Global Surgical Expedition

As a nonprofit, GSE relies heavily on volunteers to help make the medical trips possible and to run the organization from an administrative level. Since many volunteers are surgeons at various medical centers, free time can be difficult to spare. 

GSE’s social media presence previously lacked consistency. To do social media marketing well, an organization must post relevant and reliable content regularly to engage its followers and build trust with its audience. Since the surgeons involved rarely had free time to invest in GSE’s social media presence, there was plenty of room for improvement in terms of posting frequency and type of content published. That’s where we came in. 

Torx partnered with GSE in 2021 to drive its social media platforms with the goal of increasing followers, brand recognition, and donations.

Content Calendar + Content Strategy

In order to increase followers and brand recognition, we knew content needed to take a front seat. We began by creating a content calendar. Content calendars are instrumental in planning an effective social media strategy for any business.

Creating a content calendar allowed us to map out content messages and types for a month that we felt would best engage GSE’s current audience. Creating a content calendar for any given month ahead of time allows a business to capitalize on timely content and to ensure there is a content strategy for every day or week. You’ll never be scrambling to post sub-par content when you take the time to flesh out a well-strategized content calendar.

The content calendar focused and still focuses on behind-the-scenes photos from days in the operating room, patient stories and testimonials, board member, leadership team and doctor spotlights, videos showcasing prior medical trips, summaries of conditions most seen and treated while overseas, and timely health observances.

When you implement a great content strategy, great results will follow. By posting great content, the current audience will hopefully share that content, subsequently reaching a whole new audience with each share (brand awareness) – ultimately resulting in new followers. Social media is a marathon, not a sprint – success does not happen overnight. But if you stick with it, gradually, you will see exciting results. 

Paid Social Media

To supplement our organic social media efforts, we created a paid social media strategy that we implemented through Meta Ads. Meta Ads allows you to create advertisements that appear on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In this case, we created ads for Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram.

Through our Facebook Ads, we ran Page Promotions to garner more Facebook page followers. We were also able to target an audience we felt would be most likely to donate to GSE’s mission.

Below are some of the exciting results we have seen organically on social media since partnering with GSE. Data compares August 2021 through August 2022 to July 2020 through July 2021, unless otherwise noted.

• Facebook Post Organic Impressions: 39,559, a 2,467.10% increase
• Facebook Page Views (organic and paid): 1,739, a 1,207.52% increase
• Facebook Page Engagement (organic and paid): 10,138, a 2,540.10% increase
• Instagram Followers: As of May 16th, 2023, GSE had 488 Instagram followers. This is a 74% increase from October 2021.
• Instagram Post Engagements: 2,771, a 21,215.28% increase
• Instagram Post Impressions: 32,919
• Instagram Post Likes: 2,703, a 14,126.32% increase
• Avg. Instagram Post Engagement Rate: 9.72%, an 84.66% increase. On average, a good Instagram engagement rate is between 1-3%.

We have continued to see great organic results from August 31, 2022, to now.

On the paid social media side of things, we saw equally impressive results! Data reflects total numbers from August 2021 through January 2023.

• Facebook Paid Page Likes: 2,804. We started running Page Promotions in August 2021. At the end of July 2021, GSE had 356 Page Likes. This is a 687% increase.
• Facebook Paid Impressions: 461,576
• Facebook Paid Link Clicks: 4,083
• Facebook Paid Landing Page Views: 2,122
• Facebook Paid Average Click-Through Rate: 3.26%. On Facebook, the average click-through rate across all industries is 0.90%.

Facebook organic impressions refer to how many total people saw a post. Impressions can include multiple views of a post by the same person. Higher impressions result in higher brand awareness.

Facebook page engagement refers to the number of times someone clicked on any of GSE’s content.

Instagram post engagement refers to the combined total of likes and comments on GSE’s posts.

Avg. Instagram post engagement rate refers to the rate at which a user engaged with GSE’s posts. This is calculated by adding the total number of post likes and comments and dividing the result by the total number of post impressions.

Facebook paid impressions refer to how many total people saw an ad. Impressions can include multiple views of an ad by the same person. Higher impressions result in higher brand awareness.

Facebook paid link clicks refer to how many times a person clicked an ad, taking them away from Meta technologies.

Facebook paid landing page views refer to how many times a person clicked an ad and successfully loaded the destination web page. Higher landing page views result in higher website traffic.

Facebook paid average click-through rate refers to the percentage of times a person saw an ad and performed a click.

Before we partnered with GSE, GSE’s social media presence lacked engaging and consistent content. Since beginning our partnership with GSE, we have seen a tremendous surge in their Facebook followers, high post engagement on both their Facebook and Instagram, increased reach, and steady traffic to both their profiles month after month.

Do you find yourself not having enough time to dedicate to your social media presence? Let us take the reins so you can focus on your business! Use our Contact Us form below to get in touch with us.