In this instructional video, Polly Barnfield, OBE explains how to boost social‑media engagement by framing posts around targeted, emotive questions. Using the National Trust’s recent campaign as a concrete example, she outlines how the organization partnered with WWF UK and the RSPB, created the hashtag #PeoplesPlanForNature, and paired striking UK nature imagery with two core questions – “What do you love about nature in the UK?” and “What would you do if it disappeared?” – to spark personal reflection and conversation. The speaker describes how the campaign generated a flood of user‑generated content, political discussion, and mini‑poll‑style insights (e.g., percentages of respondents missing forests). She then demonstrates a practical workflow for monitoring and supporting individual National Trust sites via a platform’s “Engage” group feature, allowing the central team to like, comment, and repost local content. The talk concludes with a call‑to‑action encouraging viewers to click a help button for further assistance.
Chapters
Today we're looking at how you can generate engagement by asking questions on social media. This is a national trust and as you can see, they post really regularly and obviously what they want to do is capture people's imaginations and excitement for traveling all over the uk. And what they've done here is they wanted to generate people's passion to raise awareness of what's happening in nature around us and encourage us to be more protective of it. And what they've done is they created a little campaign which was all around, what do you love about nature in the uk? And what would you do if it disappeared? And they've created the hashtag PeoplesPlanForNature. As you can see in here, they've joined the WWF UK and the RSPB in order to do this as a collective, which is really exciting. And I think it just. It's only going to keep on increasing their reach and increasing their engagement and people's following of the hashtag as well. So it started off with a great image, so obviously capturing lots of lovely, sort of really natural, beautiful imagery from all around the uk. People out walking, people out there with their kids, you see people out there with their dogs. And yes, it's all about, you know, being one with nature. And then what they've done is they've asked a question which is all really what we really need on social media. So they've done, what do you love about nature in the uk? So we're asking specifically, what is their favorite thing about the uk? Whether it's the birds, whether it's the trees, whether it's the beaches, whatever it might be. And then what would you do if it disappeared? How would you feel if it disappeared? So that's the emotive part. So in doing this, they've given us inspirations the best. By asking us a question, they're getting people to actually engage with it and by asking people an emotive side of it. So you know that what do you love? And then what would you do if it disappears? It makes you think about what. How you would feel if, you know, the favorite element of nature in the UK disappeared. And I think it just naturally makes you feel much more present when it comes to thinking about climate change and thinking about all the different expansions that are happening over the next couple of years, which is what they're talking about specifically here with the UK government's growth plans. As you can see, people got mega engaged with it. So people have started talking about their gardens, people are talking about walking in the woods, botanic gardens, countryside. People talked about it being an essential part of their life and people have gotten very, very emotive about it. And people have started using various hashtags and gotten quite political as part of it. Now, what's great about this is it's because it's so engaging, it gets creative and exciting content that people can use afterwards. So the, you know, say a lot of people talked about a specific thing, whether it was beaches or the woods. And then they could take that and say, I don't know, 80% of our respondents said that, that they would really miss, I don't know, the, the forests around the uk. What would be your favorite one? And start getting people actually visiting their favorite ones and getting more involved in it as well. So it's just a really good way of almost creating like a little mini poll for people. And to be honest, any business can do this, any charity can do this, any community group can do this. It's all about, I call it hitting people in the funnies or hitting people in the fields. It's all about trying to spark emotion when it comes to engagement on social media. So if I was National Trust, I would want to look at the individual National Trust sites across the UK in order to monitor the social media and support them individually. So I could go to maybe Platform and then in here go to Engage and I would add in a group. So it would be all the National Trusts and you would click on the set group. So just click on whichever one works here. So it would be said instead of this, it would be National Trusts and then everything that comes up here would be all of their local content. So it would be every single piece of content from every National Trust site across the uk. And then I could quite literally go in there and like them. I can comment on them as National Trust, I can go in and support them and I can also recreate the post myself and post it on my site as well. It means that not only are you monitoring the content and seeing what they're putting out there, but you're also supporting them as well. Now, if you've got any questions whatsoever, click on the little blue button. We love to help.
