As we draw near the end of Season Nine of Data Malarkey – the podcast about using data, smarter – in this episode, Master Data Storyteller, Sam Knowles, talks with Kerry Watkins, founder and MD of Brighton-based social media consultancy Social for Good. They focus on the best ways to use digital platforms and channels with impact, without letting them run (or indeed ruin) our lives.
Kerry’s route into social media was anything but straight. She began in hospitality and training just as social platforms were emerging. Working in nightclubs, she saw first-hand how quickly people’s attention shifted online and spotted an opportunity. That insight led to her first business, Social Brighton, which evolved into Social for Good. The rebrand, made in the early months of the pandemic, was less a sharp pivot and more a decision to make explicit something that had always mattered to her: using social media for positive impact.
Deployment by objective
Today Social for Good works exclusively with charities and purpose-led organisations. Their core question is simple but searching: “Is social media actually working for you?”. Many communications teams struggle to answer that. Kerry and her colleagues help them audit what they’re doing, set clearer objectives, and focus on the channels and content that genuinely move the needle. Sometimes that means training in-house teams; sometimes it means a close, hands-on partnership to manage social activity day-to-day. Either way, the aim is the same: clarity, confidence and impact, not just more posts.
Social for Good Accelerator
Out of this work came a new offer: an eight-week accelerator programme for charity social media managers. Co-designed with people in the sector, it covers strategy, channel choice, content planning, community-building, and reporting. Kerry is clear that success looks different for every organisation. For one it might be a retweet from a key influencer; for another, a measurable shift in engagement or sentiment. The important thing is to define success honestly and report against it with data, insight and recommendations – not just pages of numbers.
24/seven? Try 24/six!
Alongside her agency work, Kerry has developed a growing interest in digital wellbeing. Concerned about the impact of social media on young people, particularly her daughter, she studied the field in depth and then went on two intensive digital detox retreats. (The retreats were run by Data Malarkey alumna, Anastasia Dedyukhina of Consciously Digital and you can find her episode here). The experience of being truly offline – bored, fidgety, then unexpectedly refreshed – left her with what she calls a “sparkly brain” and was the seed of a new, side-hustle project, 24/six. The idea is simple: in a world that expects us to be always on, we need to build in regular time when we are deliberately, unapologetically off.
Despite this new venture – yet to take its final form – Kerry is no technophobe. Social for Good uses AI in practical, contained ways, from generating alt text to make content more accessible to developing brand voice tools that keep copy consistent. But she is wary of AI-written captions that feel generic and of chatbots handling sensitive conversations with beneficiaries. Above all, she is concerned about the way platform algorithms use data to keep people scrolling, often by serving content that heightens anxiety or anger.
Summing up
Characteristically, Kerry’s response to the current state of social media is not to reject it, but rather to push for more thoughtful use of it: ethical campaigns, honest reporting, and space for humans to step away from their screens. Social media, she argues, is not going anywhere. The question is whether we choose to use it for good and give ourselves enough room offline to keep our brains sparkly.
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The first draft of this blog was written by ChatGPT, using a transcript of the episode and an ever-refined prompt. It was then edited by real humans.