Literacy group adopts a lighter Facebook tone, and responses soar

The nonprofit organization didn’t hire a ton of new staffers to make that happen. It didn’t raise its budget (of basically nothing). All it did was make some changes to its Facebook content, making it more like what Marketing Communications Specialist Ashley Tilley was seeing on Pinterest.

“Pinterest is a huge source for us,” she says. “There’s so much content out there, it’s nice to have something that’s visually based.”

The change engendered an immediate, visceral reaction from the organization’s fans. Rather than just telling them what the organization was up to, the new approach gave them ways to talk about their passions for reading, which teemed like waterfalls.

The catalyst

ABC has had presences on Twitter and Facebook for nearly three years, but the organization had never gotten much response beyond one or two comments, “likes,” or shares per Facebook post.

“We were really trying to engage with people, but we just weren’t really seeing the results we wanted to,” Tilley says.

Most of the organization’s content focused on statistics about literacy in Canada or its own programs, peppered with videos and photos from stakeholders.