How to harness the hype around awareness days

Not every awareness day is going to be relevant to you or your brand. So it’s important to familiarise yourself with the meaning behind specific days so you can make sure it aligns with your values. The last thing you want to do is jump onto a trend that might dilute or detract from your cause.

Rather than adopting a ‘catch-all’ approach, carefully select the days that are most relevant to your organisation, and plan ahead. Create an awareness days calendar and highlight causes that are relevant to you – and decide how much resource you want to allocate to each. And don’t forget to make sure that the ones you’re selecting are UK rather than US based (unless you’re based in the US of course!).

Odds are your audience will be pretty ‘au fait’ with awareness days by now, so it’s important to make sure that your take on it offers something fresh and interesting. This is an opportunity to be authentic and explain why this day is so important to you – and what it means to your cause. We love this example from the sustainable toilet paper brand Who Gives A Crap, who had a unique take on the climate crisis for International Women’s Day.

However, don’t stretch the topic of the awareness day to fit what you’re trying to say, as this could well stray into insensitive territory and therefore risk harming your brand reputation. Stick to the theme in hand and make sure that what you’re saying rings true with both your organisation and the awareness day itself.

Most awareness days will have their own associated hashtags, so you should take the time to investigate what these are. Having a look through previous content from other users and brands that have used these hashtags will also help you to see what’s been said before and therefore write something original in your own content.

When the day arrives, make sure to include all the relevant hashtags in your content to guarantee maximum exposure. And don’t forget to use any other generic ones that could help you reach an untapped audience. For example, this could be using the hashtag #parenting for social content around Foster Care Fortnight.

Curating great social media content that will inspire and engage your audience is no mean feat. It requires insight and experience, and also quite a lot of available time. If you’re looking for support with planning and delivering a social media strategy that harnesses the hype around the relevant awareness days for your organisation, get in touch.