Last week – 8th to 14th June – was the national Carers Week campaign when we came together with our like-minded friends online to make caring visible. It was an opportunity for us to showcase our work and find new friends. Pleasingly, they came from the corporate sector, the third sector and new carers have discovered us too. Here we share our Carers Week highlights aimed at making caring visible.
Story-telling to convey emotion
We tell stories to convey the emotional side of caring. As you can imagine, story-telling can help us provide context and value to readers who are new to our charity. We can only do this with the kindness of our time-starved beneficiaries who open up their hearts and show their vulnerability. Our team is grateful to Emma Thompson who volunteered to share her story. Did you see it across many of the social media channels: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and of course, Family Umbrage? We thank Emma for her time and wish Ellouise continued, speedy recovery from her severe burns.
Break 4 Carers fundraising for Carers Week
Did you see our two adverts on Facebook? We created our first fundraising campaign using Facebook Ads. The idea was to tie in with our free 4-day breaks for carers and reflect that in taking a coffee break for 4 minutes. We asked people to donate £4, keeping on the theme, for their coffee break and we called it #Break4Carers.
The advert was very simple. Unfortunately, we didn’t hit our modest target of £100. We were hoping to cover the weekly cleaning cost we incur when we re-open the cottage next month. Like all troopers, we will try again.
Results elsewhere
We enjoyed successes elsewhere, however. For example, we engaged more people on Twitter and 24 more people follow us. That’s great for awareness which we are always seeking to achieve. Several times, Carers UK shared our messages which had the potential to reach their 62,000 followers.
Small charities like us struggle to get noticed in the sea of social media traffic. Therefore, we are really pleased to stand out for this number of people. For example, The Good Grief Trust is one new follower. We look forward to supporting their beneficiaries in future months. It’s great they now know about us.
More connections on Facebook
Many of our community are active followers of our Facebook page. Last week we welcomed 28 new After Umbrage page followers. That’s growth we haven’t experienced for some time. Understandably, we are delighted and attribute this to our advert.
What was Carers Week like for you?
We enjoyed being part of the buzz. What’s more, there were lots of great resources for carers. MPs were written to, TV and Radio programmes featured carers and the government was urged to review the carers allowance. What were your stories from last week? We’d love to hear from you.