Why Create Content for Conservation?
It’s pretty common knowledge that social media can be a powerful tool for reaching new audiences. These online tools could help your conservation work take leaps forward in the impact that you can achieve for nature.
But the real challenge is knowing what content will help you achieve that outcome. What content do you need to start posting on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok to actually attract new eyes to your crucial work? How can you begin to entice more people to start volunteering their time?
I don’t claim to have the answer for your particular scenario. But what I’ve compiled below is some suggestions targeted towards community groups and reserves to begin you on that creative journey.
If you work in a different area of conservation, I still encourage you to stick around, because you should be able to repurpose a lot of these for different scenarios. But please let me know in the comments section below what kind of work you do and I’ll see if I can create a follow up post in the future that provides suggestions for your particular line of work!
Let’s get into it.
The 5 Digital Content Ideas for Conservation
1. Meet the Team Tuesdays or “Tuesday Crewsday”
There are so many ways to approach this depending on the platform that you’re using!
Here’s a few ideas to get those creative juices flowing.
The lowest effort approach would be to take a picture of the team member/volunteer and then ask them to write a short blurb about themselves.
For better results though, we need to implement some video magic. Why not capture a clip of them introducing themselves? Start with a simple “Hi there, my name’s Jordan, and I volunteer for…”
You’ll need to come prepared with some interview style questions for your subject to get a bit more out of them. Here’s some suggestions:
- What’s you’re favourite thing about volunteering at…?
- What encouraged you to start volunteering here?
- What’s your favourite native animal?
- What’s your regular day job/profession?
Now this last question may seem unrelated to our interest in conservation, but their answer might just be what entices the viewers to sign up for the next volunteer day.
Think about it, if they say that they work in something like healthcare or IT, it will instantly validate the viewers who also work unrelated professions and help them realise that they could also be volunteers.
A brief note
You may get through the entire crew in only a few weeks, but this doesn’t necessarily render Tuesday Crewsday as obsolete! Use your imagination. Now that your team has introduced themselves, they can still help you create new content in the future. Even just a quick “field log” of what they have been up to recently in the reserve, or if they have particular knowledge or expertise in an area of conservation, encourage them to share that with others.
2. What Plant Wednesdays
This concept can actually blend as a single strategy with idea number 3 that we’ll cover next.
The goal with this content strategy is to encourage engagement from your followers.
Simply post a picture or video of a plant species and do not tell them what it is.
Instead, ask the viewers if they know what it is!
This strategy will achieve a greater level of reach due to the increased engagement (i.e., comments) on the post.
Essentially, the social media algorithm is designed to suggest your posts to non-followers if it is receiving more comments than expected.
In fact, there are ways to further boost the likelihood that people comment!
It’s in our human nature to correct people that are wrong about something to try make ourselves appear smarter. You can hijack this psychology by suggesting something that others may disagree with or can prove their intelligence!
You’ll need to be careful with how you do this to avoid being discredited as a worthwhile account to follow though, but keep this idea in mind and look for opportunities to start some polite controversy in the comment section and watch your post and follower count skyrocket.
It could be as simple as suggesting a hot take about the species or asking the commenters for their hot take.
Alternatively, a really tricky approach could be to take a photo of a leaf that is very clearly the main subject of the image but have the background as the bark/trunk of a different species. Then you simply have to suggest the I.D. of the subtle background species. The experts who recognise the bark in the background might just appreciate the joke while everyone else will be up in arms about the incorrect identification in the foreground.
3. Flora Fridays
Now this is where you finally provide the answer for What Plant Wednesday.
Again, the content can be developed to varying levels and styes of creativity.
Lowest effort would simply be reposting the photo and providing the answer. However, this will only achieve minimal additional reach. After all, the majority of your followers already found out the answer by scrolling through the comments of the previous post where a general consensus will have been reached.
If you want to draw in new eyes with these posts, you need to provide more value. Again, as mentioned in the first strategy: video will always be superior to a photo. Even more so if there is a voice to go with it. People don’t like reading these days. They want to be told what they are looking at. I know… sad right? But you best bet we should take advantage of it for the sake of conservation!
Do a quick bit of research and come up with one or two fun facts about the plant that you can share with your audience. This could either be some science facts about the species, or even some history pertaining to the species in your particular conservation work. When was it rediscovered or first planted in the reserve? Is it heavily reliant on the work you’re doing to survive? What wildlife is it attracting back to the reserve? Use your imagination. There is so much to share!
4. Community Spotlight Saturday
This concept pulls from the idea of “UGC”, or “User-Generated Content”.
The goal for these is to encourage your followers to share their experiences and observations in the reserve that you’re protecting. Ask them to tag your official account so that you can repost their photos and videos on your own feed. Simple as that.
You can take it a bit further by providing a weekly prompt with ideas that encourage your audience to seek out particular things in the reserve.
Here’s an example: “This week, we are looking for pictures of the coolest mushroom you can find in our reserve! Tag us in your photos and we’ll repost it 🍄”
Other keywords to give you ideas could be “something yellow”, “a feathery friend”, “a funky texture”, “something slimy“…
The options are endless!
5. “Day in the Life”
This type of content could either follow a single individual during a volunteer/community day, or you could simply document what a community day is like in general. Simply capture several short clips from the start to end, and overlay it with a voiceover that describes everything that happened during the day.
Here’s some prompts:
- How did the day begin?
- What was the goal of this volunteer day?
- What work were you doing? (trapping, planting, translocating wildlife, etc.)
- How many people showed up?
- Did you share a lunch/breakfast that might entice more people to attend the next one?
Make sure to get clips that help to visually answer some of these questions and back up the voiceover! Have some fun with it. Capture some closeups, people, nature, scenery, and then splice it all together with a sound track. But make sure that the soundtrack is instrumental and very reduced in volume, because your voiceover needs to be the primary element of the video.
Here’s a few bonus ideas
a few more bonus ideas to get your creativity going:
- Weedy Wednesday – Like Flora Friday but teach your viewers about the weeds that you deal with in your project
- For What Plant Wednesday – an alternative approach is that you could give the prompt for “Wrong answers only”, encouraging the viewers to suggest silly and creative ideas in the comment section.
Make it Work For You!
Every conservation group has different goals and resources/time at their disposal. You don’t have to implement every single strategy that I’ve suggested, and I’m also not claiming that these content ideas are the ultimate formula to achieve maximum outreach online.
Instead, look at what I’ve provided you as somewhere to start. Give some of these ideas a go. If they don’t work, change it up a bit. I’ve provided you with some of my creativity, but maybe what is needed is some of yours!
I wish you luck. And I’d love to see your take on implementing these ideas! So please tag me in any content that was inspired by these suggestions.
Let’s keep making nature impossible to ignore.
Until next time,
Jordan
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