This article was originally published on the ActionSprout blog.
If you’re not already practicing content curation on your non-profit’s Facebook Page, you absolutely should be! Content curation is the practice of finding and sharing high-performing content from other Pages. This practice allows you to post more often and increases your Page’s reach and engagement. This case study shows the effects it had on Northshore Veterinary Hospital’s Facebook Page after just a week of practice. (If you’d like to dig into the strategy of content curation further, this article is for you.)
Northshore Veterinary Hospital’s Facebook Page
Brita Kiffney is one of the lovely veterinarians at Northshore and is responsible for managing their Facebook Page. We had the pleasure of sitting down with her one day and diving into their Facebook Page and strategy.
When we first spoke to her, she was posting as little as one post or fewer per day. When she had the time to upload an original picture of one of her patients, she would do so. If she didn’t have time that day, she wouldn’t. But even with how little she posted to their Page, they still enjoyed solid engagement from their fans. This told us that Northshore’s Page had a ton of untapped potential waiting to be unlocked.
Screenshot by ActionSprout
Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Content
After meeting with us, Brita decided to give ActionSprout, and a content curation strategy, a try. Here we’ll walk you through the steps that she took to get her ActionSprout account and new strategy off the ground.
First, Brita had to follow the right pages through ActionSprout. Fine-tuning who she followed was the key to the rest of the strategy working. After all, these are the sources whose posts she would be sharing on Northshore’s own Facebook Page! Ensuring that they posted content that was on topic and tone, compared to their own Page, was really important.
Brita landed on the following mix of Pages:
- Fellow veterinarians that she respected
- Local and national humane societies
- Pet publications
- Fun Pages that posted cute pet videos and images
This mix of followed Pages gave her an awesome sampling of fun and serious material to post to Northshore’s Page. (We call this the broccoli and cheese strategy.)
Using the Inspiration tool inside her ActionSprout account, following these Pages was as simple as typing in names and keywords:
Screenshot by ActionSprout
Once she followed them, Brita was even able to add custom tags to the Pages. She tagged the fun Pages as such, the fellow vets, and so on. Now if she was short on serious material one day, she could sort by those tags and only surface the content options that applied.
Scheduling the Content
Once she had her followed Pages, she figured that it was time to start scheduling! Finding the right content to post to her Facebook Page was as easy as browsing through her new Inspiration feed, and sorting and filtering as needed:
Screenshot by ActionSprout
When she found something that she liked, she simply clicked the share button on that piece of content. This opened up the sharing menu, where she could schedule the post for the next time when most of her fans and supporters were on Facebook:
Screenshot by ActionSprout
How did the tool know when her fans and supporters were on Facebook? Facebook gives this data to all Facebook Page managers. When connecting your Facebook Page to ActionSprout, ActionSprout is able to look at this data and pull out the best times for you.
The Day-to-Day Work
With everything in place, Brita was able to pop in and out of the app as needed. On busy weeks, she could come in on Monday and schedule three to four posts for each day of the week. When she had the extra time, she would pop in once every day or so and schedule things as they came up.
And, as always, when she had cute pictures of her patients, she published them.
The Results
We were blown away by the results after just a few days. Through the use of ActionSprout and her new content curation efforts, Brita was able to increase her posting frequency to a consistent four-to-five posts a day! The ActionSprout app allowed Brita to schedule posts for the entire week so that, as she got busy, her posting stayed consistent. Consistent posting is key to consistent reach and engagement on Facebook.
The results are astounding. The highlighted day on the graph, April 28th, was when Brita added an additional four posts a day of curated content to their Facebook Page. As we can see, her organic reach goes up sharply from there. All in all, she enjoyed a 400 percent increase in organic reach on their Page:
Screenshot by ActionSprout
She also noticed a change in engagement on their Page. The number of likes, comments and shares on their posts noticeably increased.
Conclusion
Content curation can feel uncomfortable for many non-profits when starting out. It feels counterintuitive at best, and like stealing at worst. What we have to keep in mind is that Facebook is not a traditional communications channel.
Facebook and social media in general are social spaces where ideas, content and stories are freely shared among users. Sharing is hardwired into Facebook; proper attribution is automatically included and the sharing of worthy content is expected.
Most of all, the results speak for themselves! So, what are you waiting for? Start your own content curation strategy today and start seeing the same success as Brita at Northshore Veterinary Hospital.
Briana Milligan is Head of Customer Success at ActionSprout. A true believer in the world-changing power of social media and emergent-tech, she directs her passion towards helping non-profits tap into the stream of web culture.
