed the social media analytics of the Winch on each platform. We manually looked at the reactions of the last 50 posts on each platform operated by both the Winch and the Belsize Community Library to identify trends of reactions by post compared to days of the week, content type, and posting method.

We interviewed staff at the Winch and the library, surveyed parents of the Winch, and surveyed patrons of the library to solicit opinions about the current social media presence and strategy of both organizations. We also interviewed and surveyed major donors to gain insight on what social media platforms major donors use and what content they want to see from the Winch and the Belsize Community Library. Finally, we held informal conversations with youth, ages 12 to 16, that use the Winch’s services to see how the Winch’s social media platforms can appeal to their beneficiaries of younger age groups.

To develop improved content strategies, we created a deliverable for our project sponsors that outlines the best practices our research establishes.

Conclusions
From our manual social media coding, we discovered that there were specific days of the week that garnered the most reactions per post on different social media platforms for community centers and community libraries We also discovered that videos and photos, showing the impact of organizations and the services provided received the most reactions. From interviews with community center staff members, we learned that regular consistent posting is the best way to increase engagement and that dividing work across multiple people increases creativity and the ability to post more frequently. Interviews with community library staff members taught us that libraries should use specific language based on target audiences and have found that they gain more reactions to posts when they post during weekday commuting hours.

We determined that many major donors of the Winch and the Belsize Community
Library do not use social media. Most do not believe that social media plays any part in their decision to donate to a charity. However, they would like to see more videos focused on the activities and programs at the Winch.

After surveying the parents of young children in the Play Time group at the Winch, we found that those surveyed do not follow the Winch on social media and many did not know the Winch even had social media. For those that do follow the Winch, they mainly follow them on Instagram and Facebook. The parents would like the Winch to post more photos of the children, staff, and activities.

Lastly, we found that patrons of the Belsize Community Library do not follow the library on social media. Those surveyed were most likely to use Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The majority of those that use Instagram use stories every time they go on Instagram or often when they go on Instagram. Patrons would like to see more posts about the library’s events, using pictures and videos.

Recommendations
We identify recommendations in four topic areas, as seen below:

1. In terms of advertising social media accounts, we recommend the Winch and library:

  • Promote social media to beneficiaries and major donors.
  • Paid targeted advertisements.
  • Link social media platforms together.
  • Add handles to any informational text (i.e. newsletters, flyers, promotional material, email chains, and text chains).

2. To increase engagement across platforms for the Winch and BCL, we recommend they:

  • Post content on the recommended time and day of the week for each platform.
  • Post the right type of content for each platform.

3. To increase communication between organization and followers, we recommend they:

  • Use social media features including story posts.
  • Add a space for followers to ask questions.
  • Use polls on Instagram stories.
  • Use post captions to ask the followers to comment on a post.

4. To address other constraints, we recommend the Winch and BCL:

  • Encourage collaboration among employees on their social media accounts.
  • Create a social media committee to help generate content.
  • Understand what content each audience likes to see (Donors, Parents, Youth, and Library Patrons).