SOCIAL MEDIA AND VIDEO – HOW TO USE THE ALGORITHM

Before the spring, Connexus was just a “group name” with public facing subsidiaries. With the companies legally merged, and my role for the past 3 years having been about gearing up for launching “brand Connexus” ranging from a new website, vans, and everything in between (including a new phone system). Connexus was ready to show. But why so social?

THE TOOLS

For social media I wanted to push towards video, it’s more engaging and saves time having to create content with different dimensions for the various platforms. But, video can often add extra complexities to the workflow. It was also important that the Communication’s Team at Connexus (who would be working on some of these posts) were able to create content, at speed and within our Brand Guidelines.

During my time at Global, with brands like Capital FM I was responsible for creating and developing consistency across our video assets. For this, we relied on custom Adobe Premiere Pro templates but also After Effects. After Effects allows for fantastic motion graphics and in a templated environment. These templates have allowed me and the team to deliver video content daily each weekday for the past 5 weeks (23/04/30 – 17/06/20). These templates, their content and me having a rather nerve wracking time merging the 4 previous Facebook channels into one have allowed us to deliver an increase in both reach and engagement.

On-top of production and distribution I’ve created a Brand Awareness Plan. This matches with objectives in the Connexus Corporate Plan and will allow us to deliver more Integrated Campaigns. So far, together with the Connexus Communications Team, the content we’ve published each day on social seems to be bringing in the results.

An example of the template with 3 still images (animated)

THE RESULTS

Those results seem to be promising. I’m writing this on June the 17th so April the 23rd (when the new systems and processes launched) was 55 days ago. Comparing 30 days either side of April the 23rd against each other we’re up on key metrics. These stats are combined for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter on organic posts only.

• An extra 322 link clicks (per 30 days)
• Reach up by around 645 (per day)

Now obviously Covid-19 had an impact on what is and isn’t “normal” so let’s compare a month at the start of the year with the most recent 30 days (again for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter).

• The last 30 days have delivered an extra 255 link clicks (per 30 days)
• Reach up by around 1.9k (per day)

Benchmarks of key Facebook metrics against other local Housing Associations 12/06/20 – 19/06/20

THE TAKEAWAY

Rather than Connexus sending out “messages” we’re transitioning to more fully Integrated Campaigns. I’ll be planning campaigns (and working closely with the Communications Team) for a greater focus upon content, not only that we create but content that we seed to the press. An example of this would be the predicted rise in domestic abuse referrals post lockdown. Our Domestic Abuse Team unearthed that referrals across our service and those across the UK were in fact going down.

National Press at the time were reporting increases in calls to services like ours but not reflecting upon referrals. A couple of outlets picked up this story and we’ve used their coverage to score against our Communication Objectives.

We’re seeing a need for more content. It’s that content that’s becoming more integral to our campaigns and as traditional broadcast and press has seen in the past, content is king. Content delivers an audience for those important messages.

See more of my Connexus work here.