Welcome to this
mum-led movement!
You’re now officially a founding Mum Walk Local Leader - thank you! This mum-led movement would simply not exist without mums like you, taking this first brave step to build community!
Please join our private Local Leaders page to swap tips and ask questions from other local leaders ✨
Now here’s How To Grow a Thriving Community:
First up - find your local parenting Facebook group. Reminder - don’t mention ‘Mum Walk’ as an organisation specifically as many groups don’t let you promote other organisations or groups and will decline the post. Just keep it casual - mum to mums - that you want to start a weekly pram week.
Once you have your private Facebook page set up, make sure to introduce yourself, and encourage other mums in the page to do so too. This helps to start building community.
1. Managing your Mum Walk Community.
Every week check the weather the night before you walk. Then pop up a poll on your group to see who is coming along. A poll is much better than just announcing it, or asking to ‘like if you’re coming’. It helps people more formally commit and give you a sense of how many mums to expect.
If it is rainy or too hot - you can arrange a back-up-location at a local cafe, library or council building. Or some mums use these weeks to do an indoor adventure like soft-play or a musuem together.
If you ever need to cancel your walk please announce it in the group as early as possible and tag everyone. Please try to ask for another volunteer to lead the walk that week. Usually, once your walk is established, there is a regular in your group you can lean on to help lead on the weeks you can’t. The main situation we want to avoid is anyone showing up and no one is there.
2. Your role as the Mum Walk leader
You’re role as our Mum Walk leader is to create a safe, reliable and joyful environment for all mums. The way to do this is to encourgae any mums who feel nervous to come along, regularly remind them newbiews are welcome. On the day, ask if this is anyone’s first walk, and give them a warm welcome and keep a gentle eye on them. Make sure they have integrated into the group and feel included.
The magic of mum walk is our consistancy. We want all our groups to be a reliable space for mums to show up each week. Please do everything you can to communicate when the walks are happening and when there are any changes to the plan. If you sense you can’t keep committing to being a walk leader and showing up for your community please reach out to Kimberly@mumwalk.org and we can pass the role on to another volunteer.
3. Capture your Mum Walk 📸
The #1 thing you can do to grow your group AND help grow the movement is by taking quality photos and videos to share each week.
We’ve seen that groups that share a photo/video each week in the group have more mums join the walks than groups that don’t.
Taking front-facing photos and videos (rather than the back of their head) of the mums at the walk, showing happy, smiling mums enjoying their time, encourages those who feel nervous in the group to come along next time. It’s the FOMO effect.
Each week it is the responsibility of the lead to take a photo of the group to share in your private group.
Taking videos is also a HUGE way to grow your group, as it means we can use them on social media to help grow your group too. Consider doing a “come with me to host a Mum Walk” video or interview your regular mums and ask them questions about motherhood like “what suprised you most about motherhood?”. Sharing what its like to join a Mum Walk is how we get more mums to find us.
Every time we post an engaging reel on Instagram, made up of local leader footage, we get a big influx to all the Mum Walks. Without regular videos from walks, we can’t reach more mums.
Please send any videos you get of your walks or stay and plays to your Mum Walk contact (Kim)
We always cover bubs faces if we post anything on our social channels. Here is what we need - vertically shot photos and videos of your walks:
Every month we also do a content challenge where you can win a $200 The Memo voucher for creating video content from your community we can use on our channels. You can find out more here and in the presentation below:
4. Engage with Mum Walk online
Another quick and easy way to grow your group is simply by liking, commenting or sharing Mum Walk content on Instagram or Tiktok
When you do, you help the algorithm send our content and profile to more mums like you, in your area - so we then see an influx of new sign ups.
5. Partner up with your local council
Share your walk with your maternal child health nurse: We’ve created this poster that you can download and print to help promote your walk. We’ve found your local MCHN will love to host one of our posters with a QR code in their offices. New mums have loved finding them as they go to their appointments. You can either email them the PDF or print it off for them and bring it to their office.
You can also ask if they have any other ways they can promote your walk - such as on a newsletter or their website.
To download the full PDF of your Mum Walk Poster to print off CLICK HERE
6. Partner with local cafes and businesses
If you walks does meet or stop at a local cafe each week, you can also print off the poster for them to have in their store too. Also reach our to your Mum Walk contact, as we can design a social graphic for them to share on their social media too, which often leads to many more mums coming along.
Your local library or other mum meet-up spots are also a great place to pop up a poster.
5. Remind your local community that you exist!
When you first get started - you post in your local group about starting your walk. Make sure every month or so you’re reminding that local parenting group on Facebook that you exist - as many mums won’t have seen the original post.
Pop a post up with some photos of your recent walks and let them know “Hey, I’m X - I organise a free weekly walk for mums to meet local mums and walk in nature on Tuesday at 10am from the Pier. Comment below if you’re interested and I’ll send you the link to join.”
Then send them the link to our website ideally so they can sign up with our sign up form or link them directly to your local Facebook group but just do a reminder for all new members to sign up via the website before their first walk.
Remember - don’t mention or link to Mum Walk unless the group rules allow for it (i.e. business Tuesday)
And as always, your the Mum Walk team is here to help brainstorm more ways to grow your group too!