How inspiring stories drive support on social media

Recently Ovarian Cancer Canada has increased donation rates by 250% through the use of chatbot technology. 

To lend further support to charities, we’ve taken a look at the online conversation about ovarian cancer to understand what content charities and causes need to create in order to drive awareness and funding. 

Looking at the detail

The findings

 

1) Content from both people and charities is not inspiring action
2) Inspiration is more helpful than fear

Survivor and support stories get results

We can see from all three countries (UK, USA, and Canada) that the sentiment of the conversation about ovarian cancer is largely negative. This is not surprising given the implications of the disease. Charities face the challenge of needing to create urgency. With funding and awareness of Ovarian Cancer so low and the undetectable nature of the cancer, the drive to inspire or rather demand action in this conversation is very real. 

As discussed in our first post, the Canadian conversation was more likely to receive steady engagement, demonstrating more propensity to trigger engagement. And in all three examples of content that did encourage engagement, all were survivor and support stories.

"Sharing content that celebrates personal survivors stories results in more personal investment from a community online than generic symptoms and risks content."

Erin Barrett CoFounder and CXO at Maybe*

Balancing the need to educate and inspire

Of the three countries, the conversation in Canada is the least negative in tone with 39.7% of its conversation scoring negatively. The UK's came in at 44.4%, while the US was close to 60%

Charities like Ovarian Cancer Canada balance between the need to educate, and inspire a community with content. 

Key takeaways

While there is no escaping the motivating impact of fear and injustice; inspiration to act can also be generated by hope. Charities need to balance their messages and engage with positive content online, to help them with their initiatives.