Building a Content Ecosystem: A Three-Year Case Study with With Courage
In May 2023, With Courage's social media didn't yet reflect what the organization actually did in Yamhill County every week: quietly, consistently showing up for families navigating a breast cancer diagnosis. Posting was inconsistent, the content mix was uneven, and the page didn't yet look or feel like the community it was building. Three years later, it does. This is the story of how we got there. Not through trends, but through interviews, care packages, and a lot of showing up.
The Strategy: Three Audiences, One Thread
Before filming anything, Caitlin and I sat down to figure out who we were actually talking to. We landed on three groups: breast cancer fighters and survivors, individual and community supporters, and local business and community sponsors. Each group needed something different from the page: survivors needed to see their own experience reflected back at them, supporters needed to understand where their time and donations actually went, and sponsors needed a tangible reason to get involved.
The thread that tied all three together turned out to be simple: real stories and visible community impact. Every piece of content we made after that point had to serve at least one of those three audiences, and the best pieces served all three at once.
Producing With Care
From there, my role covered the full arc of the work: coordinating with Caitlin on which businesses to visit, developing video concepts, building the filming schedule, and then filming, editing every piece into a finished story, scheduling, and posting roughly six pieces of content a month, split between reels and photos.
Because of the subject matter, the production process mattered as much as the final edit. Interviews meant sitting with women in vulnerable moments of their story, and that only works if the environment feels safe before the camera ever turns on. I kept the same standard on and off camera: empathetic, honest, and unhurried. That tone shows up in the finished videos, but it starts long before editing in how a shoot is set up and how people are made to feel in the room.
Signature Piece: The Podcast-Style Interviews
The strongest creative decision we made was letting Caitlin conduct the fighter and survivor interviews herself, podcast-style, instead of positioning myself or anyone else as the interviewer. Because Caitlin had walked her own breast cancer journey, the women we filmed weren't talking to a stranger with a camera, they were talking to someone who already understood, which meant the conversation could go somewhere more honest and more natural than a typical interview format allows.
That decision paid off almost immediately. Caitlin's own interview reel, where she shared her story and With Courage's mission directly, became one of the standout pieces from the earliest months of the partnership. Proof that the format worked as well for the founder's story as it did for the survivors'.
Signature Piece: Care Package Videos
If the interviews were about voice, the care package videos were about showing the work. We split this concept into two parts: shopping trips to local businesses to source items for the packages, and packing videos that walked through exactly what went into each one, along with education and tips for how to use it.
This is the piece of content I'd point to if someone asked what "serving three audiences at once" actually looks like in practice. The shopping trips gave sponsors and local businesses visible, specific credit. The packing videos gave supporters and donors a clear line between their contribution and a real package in a real person's hands. And the care package content overall gave fighters and survivors something useful: practical guidance, not just encouragement.
Turning Events Into a Long-Term Resource
Fundraising events and community gatherings were never treated as single-use content. A day of filming at the Cornhole Tournament or the Pink Ribbon Event became the raw material for immediate promotion, a recap video afterward, a fundraising call to action, and general brand footage we could pull from well into the following year. Filmed once, a single event could show up in the feed for months, which is exactly the kind of return that makes ongoing content work sustainable for a small nonprofit team.
Results: A Pattern, Not a Spike
Three years of results tell one simple story: consistency compounds. In May 2023, the month consistent posting began, reach and engagement both jumped noticeably from the month before, driven largely by reels. Even then, the momentum wasn't only coming from finished stories: the top-performing post that month was a behind-the-scenes photo from the interview filming day itself.
Three years later, that same consistency has become a rhythm, including a real seasonal one. Breast Cancer Awareness Month now reliably produces the year's biggest surge in reach, right on schedule every October. And by mid-2026, both Instagram and Facebook were seeing steady month-over-month growth in views, interactions, and link clicks. The Cornhole Tournament reel topped both platforms, the same event format that had been working since year one.
What connects those two points isn't one campaign. It's a handful of content types that continue to add value and build community that comes back every week. Interview and survivor reels, Caitlin's own founder storytelling, and local business partnerships carried the account through every quarter in between: a Heiser Farms donation post topped the charts in December 2023, and a Heiser Farms post did it again in early 2026, over two years later.
Project Outcomes
For a mission-driven organization, short-form content shouldn't be treated as an endless attempt to chase attention. It should become a growing library of stories, resources, relationships, and proof of impact that keeps working long after the post itself scrolls by.
That's the real result of this project. Fighters and survivors can find an experience that reflects their own. Supporters can see exactly where their donations go. Businesses can see a tangible way to get involved. And With Courage can document a single event once and keep using it for recaps, for education, for fundraising, for next year's promotion. Three years in, the page isn't just more consistent. It's become something people actually rely on.
