One of the most important roles in the first few months of setting up an Incredible Edible project is good communication, not just to attract people in the community to your project, but to open up conversation around what it means to be Incredible Edible and how you think you might like to spin those three plates of community, learning and business.
In this section we will look at some ways you can do that, all of which are free to access! And we will begin with Facebook…
Despite some negative press Facebook is immensely useful because it is free to access and easy to use. When you are first setting up your group, being able to communicate, discuss ideas and share what other Incredible Edible groups might be doing for inspiration is vital and a Facebook group is ideal for this. You can add friends and family and you can share your posts and work parties through your group to other groups in the area. You can also choose who sees your group, so whilst you are setting up you might make it secret so that only people involved can comment, then opening it up to be a public group once you feel confident that you are getting going. It’s also possible to have lots of different people as admins, meaning that the responsibility for decisions around the comms on the group can be shared. In fact it’s a really great way to tell the story of the beginning of your Incredible Edible story.
Facebook has two options, which is worth considering at the start – you can either set up a group or a page. You might start with a group, as you build up your core group of members and then move onto a page when you want to more widely promote your Incredible Edible group. This article explains the difference if you want to learn more.
More Information
What should we post?
Facebook groups are the ideal place to post opportunities for people to come along and join in with your group activities. Following on from that it’s always great to see a post showing what has been achieved during that activity and who was involved. It doesn’t need to be wordy – lots of photos of people in action makes a great post!
Sharing other local group activities to your page is also a great way of creating synergy with other local organisations, and it might end up that you share resources and ideas. Local cooking groups, allotment groups, groups that are specifically aimed at older or younger people and a myriad of others will all have synergies to explore.
- Share posts from local, independent businesses who you support.
- Share campaigns that you support or are going to support.
- Share from other Incredible Edible groups that might be local to you, or who you might go and visit.
Some introductory advice…
Pin a post to the top of the group explaining what the group, and maybe what Incredible Edible in general, is about. Then if people start to go a bit off topic, you can direct them to that post for clarification.
You can edit the settings for your group so that the Admin for the group can review any posts before anyone else sees them. This isn’t about being control freaks, but is about stopping the spambots from posting inappropriately to your group.
Encourage healthy debate but ensure that it remains friendly. It’s possible to turn off the comments on a post if it starts to get out of hand.
Keep the group small and manageable, because large groups tend to be a burden to the Admins. If you feel your group is becoming cumbersome, take a peek at the Digging Deeper section of this toolkit which will support you in what to do next.
Managing time and social media
It’s quite possible that Facebook will feel like it’s taking over your life as an admin, so here are some tips to ensure that doesn’t happen……
- Share the burden. Have as many admins as you possibly can!
- Remember the purpose of your Facebook group is to get people to come along and join in with your group, outside in the real world, not just to engage on Facebook, so make sure you are spending the majority of your allotted Incredible Edible time doing that!!
- Turn off your notifications. This might sound counter intuitive because you want people to get hold of you as they need, but social media probably isn’t the right place to expect immediate response. If people need you urgently, they will have your phone number or email address.
Everybody loves a photo and that is the key to Instagram’s success! Whilst many criticise what is becoming to be known as Instagram perfect, in reality for local organisations a great picture is the perfect way of getting some positive engagement from people in your local area.
Going about setting up an Instagram account is easy, but it is only available on smart phones and not on a laptop or PC. It’s wise to use a business account because this gives you access to analytics so you can see whether you’re reaching your target audience. If you suddenly find you are mostly being followed by 14 year old boys 100 miles away from where you are, there is something not quite right!
Instagram at first can seem a bit tricky. How do I get engagement through photos I hear you ask? And what is important here is that you spend time creating the post that goes with the picture, setting the scene around the scene as it were. Telling people where the picture was taken, tagging anyone who is in the photo, and most importantly, telling people how they can get involved in future events and work parties.
But as well as that, it’s important to follow the right people. If you follow them, they might follow you back, so you reach new people and start building a virtual network of support and interest. There are accounts on Instagram with millions of followers, but it’s not numbers that matter. What is important is that your audience is the right audience for you and that starts by following the right people. Follow people who are local to you, businesses that you use and support. Follow your volunteers and local leaders in your community. Once you start looking for people you will see just how many people use Instagram and how there are communities within the app that are really focused on certain things.
Finding those communities is an important part of Instagram engagement, and this is done via hashtags. Using hashtags is often described in a complicated manner but it can be really simple and the best way to start is by using #nameofyourtown. Below we have added a list of useful hastags but once you get going you will find the most relevant to you and it’s worth looking at the tags other local people are using to find the right ones for your area.
A word about photos…
Obviously we are in the Incredible Edible world and access to a professional photographer is unlikely. However, do make sure your photos are in focus and framed well. There’s nothing worse than seeing someone with their head cut in half or an arm with no one attached. If it’s a grey day don’t be ashamed to use a brightening filter to cheer things up a bit.
If you do have a local person offer to take photos for you, make sure you credit them either by tagging them in the photo or in the caption, or ideally in both. And ask permission to use the pictures, and get permission from people in the photos too before posting on social media.
And again, make sure lots of people in your team have access to the account so that the burden is spread. To get maximum engagement it’s a good idea to post daily and at around the same time if you can-first thing in the morning or tea time seem to be optimum times for good engagement, and if you can hang out on Instagram for a while after posting, you can not only answer any comments on your post, but you can comment on other people’s posts too, supporting more engagement around your social media in general.
Useful and relevant #
- #community
- #kindness
- #ifyoueatyourein
- #incredibleedible
- #growingtogether
- #greeninggreybritain
- #supportlocal
- #supportsmallbusiness
- #urbangardenersrepublic
- #foodforfree
- #activecitizen
- #today
- #localeconomy
- #eatlocal
Twitter / X
Twitter (or X as it is now called) is a completely different platform to either Facebook or Instagram, so needs to be used in a very different way. However, as with Facebook or Instagram, following the right people and engaging in conversation with them is the only way to get any engagement. But who to follow and who to engage with on Twitter is a completely different game and one to consider prior to bowling in.
Twitter is fast moving and a great space to connect with local businesses, your local council and councillors, politicians across the country and in your local area, and other groups that you might be aligned to. It’s a fabulous space to share content and make clear your bigger visions around food, community, learning. It’s great to connect with groups across the country and see and engage with the work they are doing.
Once you have made your account it is vital to engage in conversation with people you want to connect with, and with this in mind Twitter is probably the most time hungry platform, but equally it is the one that most media, both local and national, engagement comes from, and where you will constantly connect with likeminded people for really meaningful discussions about what we do at Incredible Edible. It is definitely worth connecting with a few others and finding your way through.
Who to follow…
Far be it for us to give you a set of suggested people but some ideas are…….
- Local councillors, mayors, and officials
- Local businesses who you might like to engage with
- National organisations that you might want to work with or align yourself with
- Local and national food partnerships, food waste organisations etc.
- Other Incredible Edible groups
- The Incredible Edible Network
- Local schools and other educational establishments
- Local and national food and growing initiatives
The most important thing about Twitter is to keep your content positive and to do lots of sharing from others who will do the same for you. Twitter is like a networks of networks, and making sure you stick to people who share your interest in local change, food, etc. is really important to ensure that positive voice.
