Humans Behind the Handles: Hannah Land

This week, we spoke to Hannah Land, Social Media and Digital Content Manager at St John Ambulance.

The Backstory

Hannah’s journey into the world of communications began in Sixth Form. One summer, she volunteered with the YMCA, supporting their social media and fundraising efforts, and even “labeling hundreds and hundreds of balloons.”

While at university, she built on that experience through communications and marketing internships. Although she “wasn't necessarily thinking about going into charity comms”, these roles gave her a unique chance to learn about the sector more broadly.

After graduating, Hannah joined Bennington Health, a health non-profit. Five years later, she was ready to take that “next step into more leadership opportunities” which led her to St John Ambulance. Beyond career progression, what truly drew her to the role was her personal experience: while Hannah was a student, her mum saved her dad’s life by applying the knowledge she had gained during a first aid course.

Thankfully, “he's still, you know, with us and having a pint this evening” to celebrate his birthday. Happy belated birthday, Hannah’s dad!

The Day-to-Day

With Hannah’s amazing team covering organic and paid social, alongside celebrity and influencer marketing, no two days look quite the same. “Between 90% and 95% of what goes out from the St John Ambulance socials is created in-house”, meaning her day-to-day work always involves planning, drafting, and reviewing content.

Much to the envy of many social media managers, the team also has a monthly planning meeting, about a month and a half to two months in advance, where they plan roughly 70% of their content. The remaining 30% is intentionally left open for reactive posts, because “what you leave blank is as important as what you fill in.”

Accuracy is non-negotiable, so the social team works closely with St John’s clinical team to ensure everything shared is “as accurate as possible”. As Hannah explains, “The volunteers are such experts and passionate fans of the organization that, if something is wrong, they will let us know.”

She also highlights a common misconception about working in social: that lighter or more humorous posts somehow require less rigour. In reality, “when you're putting out something that's funny or lighthearted, it might not be immediately obvious that the kind of the thought process is very much the same as if you're putting out something serious.” Every post, regardless of tone, is rooted in strategy and discussion.

The Highs and Lows

Last year, Hannah’s team ran a campaign to raise awareness of the gender gap “where people are more hesitant to give CPR to a woman than they would be to a man.” Bea, a running club organiser, reached out to tell the story of one of her runners collapsing while training. This led to the creation of “drop-in events where people can do some hands-on practice” of CPR specifically tailored to runners.

Hannah is understandably proud of the campaign, which has created a real “ripple effect” helping keep the public safer. In fact, one attendee even messaged the team shortly afterwards to say he had used the skills he learned to save someone’s life.

Not every insight is quite as heart-warming though. On the flip side, Hannah discovered that 80% of their “worst performing posts on Facebook were video and none of the best performing ones were video”, despite testing different lengths, formats, sizes and topics and following best practices.

When pulling together monthly reports, Hannah includes a “summary that talks about our tops and flops [...] as a more light-hearted way to talk about things that haven't worked as well.” This is essential, because “if you want to slay you have to flop so things have to go wrong so you can learn from them.”

Finding Balance

Working in a charity like St John Ambulance comes with a constant sense of urgency. Thankfully, the team has out-of-hours support, as well as an agency supporting the community management rotation. As Hannah puts it, you need to “make sure that you're rested so that you can step up in urgent moments.”

As a manager, she’s also mindful of “model[ling] the good behaviours that you want the team to emulate”, whether that’s avoiding out-of-hours emails or taking proper breaks. Having plans outside of work helps too. Hannah enjoys “having random plans on Tuesday, Wednesday, or even a Monday. Just having something outside of work that's special and you look forward to.”

She’s also gone old-school with a physical alarm clock and removed social apps from her phone. “So if I want to check social media, I have to go on my partner's laptop. So it's a pain.” While this sometimes means being “a little behind on the current trends”, she reminds us that “there's always time to catch up on these things during the working day.”

Her biggest piece of advice for anyone working in digital charity comms? “Being really comfortable and confident with our data,” as it helps with “getting buy-in to new ideas, new projects [...] and showing the benefit” of the work.

A huge thank you to Hannah for such an open and lively chat!

Join us next time on Humans Behind the Handles as we continue to meet the real people behind the social feeds of charities and non-profits across the sector.