Social media is an important part of any movement. It allows us to show of what we’re doing and recruit potential new volunteers. Below are some resources that could come in useful to help keep you on brand and make the most out of social media.
Brand Guidelines
The Scouts have set out a list of brand guidelines for us all to follow. This includes exact colour codes, wordings and styling for all groups. This allows us to keep consistency between all groups, districts and counties throughout the UK. It also allows us to keep a professional look.
The guidelines can be downloaded by clicking the button below.
Brand Centre
Struggling for high quality images? Want some recruitment flyers making? Then take a look at the brand centre. They have 100’s of resources from high quality images to banner designs and even flags for your group. It is easy to sign up to. Just use your Scouting email and membership number to gain access.
Regular Updates
Build up a good user base on your social media platform whether that is a public facebook page, instagram channel or even your own groups website. Keep people updated on the latest goings on in your group such as how much you’ve raised at a recent fundraising event, what you did on camp or even just an interesting craft that you made.
Increasing your interactivity
Social media is typically used by people in their leisure time when they want to catch up on fun news and gossip. Keep messages from Scouting in line with this, take a light-hearted tone and ensure messages are upbeat and positive. Share good news stories, great photos from an event or a quick reminder about an upcoming event to keep the energy and interaction high.
Videos, photos, polls or questions are content that is most likely to generate interest or comment from those who are following you. Think about ways in which your members can best engage with you. The most popular social media content is linked to relevant moments in time. .
Forward Planning
The best social media is timely and responsive but can be planned to fit around milestones in your communication work or the time of year. You may notice that your users interact at specific times of the week or day so you can use your planning to ensure your content is viewed when they are most likely to interact. Use social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck or Facebooks built in tools to help you schedule your social media content to ensure your content remains relevant and timely, even if you are unable to drive content all day every day. But be aware that third party software may have different security settings and access to personal information, so be sure to check out each site’s policies and settings.