INFO 250 002 2021W2 Networks, Crowds, and Communities: UBC Blogs

MOSAIC BC Social Media Marketing Strategy

Our team: Rebecca Baron, Ally Carey, Andie Lizo, Ashley Young

Our community partner collaborators: Caroline Wallace (Development Coordinator), Mischa Milne (Communications Coordinator) and Abde Amr (Communications Specialist)

I. Introduction

MOSAIC BC’s overarching mission is to foster an inclusive and thriving environment in Canada. As part of our community-based experiential learning project, we aimed to advance our community partner’s mission by developing a social media strategy to promote, enhance, and catalyze MOSAIC’s Afghan Response Fund. We worked closely with Mischa Milne and Caroline Wallace between the dates of January 28th and March 18th to develop a social media campaign across their Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn channels. From our Zoom meetings and email correspondence, we were able to understand how our community partner’s work ensures that more Afghan refugees in the community have access to the resources they need to thrive in Canada. We then developed a step-by-step plan on what content is needed to gain traction and raise awareness to support MOSAIC’s Afghan Response Fund — an ongoing fund to support Afghan refugees in the Lower Mainland. This was determined based on a preliminary analysis of several other similar non-profit organizations, such as the Pacific Immigrant Resources Society (PIRS), Canadian Red Cross, and Compassion Canada. After completing our research, we then began drafting a campaign schedule using Excel and developing several infographics for our social media campaign using Canva. Overall, our project helped to enhance our community partner’s work by ensuring that more Afghan refugees in Vancouver have access to the necessary resources and support networks to allow them to thrive in Canada.

II. Background Information About MOSAIC BC

MOSAIC is a non-profit organization dedicated to working alongside the Afghan and wider Canadian community to provide meaningful refugee resettlement and integration support. It is one of Canada’s largest settlement and employment services organizations with 18 additional new projects approved and funded to meet the evolving needs of its clients. MOSAIC plans to aid in the resettlement of Afghan refugees through two programs, the Special Immigration Program and the Special Humanitarian Program that focus on Afghans who assisted the Canadian Government and resettling Afghan nationals respectively.

“MOSAIC enriches communities through services and advocacy, furthering the success and sense of belonging of newcomers and individuals from diverse backgrounds.”

– MOSAIC BC, 2022

Since the organization’s inception in 1978, MOSAIC has provided enriching services to immigrants in the Metro Vancouver area. Historically, it has relied on government contracts, including federal and provincial contributions, to fund its resources and programs. With the advent of social media, the organization now uses its various social media channels (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn) to raise awareness, gain public interest, and increase funding to support its programs. 

Throughout the pandemic, MOSAIC created new and continued ongoing programs. As mentioned during our conversation with Mischa and Caroline, many of the staff and volunteers take pride in the fact that MOSAIC’s funds are able to support individuals in the community. This has allowed the organization to grow, and it now manages a $20 million-plus annual budget with over 450 volunteers, 300 staff, and 300 contractors. 

Fig. 1. MOSAIC is proud to be named 26th on the 2021 Best Workplaces™ in Canada list. All image rights go to MOSAIC BC.

III. Problem/Need We Addressed

The problem we aimed to address in this project was improving MOSAIC’s social media outreach for their Afghan Response Fund. This fundraiser has been ongoing, however, there exists a lack of donor awareness and public engagement with this particular initiative. Our team decided to take this opportunity to create, develop, and implement a social media strategy for MOSAIC. Prior to the implementation of our community-based experiential learning (CBEL) project, the Afghan Response Fund was not being actively promoted across our community partner’s social media channels.

Additionally, Canadians were not being made aware of the federal government’s promise to assist 40,000 Afghans in need of lifesaving resettlement. Therefore, we saw this project as an opportunity to disseminate the stories of Afghan refugees and increase awareness regarding the severity of the crisis. In doing so, this would not only make social media users more inclined to donate to MOSAIC’s Afghan Response Fund, but it also would reinforce public sentiment to create change. 

IV.  Solution & What We Did

To effectively implement our social media campaign, we divided our project into three separate phases. Phase I (analysis) allowed us to use critical thinking, effective communication strategies, and problem-solving skills to determine relevant social media campaign strategies that have been used by similar non-profit organizations. Phase II (social media campaign) involved the most intensive section of our project, where we acquired design knowledge and important writing skills. Finally, Phase III (wrap up) of our social media campaign required us to develop strong time management skills, a willingness to collaborate, as well as be able to bring our project to an end.

We were able to make informed suggestions for social media fundraising and improve upon MOSAIC’s current social media practices by researching and analyzing digital fundraising strategies used by other Canadian non-profit organizations. The four members of our group individually conducted research on 1-2 other organizations with similar fundraising campaign plans. We then came together to discuss potential strategies, strengths, and weaknesses of other social media campaigns. This informed our Social Media Plan, which was developed using Excel and stated the Type of Content, Topic, When to Post, Platform, as well as any relevant information that was gathered during our preliminary analysis.

Fig.2. MOSAIC Social Media Plan to help plan post and their release dates for our two-week social media campaign.

We kept in mind MOSAIC’s existing branding and did not want to deviate from that, thus, Abde Amr assisted our team as we generated content for our community partners. He provided us with several folders of consented photos to promote the Afghan Response Fund, including the organization’s official primary and secondary colour palettes. Using Canva, we developed visually appealing content by using and editing photos, visual graphics, and text to capture the fundraiser’s mission. In generating these forward-thinking designs, we were able to create material for our community partners to engage a wide audience of potential donors across several of MOSAIC’s social media channels. Not only did this project create a strong social media strategy to aid MOSAIC BC’s digital fundraising campaign, but it also enabled our team to design, implement, and evaluate social media strategies to support newcomers to Canada.

