PushON Launches New Social Media Strategy for Citizens Advice Bureaux

Citizens Advice Bureaux in and around Manchester are helping improve the lives of thousands more people, thanks to a new social media strategy devised by digital marketing consultancy, PushON.

Bolton Citizens Advice Bureau (Citizens Advice - Bolton) working with bureau’s across Greater Manchester, which provides impartial advice to the public on social and consumer issues, needed a way to efficiently extend its reach to help people in need. Citizens Advice - Bolton appointed PushON to develop and implement a digital plan that enables members of the public to access the advice and guidance they need.

PushON’s strategy is also helping first time users of the service discover Citizens Advice’s unique legal, money and problem resolution services.

Citizens Advice Bureau’s across the country can now use social media to sign post people to relevant resources, such as to an office based advisor or online content such as the Advice Guide, helping quickly improve the lives of thousands more people. The project included training key members of staff on how to effectively use Twitter, Facebook and social media analytical tools to aid the valuable work they do.

The system was initially implemented in Bolton and has since been rolled out in ten further Citizens Advice Bureau’s throughout the UK.

The new strategy has resulted in a significant rise in interaction on the company’s own social media accounts, both on Twitter (25%) and Facebook (43%).

Simon Wharton, managing director of PushON, commented: “Citizens Advice offers an invaluable service, dealing with incredibly sensitive issues such as immigration and debt management. They needed a quick and efficient way of extending the services they provide to help even more people, so together we devised a digital strategy that would enable Citizens Advice to help members of the public through difficult circumstances and life challenges.

Steve Hughes, service development manager at Bolton Citizens Advice Bureau, said: “We worked with PushON on what we hope will be an award winning project that involved the 10 bureau’s across Greater Manchester. The digital marketing expertise that PushON was able to present to us was fantastic and really helped us to understand what could be achieved with social media in order to reduce the high volume of enquiries.

“The work produced for us was top quality and has been shared across the county to support them in using social media. They have been a pleasure to work with.”