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* Jones M, Pitt H, Weitkamp E (2017) Food Growing Schools: London. Final Evaluation Report. UWE Bristol.
The Food Growing Schools: London (FGSL) partnership, led by Garden Organic and supported by the Mayor of London, brings together the very best of London’s food growing expertise, information and support, with the ambition to inspire and equip every school in London to grow their own food.
The core of FGSL’s digital communications has always been the website and the schools e-newsletter, which are excellent channels for sharing information.
But given these tools facilitate one-way communication, for the 2017-2018 year of the project, we increased our focus on social media in order to foster a sense of community among schools and to develop timely collaboration, networking, signposting and campaigning opportunities.
These are areas identified by FGSL research as key ways to support school food growing in London.
Digital Communications Tools:
Using social media to support school food growing
Learnings from FGSL evaluation 2017
Schools that completed our survey were asked to rate areas where a London-wide organisation could support food growing in their school. We used social media to respond to two of these areas where the percentages rating for ‘significantly valuable’ were as follows:
• 68% Networking, signposting and collaboration
• 49% Campaigning for food growing in London schools*
www.foodgrowingschools.orgGarden Organic | www.gardenorganic.org.uk | Registered Charity No. 298104
“Teachers and school staff want opportunities to network, they want to communicate with other schools who are doing similar projects –they value peer support, the opportunity to share challenges and celebrate successes together, knowing they are part of something.”
Sarah Bishop, Garden Organic Education Officer, Project Learning Garden
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Using social media to achieve FGSL objectives
We developed a social media strategy to support FGSL’s 2017-2018 objectives: increasing the number of schools engaging with FGSL, improving links between schools and community organisations/volunteers, increasing the number of organisations linking food growing to the curriculum and increasing organisations promoting FGSL.
The starting point for the strategy was to build on our existing social media presence, by maximising the impact of our existing Twitter account and then launching a new Facebook page, meanwhile ensuring that communication via these channels joined up with our website and newsletter.
Social media was used to:• Reach more schools;
• Share opportunities by connecting schools with offers from external organisations;
• Link schools and staff to one another to help foster a network and sense of community;
• Disseminate free resources and promote growing advice on the FGSL website;
• Campaign for school food growing and raise awareness of its benefits amongst a wider audience.
“Social media, especially Twitter, is a quick and easy way to share ideas and tips, showcase achievements, and build a sense of community. I always finish school gardening days with a selfie – you can tell how much the pupils enjoyed the day by the smiles on their faces!”
Chris Collins, FGSL Ambassador, Head of Organic Horticulture, Garden Organic
www.foodgrowingschools.orgGarden Organic | www.gardenorganic.org.uk | Registered Charity No. 298104
Reaching the right audience @FoodGrowSchools
Twitter is an effective platform for FGSL because of the presence of school accounts, FGSL partners, and other relevant organisations (for example, those featured in our Directory of Support). We have also benefited from using the platform’s key functions, such as tagging other users, aggregating topics using hashtags and sharing links and graphics containing text.
We started by creating a list of London schools and Parent Teacher Association accounts in five boroughs, identifying those that were not yet followers. By following these accounts, many in turn chose to follow FGSL back. This targeted approach increased our reach, with more than 20 new schools or school related accounts becoming followers.
Digital Communications Tools:
Using social media to support school food growing
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www.foodgrowingschools.orgGarden Organic | www.gardenorganic.org.uk | Registered Charity No. 298104
Digital Communications Tools:
Using social media to support school food growing
“Participating in the FGSL partnership gave us an opportunity to reach out to London schools through FGSL’s social media channels and helped promote our Edible Playgrounds work to a key audience.”
Carys Alder, Development Manager, Trees for Cities
Partnership campaigning potential
The number of Twitter followers for the account of each organisation involved in the FGSL partnership varies. Added together, the number of followers is an impressive 253,000. Though these are not all unique followers, there is potential to make a big impact through coordinated, collective communication to a wide audience.