V. CBEL Video

VI. Results

MOSAIC’s campaign posts on their various social media platforms helped in broadening reach and spreading information about the Afghanistan crisis. While MOSAIC is not very active on Instagram, we thought that posting on this platform (along with Facebook and LinkedIn) would help reach younger audiences. Moreover, by sharing the stories of the Afghan refugees MOSAIC has already supported, they are making their audience aware of how their donations are making an impact.

Fig. 3. Instagram posts from the social media campaign.

After researching on types of content that receive the most engagement and exposure, we suggested for they post a reel or video on their social media accounts. MOSAIC took our recommendation and uploaded a PSA video on their Facebook and LinkedIn, which is useful for quickly capturing the audience’s attention. To further help with the campaign, we created several infographics for them to use. However, we were not able to gauge its influence as MOSAIC decided not to utilize them.

Fig. 4. Our group helped to create several graphics overlayed with text on Canva. We used several of the templates provided with their free service to edit and enhance our photos. 

Overall, the posts that were uploaded on Instagram ranged from 30-52 likes. On LinkedIn, our content, other than the PSA video, did slightly better in comparison with their other posts. We obtained 30-62 likes, while their usual posts received around 20. Our Facebook posts had the least engagement with posts gaining 8-14 likes, which performs about the same compared to their previous posts.

We ended the campaign with a message from the Chief Executive Officer as a way to thank everyone who donated to the Afghan Response Fund. We found that the personalized message gained the most interaction, coming up to 63 likes on LinkedIn.

Fig. 5. We helped to disseminate information about the Afghan crisis to other Canadians. This was accomplish by using statistics and sharing stories across several social media platforms.

VII. Self-Evaluation

Overall, our CBEL project with MOSAIC BC was a beneficial experience that provided us with the necessary tools and resources needed to move forward as social media strategists. We learned how to design, evaluate, and implement a two-week social media campaign for an organization. We also discovered how to implement fun facts, donation “how to’s”, and interviews with previous refugees and team members into digital designs. In applying our skills from INFO 250, we were able to help contribute to MOSAIC’s fundraising goals by supporting our efforts to raise money more effectively for Afghan refugees in BC’s Lower Mainland.

Reflecting on our experiences working with MOSAIC BC, we believe that this opportunity provided our group with a deeper insight into the importance of social media platforms, as well as their integral role in modern society. As we discovered from this project, social media allows organizations to reach, engage and nurture their mission and vision with a target audience. However, it also has the potential of not reaching individuals who need the services and resources provided by an organization. In the case of MOSAIC BC, we discovered the profound importance of posting on social media to connect with potential donors and increase public awareness of global issues to ensure that nobody is left out.

Fig. 3. We had group meetings over Zoom and kept up with email correspondence. 

From our CBEL project, we were able to accomplish our goal of spreading public awareness of MOSAIC’s Afghan Response Fund. We were able to reach approximately 68- 128 individuals across several social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Evidently, this was accomplished by conducting a thorough background analysis and social media review of other non-profit organizations fostering a safe and inclusive environment for immigrants. Additionally, our active involvement in supporting and promoting the Afghan Response Fund across these digital platforms catalyzed our ability to design, implement, and evaluate social media strategies to support newcomers during their resettlement period in Canada.

Initially, we aimed to assist in raising $1000 for the Afghan Response Fund by creating posts for Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Although we did not fully achieve this goal, we still successfully raised $250 from a significant donor, identified important social media strategies to strengthen future social media campaigns for MOSAIC, and promoted their vision across several social media platforms. We were also able to effectively disseminate information in a coherent, succinct, and evidence-based way to potential donors across several social media channels. Not only did this raise awareness for MOSAIC’s vision, but it also helped increase public awareness of the organization’s current efforts to ameliorate the downstream effects of the Afghan crisis. 

As university students coming from a diverse range of backgrounds, from UBC’s Faculty of Arts to UBC’s Faculty of Land & Food Systems, we had a diverse range of experiences and expertise on our team. However, we lacked the ability to create and design graphics. To ensure that the content we curated for our community partner aligned with their goals, mission, and expectations, we relied on Abde Amr to assist our group. We also used Canva to help generate infographics that were visually appealing and would allow us to edit images without extensive photo editing knowledge or experience. Due to this gap in graphic design knowledge, some of the designs that we created for our community partner were not used during the campaign. Therefore, if our team had learnt how to use Adobe Illustrator or other, more professional graphic design platforms, we would have been able to create more alluring content. That said, Mischa and Caroline will be taking into consideration our recommendations and advice for social media engagement strategies and implementing these suggestions in the future.  

Overall, our group thoroughly enjoyed this experience of working with MOSAIC BC. We acquired new social media strategy skills, including how to design, implement, and evaluate social media strategies to achieve organizational and communicational goals. Both Caroline and Mischa provided us with the support and guidance needed throughout this project and were open to our group’s proposed ideas. This project provided us with the opportunity to analyze social media trends and develop a strategic plan to reach out to a unique and diverse audience of donors. Additionally, it taught us about how we work together as a team, including our individual strengths and weaknesses. We believe that this experience was worthwhile; it has allowed us to not only grow as future social media strategists or avid social media users but also as students pursuing careers where informational skills are needed.