Understood for All

Bilingual copywriter / Content Strategist / Creative

Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting individuals with learning and thinking differences, such as ADHD and dyslexia. Their mission is to empower people and families who face these challenges by providing resources, community support and expert guidance at no cost.

Understood en Español

To expand their reach, Understood launched a Spanish channel (on Facebook—Page and Group) to help families and individuals whose access to reliable resources is limited due to a language barrier, on top of the LTDs challenges they face.

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The challenge

The Spanish Channels had been running for a few years, but the results compared to the English ones did not meet expectations, even though the content was the same. At the time, they translated the content created originally in English (for Instagram) and then recycled it for the Spanish Facebook Page.

Their initial diagnosis was that the translations were not “native enough”, which resulted in low engagement, and they hired me to help with Spanish copywriting adaptation.

The diagnosis

Understood’s tone for social media is casual; however, ideas were getting lost in translation due to cultural nuances.
The majority of the Spanish Facebook audience page was moms of kids with LTDs, unlike the English channel, whose audience was adults with LTDs
Most of the content was designed for in-feed static images or carousels, while Reels were being prioritized by Meta.
None of the talent hired for UGC videos resembled a Hispanic woman.
Besides the language barrier, there was an immigration knowledge gap that was not being taken into consideration.
There wasn’t a clear difference in the value that the page provided versus the group; therefore, people didn’t join the group.
Ultimately, the Instagram strategy didn’t work on Facebook because user behavior differed on both platforms.

The solution

I kicked off by switching translations for transcreations, which led to a more relevant brand tone for the Hispanic community.
I proposed a new content strategy for Facebook that was oriented towards immigrant moms who didn’t speak English but lived in the U.S., and I adapted the proposed content by the English team to our audience's pain points.
Due to the lack of budget allocated to hire more UGC creators, we were authorized to post videos from Hispanic creators, with previous authorization from the original creators. We selected already viral videos and repurposed them as Reels on our channel, which helped us increase reach.
Instead of recycling English videos with Spanish subtitles, we created videos in Spanish.
We started implementing a “Low effort, high impact” content approach, which I developed in 2023.
I designed an organic funnel strategy that placed the group as the main source of valuable information, which led to the website.

The results

In 19 months, the page grew from less than 3K followers to over 80K.
In 19 months, the Facebook Group grew from 241 followers to over 15K. More than 10% of the page audience at the moment.
Thanks to the great results and insights the Spanish campaign provided, the Social Department tasked me with the content creation of the Facebook Page in English, to recreate the strategy and adapt the best practices to the English-speaking audience.
Over the course of 12 months, we gathered not only thousands of followers but also testimonials of immigrant moms who received help, felt supported and were able to help their kids.

A new way to understand

Ultimately, my time at Understood helped me put into practice innovative ideas (with little to no resources), learn from trial and error, and develop a much deeper understanding of the importance (and application) of hyper-specific niches. Moreover, our results on the Spanish channels open a new window for the organization, and we have started investing in ads and lead generation campaigns for this audience.

Produced, created and edited video for Ads campaign.