In this presentation, Polly Barnfield, OBE, explains how charities can harness personal storytelling on social media to create emotional connections, drive engagement, and increase support. Using the UK domestic‑abuse charity Refuge as a concrete example, she breaks down the anatomy of an effective story – a vivid personal portrait, a description of the survivor’s experience, a hopeful update on their progress, and a clear call to action. She shows how such posts generate high engagement by putting real people at the centre of the narrative. Barnfield then moves to a tactical layer, demonstrating how charities can expand reach by using platform location tools to identify and partner with local businesses and venues (e.g., fashion brands, theatres) that are already attracting attention. By liking, retweeting, or co‑creating content with these partners, charities can surface their stories to new audiences. The talk concludes with a reminder to provide easy contact options (the “blue button”) for further assistance.
Chapters
Today, we're looking at how charities can use storytelling to create connection on social media to drive more support. Refuge is the UK's largest domestic abuse charity, providing support and services all around the uk. Their page features many personal stories of women who've been affected by domestic violence and showing how it's affected them, as well as open letters to MPs asking them to make changes to laws to protect more women. So they very much use social media as a way of promoting what they do and how they do it, and then also trying to get more support as well. Now, one of the things that I think was really powerful is these kinds of posts here, and I think that any charity can learn from this. So, I mean, obviously it's incredibly hard, it's hard to read, and that's kind of the point, is that it's supposed to, I guess, you know, give you that, you know, a very emotional response to a very traumatic experience. So here you have the image of the lady, and then you've got their name and then it explains, you know, basically what the lady has been through and then it explains, it gives you her personal insights as well on the. On the experience. Now, this is all about her telling a story, but then it's also a lot of them are. Then they go on to talk about the success story and how she's actually doing since leaving that difficult relationship. So it gives you warmth that they're doing well in the end, and it shows the difference, I guess, that working with a charity like Refuge can make to someone's life. But it also is quite, you know, painful and very emotive when you're actually reading the story about what the lady has been through and amongst obviously all these other incredible women that have been through this as well. So I think what's amazing is this is about telling a story. They show the real people behind the real story. They give you the what happened from their perspective. They give you the what happened exactly from. From the actual lady's perspective. Then they give you. Then they give you, I guess, you know, where she is now. And then they say how you can support them. So they also give, if you like, a call to action at the end of it. And as you can see, it gets a lot of engagement and it really, really, really gives you a feel for what this charity can do for people just by telling the story. Now, if I was Refuge, I'd be looking around the UK at different locations that I can get engaged with to get even more support on my social media. So I would go engage tab of maybe you go to location and I might pick London, for example. So you've just typed in London and then it would have all of the local businesses in London that are getting a lot of engagement at the moment. And then what I would be doing is if you know that. So it might be a fashion brand, it might be as it's here, it's what's on stage, you know, anybody who's visiting the theater, anyone who's engaging with a fashion brand. There's going to be a lot of people who might need help as well, or might be able the word of what refuge are doing. So they can like it, they can retweet, they can create a post based on what they've seen, they can share it, they can get involved. And then what that does is that anyone who's reading what's on stage, for example, or anyone who's looking at this fashion brand, they would be able to physically see, see the refuge have liked it. They'd be able to then go back and engage with their post and it attracts new eyes onto their feedback. Now, if they've got any questions whatsoever, please click on the little blue button. We love to help.
