How we can #ReclaimSocial for good

We are about to celebrate the third year of #ReclaimSocial on February 6 and it’s more important than ever to highlight the positive side of social media.

It was back in 2018 when we first encouraged others to #ReclaimSocial for good. The idea was to bring charities and individuals together to share their inspiring stories and how we are all using social media to bring our communities together and promote meaningful campaigns. The response was overwhelming, reaching 10 million people in just five hours.

In 2019, we’ve partnered with Social Misfits Media, IG Advisors, CharityComms, the Institute of Fundraising, NCVO and ACEVO to spread the message even more. We were happy to see that the hashtag #ReclaimSocial had more than 40 million impressions in 24 hours. The posts were very inspiring! Hundreds of individuals and charities came together to share their own positive stories of how they’re using social media for good.

In 2020, the goal is to focus even more on building a movement of people who are making our feeds more inspiring.

Building a movement

The message is not just trending once a year anymore:

• we’ve closely supported #GivingTuesday for another year to celebrate the big movement of generosity
• we’ve joined the campaign #YouMadeItHappen with NCVO
• we’ve worked with The Big Give and their Christmas Challenge project
• we’ve sponsored the “Wellbeing Guide for Comms Professionals” for CharityComms
• we’ve run our #ReclaimSocial Twitter takeover for Nptechforgood
• we’ve talked to the Sharing Social meetup about #ReclaimSocial
• we’ve won a highly commended award as “Campaign For Good” at the Social Media Marketing Awards and we were nominated as “Social Media Campaign of the Year” in the Major Player Awards
• we’ve started our own #ReclaimSocial podcast!

The most important thing about #ReclaimSocial is that it gives us the opportunity to talk to amazing people and organisations who are genuinely making social media more inspiring every single day. And this is our goal for this year. We want to bring together as many people as possible to prove that it’s up to all of us to make social media even a tiny bit more inspiring. We want to see how far we can go and we want to celebrate all the heroes of positivity who are making our feeds more inspiring.

How you can join

#ReclaimSocial takes place on 6 February so it’s useful to start planning ahead if you want to make the best of the day.

Joining awareness days can be a great way for your organisation to celebrate all the great work that you’re doing and reach a bigger audience. You can even use Lightful’s free templates to schedule your content before the 6th of February.

The goal is to get as many individuals and charities to spread good news and stories of impact so that we can inject positivity into people’s newsfeeds. It can be a great opportunity to showcase inspiring stories and hopeful messages that can make social media more positive.

Not sure what to talk about? Here are different ways that you can join.

Share positive stories

How about sharing positive stories that matter as part of #ReclaimSocial?

• Share inspiring stories on how you or your organisation are using social media for good
• Post a tip on how you’re planning to be more mindful on social media at a personal level
• Thank someone special either as an organisation or an individual

#ReclaimSocial is a great opportunity to celebrate important milestones or even small wins. You can even share the impact of your work or thank those who support you the most.

Celebrate your heroes of positivity

We all know someone who is making our social media feeds more interesting. Whether it’s an organisation, an influencer, or simply our best friend, it’s time to nominate your favourite heroes of positivity.

• Mention five (or more!) people who have inspired you, had an amazing impact on you or simply make your newsfeed more positive.
• Help others create a more positive feed by including the hashtag #ReclaimSocial.

Be a #ReclaimSocial Ambassador and spread the word

Do you believe in the inspiring side of social media? Are you passionate about using social media for good? You can become a #ReclaimSocial ambassador to encourage others to be more mindful with their use of social media.

Let’s make social media more positive:

• Use our special images and inspire others to be more positive on social media.
• Encourage someone to join the #ReclaimSocial movement

Social media assets to use

We have prepared more than 50 social media assets (images, videos, GIFs) that you can use as part of #ReclaimSocial if you want!

You can use them any way that you want or you can even create your own images.

You can access all the images in this folder and you can use the ones you like the most.

Social media toolkit

We have prepared a social media toolkit to help you plan your content for #ReclaimSocial.

You will find:

• An overview of #ReclaimSocial
• Stats
• Content ideas
• Draft social media posts
• Links to social media assets
• Examples of posts

You can find the #ReclaimSocial social media toolkit here.

Ideas of what to post

If you need additional inspiration on what to post, here are some examples from last year.

You can share motivational posts to inspire your followers

You can share good news

You can celebrate the power of social media

You can thank your supporters

You can create your own visual assets to celebrate the day of positivity

You can share individual posts on how you’re personally using social for good

You can find out more examples from #ReclaimSocial 2019 here or simply by looking at the hashtag #ReclaimSocial on Twitter and Instagram.

We can do it!

There are many of us who want to make social media more positive. And it’s good to remember that it’s up to all of us to make a change.

It’s time to highlight the positive ways we can use social networks to make friends and find inspiration.

Join #ReclaimSocial on February 6 and help make everyone’s news feeds more inspiring!

Let’s do this!

Get the Reclaim Social toolkit now