Smile Train is an international charity that provides life-changing surgery for children born with cleft lip and palate around the world, and we manage the charity’s UK social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Donations to Smile Train fund surgeries around the word, so it’s our job on social media to galvanise supporters here in the UK to get involved and support the international efforts of this incredible charity.
Education is at the heart of our strategy, and this is reflected in daily content that teaches audiences about all things cleft lip and palate; including surgery and treatment, the challenges people born with a cleft face, the work of the charity, and how potential supporters can get involved.
Through educational content, patient stories and the celebration of UK fundraisers, we help to raise awareness of Smile Train’s work around the world in engaging, relevant, algorithm-pleasing ways.
Through the UK cleft community, we’re able to share powerful UK patient stories that are always the top-performing content on Smile Train UK’s social channels. These inspiring stories highlight the important message that countless children around the world don’t have their surgeries funded by a free national health service, like we do in the UK.
For campaign moments and key calendar dates, we work with celebrities and influencers to help amplify Smile Train UK’s work, utilising the social media channels to highlight campaign support from household names such as Elizabeth Hurley, Bill Bailey, Evanna Lynch, Joanna Lumley and Amber Davies.
Our outreach strategy involves sourcing influencers from a range of lifestyle categories, as well as influencers known for covering the topic of cleft on their channels. We nurture these influencer relationships and ask them to share select key messages and help us amplify key campaign moments throughout the year, such as World Smile Day and the charity’s annual fundraising campaign, Big Smile Tea Party.
Through our influencer outreach activity, we recently nurtured a relationship with Dr Kiran Rahim, a high-profile doctor born with a cleft, who has a large social media following. Dr Kiran is now one of Smile Train UK’s official ambassadors. Educational videos we filmed with Dr Kiran always rank among our top performing – highlighting the importance of working with relevant ambassadors who can speak to the objectives of your charity.
Over time, we’ve built an engaged community of over 20,000 followers. In 2022 alone, our content has helped to generate over 28 million impressions and 4 million engagements – two statistics that are far above industry benchmarks.
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