The Black Fish Social Media 

In December 2013 Ms. Ferguson became one of two Social Media Coordinator (SMC) with The Black Fish. In this role she is responsible for management of their International Facebook page, which has over 102,000 likes and features new content every day.

In addition to the day-to-day management of the Facebook page, she has also worked in close partnership with the SMC for The Black Fish’s Twitter account to devise a strategy for The Black Fish’s use of social media. Together they defined the goals the organization wanted to achieve through its use of social media, and devised steps to help meet these goals through the platforms to be used, language guidelines, the type and frequency of posts and tweets, and established metrics for monitoring how closely these goals were being achieved.

As The Black Fish expands its social media use to include Facebook pages for each of the countries it works in, Ms. Ferguson again co-drafted a comprehensive set of guidelines for new Facebook page managers which include topics on practical considerations such as when to post content, as well as information pertaining directly to the organization, such as what subjects to curate content on and specific language to use which reflects the organization’s values.

Feedback from the community tells us our efforts are effective. The Black Fish founder Wietse van der Werf noted, “In the last two weeks I’ve had two major funders tell me that they thought we had a really strong social media presence and quality content and together with contacts at other organisations, they have all found out about us via social media and what they saw from us was the reason they decided to approach us.” 

The Idea Tree can also help your organization create a social media strategy or train volunteers and staff of various social media platforms. For more information see our Social Media Strategy and Training Page.