" />Long-standing client, The Boys’ Brigade, approached us here at Refresh to ask for help with a new idea the comms team had to run an internal awards scheme specific to social media.
BB, as it is commonly known, is an organisation that Refresh supports across England, Scotland and Wales. Groups meet locally on a weekly basis, sometimes operating in areas where there are very few other after-school options for children aged 5-18 years.
The reason for BB being able to operate over 1,000 groups across the UK is down to an amazing network of volunteers, who lead sessions for members week in, week out. In most cases, this is also on top of a day job. So, when we started asking the volunteers to get onto social media and to show off the activities that their group undertake each week, it added an additional layer of work for many. It is for this reason that BB wanted to give back to the hard-working volunteers by recognising their efforts.
Planning an awards programme
At Refresh, we are used to running awards programmes, and we used this experience to pull together a plan for BB which followed a tried and tested formula.
We:
- Went out with a call to action to enter – via social media of course! This was also communicated in BB’s internal communications to groups
- A final call to enter was issued
- Meanwhile we were busy securing a panel of judges which included CMO of Boots UK, Peter Markey
- We gathered all entries and spent time judging them against set pre-agreed criteria. With so many great entries, this was hotly debated
- We announced our shortlist
- We announced our winners – again, on social media
Celebrating the awards
Given this was the first year for the awards, the results were beyond our expectations! We had thousands upon thousands of public votes for our shortlisted groups, and from our point of view it was fantastic to see so many groups doing great things on social media. Remember, all those running social media accounts are volunteers, and they do this in their spare time!
To find out more, and to view the winners, head over to BB’s post ‘Social media awards – congratulations to our winners’ to see which of the lovely volunteers won.
Awards’ legacy
We’re already thinking about how we can make Year 2 of the BB Social Media Awards a success, and how to build on the foundation that we laid earlier this year.
In the meantime, we’re encouraging more groups to get online to share photos of their sessions, events and even summer camps and to keep the conversation going. Most importantly, we’ll be encouraging groups to post about The Programme. This is a schedule of activity written specifically for different age groups which explores creativity, activity, adventure and more. It means all groups undertake a similar schedule week-on-week, and volunteers already have all the resources they need to hand, so there’s no need for them to have to plan out sessions in advance.
If you’d like to join BB, either as a volunteer or a member (if you’re age 5-18 years) visit Boys’ Brigade to find a local group, start a group, or just to have a read about this fantastic youth organization.
Find out more about Boys' Brigade.
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