4 ways to use Social Media to your Group’s advantage

Social media is an incredibly popular communication tool for millions of people around the world. When used alongside your Scouts or Guiding website, it can prove to be extremely useful.

Social media is a great way to provide updates in a less formal tone for leaders and parents to enjoy in their spare time, along with their personal updates from family and friends.

Take a look at some of the ways you can use social media to benefit your Scouts and Girlguiding Groups:

Provide real-time updates

There are so many different social media platforms that you can use to provide updates to members, parents and leaders these days. Social media preferences are constantly changing so it might be worth holding a vote to find out which platform/s your parents and leaders would find most useful.

Amongst the Scout Groups, Districts and Counties we work with, Facebook appears to be the most popular. This is because you have the best of most big platforms in one. You can provide text updates, post images and videos, create events and share anything at any time.

Posts can also be scheduled to fit around when’s best for you or your members using online tools such as Facebook’s built-in post scheduler, Tweetdeck or Schedugram. Just a quick search can bring up a whole host of tools to help you plan your posts, and they’re almost always free!

Improve engagement

As well as using social media as a way to communicate with your members, parents and volunteers outside of meeting times, you can also use it as a way to engage with other Groups, Counties or Districts in your area and beyond.

Use your platforms to strike up conversations with your followers or provide feedback to other similar accounts if you see posts that you like or inspire you.

Recruit new volunteers and members

Word-of-mouth and printed adverts have traditionally been the best ways to recruit new volunteers and members. Social media in a way is still word-of-mouth but levelled up. You can put out a post and with a few shares, or by posting in a few Groups such as 1st Facebook Scout Group, you could have found your next team.

Take sharing a volunteer vacancy to the next level and boost your Facebook post for just a couple of pounds to reach more people in your local area.

Integrate your social media pages with your website

Quite often we find that some Groups want to use either their website or social media, and not the two together. However, social media and a website can complement each other perfectly.

Using either social media or a website, and not both, can limit what your leaders, members and parents can see. Some might not have social media, and some might not use your website, so having both provides them with the option.

Our websites can integrate your Twitter and Instagram feeds so your users can view your latest updates without having to visit your pages if they’re strapped for time.

Find out more about Scout Group websites here