6 things we’ve learned from the Lewis Pugh Foundation’s social media journey.
The Lewis Pugh Foundation (LPF) works to preserve and conserve our oceans for a peaceful and sustainable future. A big part of that is ensuring that the foundation brand is top-of-mind among ocean conservationists, funders, and policy makers.
Starting with a zero base, we frequently have individual posts reaching 100k+ organic views and have grown a very loyal and influential community around the account. This has translated directly into meaningful relationships, opportunities and impact for the foundation.
Here are 6 simple learnings from our journey with the Lewis Pugh Foundation’s social media.
6 Learnings from the LPF’s Social Media
Be Educational
Tap Into Trends and Issues
Do a Deep Dive
Make it Easy to Fall in Love
Say it with Video
Celebrate the Community
Let’s explore these in more detail.
1. Be Educational
Beautifully designed educational material performs well on the Lewis Pugh Foundation’s social media accounts. They also age well and can be reused and repurposed into other formats like posters.
2. Tap into trends and issues
To be an authority on a specific topic means that you need to be tapped into the zeitgeist. Being at the forefront of the latest developments, and having an opinion on that, gives you a position of authority and trust - two things that can set you up for social media success.
This is true on significant themes, like when we were one of the first accounts to post about Shell’s seismic blasting off South Africa’s Wild Coast. But it is also true in more straightforward and playful ways, like when we quickly adapted a powerful monologue about ocean animals for TikTok and garnered over a million organic views.
3. Do a deep dive
Step aside, blogpost; the Twitter thread is here! We are increasingly seeing lengthy, well-researched twitter threads that quickly encapsulate or explain complex issues. It’s a winner in terms of time and attention and one we like to use to engage our community.
It’s also a great lesson in using specific features of a platform like Twitter in the most effective way possible. Test and learn; you never know which feature may give you a new opportunity to present your content differently.
4. Make it Easy to Fall in Love
Sometimes we just post images of cute, quirky and wonderful ocean creatures. Why? Because people love this stuff, and we protect what we love. It’s a great way to bring people into the cause.
Everyone likes the cute stuff! Luckily for us, nature gives us so much to work with here.
5. Say it with Video.
We try to produce short and subtitled explainer videos as often as possible. The combination of moving visuals and text helps us convey a lot of information quickly. It’s thumb-stopping content that, importantly, can be viewed sound on or off.
6. Celebrate the Community
When we look at a specific ocean-related conservation theme, such as kelp, we always compile a list of key people doing pioneering work in the field. We follow them, talk to them, and celebrate their accomplishments. This provides access to new information, introductions to other leaders in the field, and an easy way to connect with all the right people when it comes time to push for policy change or raise public awareness about the issue.
Consider our most recent article, 21 Voices for Kelp. The voices on the list do not all have a large or active social media following. Still, because the list was so beautifully curated and the individuals chosen so credible and respected, the list was circulated throughout the kelp community. We have been inundated with nominations for our next list on the topic!
You can read the full, and beautifully compiled article on the LPF website here: Voices for Kelp, and see all the social media chatter we started with the #lovekelp hashtag.
learn more as you follow
Follow the Lewis Pugh Foundation here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LewisPughFDN (Bonus: here’s the top performing posts)
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lewispughfoundation/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lewispughfdn/