Organisation account Twitter followers (approx)
FGSL 3k
Garden Organic 37k
Capital Growth 8k
Soil Association Food For Life 13k
Royal Horticulture Society/ RHS Campaign for school gardening
155k/7k
School Food Matters 6k
Trees for Cities 24k
Total 253k
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Bearing fruit: what have we learnt?
Engaging audiences: The key factors for engaging our audience on social media is providing free, timely, and relevant content. For example, providing an advice blog on effective watering during a heat wave and carrot growing tips when #NationalCarrotDay is trending on Twitter.
Hashtag vs account handle: Asking schools to use specific hashtags was not popular (low take-up of #GrowYourOwnPicnic for example) but many schools are keen to tag the @FoodGrowSchools account handle to help connect with a wider, relevant audience.
Twitter vs Facebook: In the boroughs we tested, a higher proportion of schools had a Twitter account than a Facebook page. Twitter may be more effective for communicating with school accounts. However, for communicating directly with teachers on personal accounts, Facebook may be a better choice. Each platform has communications benefits for the project.
Facebook page vs Facebook group: Though a Facebook page is a good public-facing tool, growing the number of page fans organically is challenging. A Facebook group might instead be a better approach to allow teachers and school staff to network.
However, Facebook adverts can only be run via pages. Though the tested adverts produced a relatively low percentage of direct survey completions or web visits, achieving this level of project awareness and visibility with a highly specific target audience can have positive long term impacts.
Photos vs graphics: Impactful photos are key to the success of Facebook adverts and posts. Many FGSL resources and graphics are text-heavy so these are not suitable for maximising exposure of a post due to Facebook’s policy restricting text in images. Images containing more than 20% text are penalised by appearing in fewer newsfeeds.
www.foodgrowingschools.orgGarden Organic | www.gardenorganic.org.uk | Registered Charity No. 298104
Digital Communications Tools:
Using social media to support school food growing
Launching a Facebook page @FoodGrowingSchools
We used the new Facebook page to test low-cost, paid adverts, using Facebook’s audience insight and geo-targeting tools to reach new audiences who may not yet be aware of the project.
A total of £30 was spent to reach 5,000 people with audience targeting parameters of Facebook users located within 20 miles of London city centre, 18 years or older, listed job as teachers or assistant, and an interest in gardening.
Additionally, our new Facebook page proved a cost-effective means to trial reaching out to new schools and teachers.
We established a Facebook page to:
• Grow a community of 100 followers interested in school food growing.
• Provide school food growing news, free resources, opportunities and advice on page posts with over 12,000 total reach and 1,200 engagements.
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Bearing fruit: what did we achieve?
We used Twitter to increase FGSL’s visibility and reach, to foster engagement, to participate in relevant and timely online discussions and to contextualise the project’s work.
We successfully used Twitter to:
• Campaign for school food growing and raise awareness of the benefits, reaching over 600,000 impressions and 2,800 engagements on tweets while gaining over 700 new account followers.
• Promote available opportunities for schools. We matched schools with free items, competition prizes and opportunities.
• Support an environment where schools and school staff can connect, fostering a sense of community where schools can showcase their food growing and cooking achievements. The @FoodGrowSchools Twitter handle is popular with 20 school, teacher or garden lead accounts tagging FGSL in tweets and images.
• Share free gardening and classroom resources, providing quick access and curriculum inspiration on relevant dates. For example, sharing Garden Organic’s Composting Tips classroom poster during Composting Awareness Week achieved 10,000 impressions and 200 engagements.
• Signpost to information and resources on the FGSL website. Links in tweets provided the third highest source of total traffic to the FGSL website where visitors downloaded free pdf resource files over 2,500 times.
• Raise the profile and impact of the FGSL partnership offer by promoting partner activities and helping national partners to communicate with London schools. For example, over 100 tweets tagged Garden Organic, and these reached 175,000 impressions.
Digital Communications Tools:
Using social media to support school food growing
www.foodgrowingschools.orgGarden Organic | www.gardenorganic.org.uk | Registered Charity No. 298104
Right audience, right time – sharing blogs on social media
The FGSL website features a news section which is a Wordpress blog integrated into the overall website.
