Guide to social media

Our team members are the source of project information, stories and updates. Many of you are talking to partners, researching in the field, hearing daily feedback, and working on interesting activities.

That’s why we ask all our team members to help us with the ongoing task of growing our social media presence. Increasing our reach on these channels will help build Catalpa’s relationships and create support for our programs internationally.

You can support the communications team in two ways:

1. Simply follow our pages and share Catalpa’s posts with your network of friends and colleagues

2. Post about your work on your own social media channels and tag Catalpa International on Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook.

How does sharing updates help?

• Keeps donors, networks and communities in the loop

• Builds public support for programs (which is crucial for government support and ongoing funding)

• Educates others to be innovative and creative in aid and development (we all know the aid industry needs to change - we can help make that happen)

• Documents our achievements, as well as what works (and what doesn’t!)

Let us tell your stories!

Catalpa team members are the eyes and ears on our projects. You can help the communication team (and get great coverage of your hard work) by submitting social media post ideas in the Social Media Review Slack channel: https://catalpa.slack.com/archives/CDM0Z2K5Y

Ideas do not need to be perfectly crafted, or drafted for different channels - our communication team will make sure all messaging is on-point before going live.

Tips for creating a post

• Keep it short, simple and interesting! Your post can be anything from three emojis to three sentences.

• Include an image. Posts have been proven to get more engagement with an image, video or other visual media. It should be clear how your image relates to your post. See the Guide to Photography for some tips on taking photos.

Not sure what to post about?

Here are some thought starters:

• An activity you did within a project (eg. training session, launch event)

• Something nice that a partner, program participant or community member said about you

• A new update in your program (eg. a new partner or platform feature)

• New data, outcomes or milestones from your program

• Acknowledging a special day and/or the achievements of a group of people (eg. international awareness days)

• A spotlight on a particular person or partner that you appreciate or admire

• Something new thing you’re working on

• Something you discovered in tech that could impact lives positively