Malini Chakrabarty is a freelance designer and Communications Lead at Built Environment Forum Scotland. With a passion for anti-racism and inclusivity, Malini’s comprehensive background spans public engagement, arts, human rights, media, and heritage.
For our March 2025 event, Malini talked about their experience using social media to advocate for causes within and outwith the heritage sector, offered tried-and-tested tips, shared insights into what’s worked and what hasn’t, and discussed their approach to advocacy going forward in an ever-changing social media landscape.
Malini started by sharing the BEFS Policy Map, which offers context for how advocacy works in the built environment sector. It’s multi-layered and intersects with numerous policy areas;the complexity of this policy landscape presents both challenges and opportunities for advocacy. There are many overlapping areas, such as climate action and land reforms, so BEFS have to ensure that they take strategic approaches to ensure voices in the heritage sector are heard.
Malini then shared some of their top tips for using social media as a tool for advocacy:
Understand your audience, your goals, and the platforms
Before you begin, ensure you have a good understanding of your target audience(s), your business goals and what you’re trying to achieve through social media to reach those goals.
You can then analyse which platform and what type of content is best to suit those goals. It helps to select your content pillars, which gives you a bank of ideas to draw from when you want to create the content.
Also ensure that you’re staying up to date with what’s happening in the broader social media landscape. For example, visual content is being given priority in the algorithms as Meta competes with TikTok. More stable platforms like LinkedIn (as well as tools like e-newsletters) are also becoming increasingly important with rapid changes occurring to X and Meta.
Work across the portfolio
A lot of campaigns can be cross portfolio, which can help get the concepts out into the world without scaring off the audience and making policy as accessible as possible.
For example, connecting the Heat in Buildings Bill with the Just Transition Framework when discussing the sustainability benefits of using existing buildings rather than demolition. This essentially connects heritage to climate goals and the national planning framework.
This is why it’s important to understand what’s happening with other portfolios and departments if you’re considering running an advocacy campaign.
Measure impact
Metrics are “absolutely crucial” and Malini recommends tracking the conversion funnel. For resources, for example, they track the number of people who saw the resource on social media and actually went to the BEFS website and downloaded it, emailed it, added it to their organisational newsletters, etc.
They also prefer to track social media engagement rates, shares and click-through rates (rather than likes and comments), as well as the growth of policy-specific conversations and any sort of ministerial or official responses they receive from the government based on the content they’ve produced.
Grab their attention
When Malini first posted the Policy Map, it didn’t get the amount of likes and shares that they’d initially expected. But this became a growth opportunity, and they realised that reposting it with slightly different language would do the trick.
We’re living in an attention economy, which means you only have three seconds to stop somebody scrolling and actually pay attention to your post – usually with catchy text and a bright visual.
So instead of saying “hey this is the Policy Map for BEFS”, Malini posted again but this time with the caption: “Have you ever wondered what the policy landscape is for the built environment sector in Scotland? How can that relate to your sector and why is it so important? Why is it so important for us to know all of this? Learn more here.”
And instead of posting just the link or just the display link, they posted the JPEG because that took up more digital real estate on the screen and because the audience can see it right away and better understand how they can benefit from it.
This time it really worked and it’s a moment that Malini always looks back on when framing captions.
Post threads
Malini has noticed that structured policy threads on platforms like X perform exceptionally well for complex topics like the national planning framework for heat and building strategies. They break the content into five or seven posts with clear numbering so they’re not overwhelming their audience with information.
While the initial post gets somebody’s foot in the door, they want them to enter the room. And you do that by using words like “this is what you will learn” and “this is how you will benefit from it”. After all, consider why a reader would give you their attention if they’re not getting something out of it?
Maintain visual consistency
To stand out in a sea of content, you have to maintain visual consistency such as using branded elements or colours indicating a specific department. This applies to all platforms as well as documents such as letters you’re sending to MSPs.
Subliminal messaging is extremely crucial for making sure your organisation stands out.
Strategic tagging
Don’t tag random organisations on social media. Specifically tag the organisations you’ve worked with, your specific members, and specific consultants or independent contractors who are relevant to the content you’re sharing.
Timing is key
BEFS used to make their policy announcements in the midweek mornings, but Malini’s analysis showed that the engagement actually peaked on Monday mornings as well as Thursday afternoons. Find out what works best for you.
A/B test your content
Malini recommends A/B testing: post the same content but change the caption and visuals and post it at different times on the same platform to see which one performs best. This gives you essential data which will ensure your next posts perform better.
Try PDFs and infographics on LinkedIn
When sharing documents on LinkedIn, don’t post a summary of what the document is about with a “to learn more, go here” call to action with the link and link preview.
Instead, post a caption that grabs your audience’s attention by asking a question that’s relevant to them along with a PDF or infographic of the document you’re sharing with extracts so people can scroll through them.
Keep in mind that human beings love connection. We want something to be easy, accessible and understandable. Nobody likes feeling stupid and we want to share things with other people.
So when you make something like a PDF or an infographic that’s easily presentable instead of just a link, you’re enabling your audience to easily download and share it on WhatsApp or via DMs which means you’ll get more engagement compared to a call to action with a link.
Connect policy to real world impact
Before sharing advocacy content, ensure you understand the problem, the solution (or expected solution) and the policy connection (what policies are in place, what working groups are there, what’s being proposed, what’s the evidence, etc).
This is known as the PSP structure and it consistently outperforms other approaches.
Provide evidence and empathy
Malini told us that all advocacy work is based in two things:
- Evidence: anything that you mention has to have specific data points and research findings
- Empathy: you have to place yourself in your audience’s shoes and understand their pain points. Why would they stop and pay attention to you? What can you give to them?
Be honest
If you’re worried about how much you need to “get your own house in order” before running an advocacy campaign, Malini noted that it all comes down to honesty.
You can’t change the past (for example, problematic content in a journal article written 200 years ago), but if you hide that information, you’re being dishonest. People don’t want to be lied to. They just want transparency and honesty.
While you can’t change something problematic that happened centuries ago, by acknowledging it and choosing to do better (e.g. saying “this happen in the past, this is who we are now, and these are our next steps forward”) makes a world of difference.
Recommendations
Malini ended the talk by recommended three books and three podcasts which they keep going back to again and again:
- Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk
- Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller
- Contagious: Why Things Catch on by Jonah Berger
- The GaryVee Audio Experience
- Marketing Over Coffee
- The Science of Social Media
If want to connect with Malini, you can find them on LinkedIn or follow BEFS on X and LinkedIn to see some of their work.
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