Some of the most popular content shared on our Twitter account were the monthly blog articles “How to Grow a School Garden” written by Chris Collins, Head of Organic Horticulture at Garden Organic for FGSL schools.
Sharing these expert blogs and tailored advice provided credibility to FGSL’s social media channels and sharing on social media helped get the information out quickly to the right audience at the right time.
For example, Chris Collins’ March blog provided gardening tips for dealing with late frosts and wet soil which many schools struggled with at that time of year. Meanwhile his June blog focusing on watering advice and garden care for dry weather periods provided appropriate advice during one of the hottest years on record in the UK.
Sharing Wordpress blogs on social media
As users scroll through their newsfeeds, you only have a moment to get your message across.
One key factor for attracting attention is choice of image. Another is the headline and preview text underneath.
In order to customise the image and text of Wordpress blog links shared to our social media for maximum impact and relevance to our target audience, we used Yoast SEO, a Wordpress plug in. This plug in is free and easy to use.
Doing more with less
Free tools were used to maximise our impact:
• Tweetdeck: Useful for keeping track of FGSL partner Twitter activity, representing the partnership with retweets, monitoring trending hashtags, scheduling content to keep the account active while staff are engaged in other areas.
• RiteTag: Reports the current and long-term popularity of a searched hashtag and suggests related hashtags to include and increase the exposure of your tweet.
• Canva: Online image manipulation software for resizing, amending photos and graphics; key to more impactful social media and e-newsletters.
• Photos: Some websites offer copyright-free high quality stock photos. Good examples include Pixabay and Unsplash.
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Food Growing Schools: LondonPartner information
Garden Organic | www.gardenorganic.org.uk | [email protected] | 0247 621 7747
Garden Organic leads a group of organisations in the Food Growing Schools: London partnership. It is the UK’s leading organic growing charity dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening. Garden Organic has been bringing the benefits of gardening to schools for over 20 years, helping students and communities access the benefits of growing food and engage in hands-on activities.
Food Growing Schools: London is a partnership initiative led by Garden Organic. Garden Organic, the working name of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, is a registered charity in England and Wales (no. 298104) and Scotland (SC046767).
www.foodgrowingschools.org
Capital Growth | www.capitalgrowth.org | [email protected] | 0207 065 0902
Capital Growth is London’s Food Growing Network, with over 2,000 members. Whether you are growing at home, at school or with a community group, join for free to receive benefits such as advice, discounts on food-growing training delivered via our network of London Training Hubs and invitations to participate in key events, including a School Marketplace at City Hall. Capital Growth is a project of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.
Soil Association Food For Life | www.foodforlife.org.uk | [email protected] | 0117 314 5180
The Food for Life schools award programme is widely commissioned by public health teams and taken up by schools. The award is an independent endorsement for schools that support pupils to eat well and enhance learning. Our menu of teacher training courses was developed to give staff confidence and capacity to offer practical cooking, food growing and develop farm links. Training supports curriculum and promotes knowledge of healthy eating amongst pupils, parents and the community.
RHS | www.schoolgardening.rhs.org.uk | [email protected] | 0148 322 6517
Royal Horticultural Society Campaign for School Gardening encourages and supports schools to develop and actively use school gardens. Through the Campaign, the RHS provides teachers with a wide range of resources and an extensive programme of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) days and a School Gardening Award scheme.
School Food Matters | www.schoolfoodmatters.org | [email protected] | 0208 878 8333
School Food Matters’ mission is to ensure that every child enjoys fresh sustainable food at school and understands where their food comes from. Schools sign up for a one or three year membership programme to make the most of great benefits. Be first in line to participate in exciting food enterprise projects, receive expert advice on how to improve school meal service, host cooking or growing activities at school, enjoy discounts and more.
Trees for Cities | www.treesforcities.org | [email protected] | 0207 587 1320
Edible Playgrounds transform school grounds into vibrant outdoor spaces that excite and teach children about growing and eating healthy food. By instilling healthy eating habits at an early age, they help tackle obesity, food poverty and lack of access to nature, and provide a platform for fun and engaging lessons that support the school curriculum.
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