How to Maintain Social Media During a Leadership Transition
I don’t talk about social media and marketing much, but I do have this one thing to say about it, when it comes to leadership transitions: You need to double down on your social media when you have a leadership gap, when you’re hiring, or when you have a workplace transition in executive leadership.
It’s very tempting to just go quiet and pick things back up when the role has been filled and you’ve established the new normal. So why am I so adamant that your nonprofit continues to post on social media when things are so uncertain?
Because it keeps you consistent. Not just with the various algorithms on each social media platform, but in the minds of your community members, donors, and the people you serve.
The worst thing you can do during a leadership transition is to go quiet.
Consistency in Social Media
I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on social media algorithms and how to appease them, but it is true that they reward you for posting at consistent days and times. If your organization has posted on LinkedIn every Friday at 4:00pm for the past year and you suddenly stop, the algorithm deprioritizes your posts.
Consistency keeps you top of mind, which is an invaluable part of the puzzle when it comes to marketing for a nonprofit organization or social impact company. Our organizations thrive on people knowing about our services and the work we do–including the people our work supports, as well as funders, donors, and grassroots organizers.
Not to mention that during your hiring process, potential applicants will go check out your Instagram. They should see current posts that support your mission and vision, not crickets and old news.
How to Keep Your Momentum
There are a few tricks and tips I recommend for organizations that need a social media push during leadership transitions, and the biggest impact will come from repurposing your content.
We tend to focus so hard on the day to day work of achieving our missions that sometimes we don’t celebrate the things we’ve accomplished and avoid tooting our horn by sharing news more than once or twice. Plus, people need to see things more than once before they take action. In this case, more is more.
Look back at the last few years of content that has been published–blog posts, articles, even existing social media posts. You’re likely sitting on a treasure trove of messages and news that can be shared on an evergreen basis.
The key is making sure that all of the repurposed content supports your present mission, vision, and values. Applicants for your leadership role will need to know your company values and organizational culture–and not just buried on your website’s About Us page. Point your social media posts back to your website, email subscription page, or donation link with a clear call to action that supports the company values.
Here are some other considerations for your content repurposing:
News/Media Interviews: Whether it’s an article or a video interview, keep an up-to-date list of news and media mentions that you can repurpose. Take a clip from the interview or a great pull quote and turn it into a full post that speaks to your company values.
Published Articles: If you have a company blog, pull some highlights from the article that you want to drive home. Make a graphic of the quote. Record a podcast episode based on the article and share clips as Reels or YouTube videos.
Team Shoutouts: Post a shout-out to all your volunteers over the past six months. Post a video or image for team member anniversaries to celebrate how long they’ve been with the organization. Pick a department and share a team photo once a month with a write-up of their latest project.
Values: Interview team members about your organization’s values and post a series of 30- to 60-second Reels. Ask them questions like How do you see this value in action in our work? Why is this value important to you? Who on the team most embodies this value? You can also correlate your values with programs within your organization, sharing a different program to highlight each month or week. For example, The program we’re highlighting this week is XYZ. One of the reasons we love this program is because it incorporates our value of innovation every day…
Dig deep and get creative. You already have so much to pull from to keep your social media running smoothly during the transition.
Email Newsletters
Just in case you thought you were off the hook for your newsletter, you’re not. You also need to double down here and make sure you are sending consistent emails that support the mission and values. Stay present and top of mind in your followers’ inboxes as well as while they scroll on Facebook!
You can use old email newsletters as a basis for repurposing too. Re-send top performers and revamp any emails that had low engagement. Maybe there’s something you can repurpose and try sending again.
Quick Wins
There’s a lot to ponder in this article, but these three action steps can help you get quick wins when it comes to developing a bank of evergreen content for your organization to use during transitional periods.
Work with your communications or social media team to implement a content repurposing strategy as soon as possible (and if you don’t have a comms or social media team, email me for some great recommendations: naomi@8thandhome.com
Create a database of news/media articles about your organization that can be repurposed
Interview team members about your company values to use as evergreen content
You can listen to this episode of the Leaving Well Podcast: Leadership Transition and Social Media, and when you’re ready: discover your organization’s natural relationship to change and transition with the Workplace Transition Archetype Assessment!