Rachel Elson, digital marketing manager, The Children's Society Richard Ward, social media manager, RNLI Joseph Downie, social media manager, Friends of the Earth Visit the CharityComms website to view slides from past events, see what events we have coming up and to check out what else we do: www.charitycomms.org.uk

1. Planning for key external moments
of the year
Social Media Network Steering Group

2. Rachel Elson, digital marketing manager, The Children's Society
• We have a comms calendar that’s been created at a senior level with our
major campaigns and moments. From these plans we will coordinate
meetings with relevant teams.
• We use Trello to coordinate our social media content schedule – this allows us
to input relevant awareness days and external moments that we’re
anticipating, tagging members within the organisation to help coordinate
the content needed.
• We work closely with our policy and public affairs teams to pinpoint major
moments and focuses for the government in the year ahead including
budget, party conferences, Queen’s speeches, etc.
• We’ll look at various different social moments in the next year and to talk
about them in relation to our work. This could include music festivals, award
ceremonies and the movies/ actors/ artists up for awards, key government
moments including anticipating next moves and results, emerging trends and
popular discussion points (climate change, gender norms, gender
conformity), anniversaries of major milestones and policy decisions.

3. Rich Ward, social media manager, RNLI
• Take a multi-channel view to ensure a joined-up comms approach. I find out what
other teams are going to be doing and think about ways in which social can
support/complement that activity.
• Think about what sort of key messages we want to communicate as a charity this year
and what kinds of stories/content will help us do that.
• Identify key dates, both internal (heritage anniversaries, events) and external (national
days, Olympics etc) that could tie in with those key messages and provide content
hooks or opportunities to create new content.
• Plot a week-by-week basis for the whole year (obviously this will be more detailed for
Q1 and Q2, versus Q3 and Q4) covering details such as content ideas, aims, channels,
KPIs, etc.
This overview then forms the basis for delivering on longer-term objectives
eg creating a new film for an upcoming campaign and making sure the steps are put in
place to deliver it, as well as the structure for more detailed day-to-day planning for
what content is being posted on what channels 2-3 weeks in advance, which goes into
a shared Outlook calendar.

4. Joseph Downie, social media manager (EWNI), Friends of the Earth:
• We use a Comms Planner, with tabs for Media, Social Media, Email and
Grassroots Activism.
• We plan for what we call A, B and C moments - we have a document that
shows what kind of resources and planning we put into each.
Important to remember the need to be flexible and responsive throughout
the year; we are still a largely reactive organisation, with our campaigns and
communications having to sit within the context of ever-shifting policy,
legislation and general narrative, eg: school strikes, Extinction Rebellion,
extreme weather and a UK election were all part of the story in 2019.
• We also note all relevant forthcoming external activities, events, days of
interest, etc, in terms of politics, global “days” like World Environment Day, as
well as moments in our own organisational diary, such as the regional
meetups we’re planning in the summer.

5. Joseph Downie, social media manager (EWNI), Friends of the Earth:
• We have Quarterly Business Planning to check in on the longer-term
objectives of the main campaigns.
• Monthly comms planning meeting to horizon scan and also discuss our main
activities, themes and messaging for the month ahead.
• A (new) monthly editorial meeting to ensure we have the right Creative and
Content being produced.
• We also have a daily Comms Stand-up, to check messaging, content and
any action required.
• The challenge for us is to break out of reactive mode and try and develop a
stronger culture of planning and making our own moments. Making your own
moments takes a lot more effort and forward planning, as well as resources,
so perhaps it’s just easier to fall back into a routine of responding to things
happening in the outside world. But if you do that, your comms aren’t
proactive and you’re always on the back foot.

6. 16 January 2020
Social Media Network:
Planning and vision setting

7. Visit the CharityComms website to view
slides from past events, see what events
we have coming up and to check out
what else we do:
www.charitycomms.org.uk