Social media tips

Social media training Belgrade, 15 September 2011

Why engage in social media for publicity?

Some tools that you can use...

Listening in to the conversation…

• Dashboard – Netvibes, iGoogle
• Keyword tool – SocialMention, IceRocket, Trackur
• Feed reader – Google Reader

Finding keywords is very important…what are the people we are looking for using when they look for us online, or have a conversation about this topic online?

www.google.com/adplanner

Can help answer the question is this an important blog etc?

Premium services – Politicshome, Radian6, BrandWatch and Sysomos

Assessing tools

• Klout [1] (twitter, FB)
• PeerIndex [2] (twitter, FB)
• Alexa [3] (websites)

30 second blog review method

Who’s blogging?
How many posts, how recent?
What kind of engagement?

Responding to comments

It is an option to NOT respond to comments about you.
Only reply if you have more value to add, or can gently correct inaccuracies.
Otherwise, monitor the conversation without commenting.
If you do respond, keep it informal and friendly.

Writing for websites

• This is an active medium – people use the web to answer questions, get things done.
• Offer a summary up front
• Use the keywords and phrases you know your audience use to find information about you in the first part of the text and in titles eg clocks go back
• One idea per paragraph
• Short headlines – 5 to 8 words only
• Add descriptive inline links and multimedia to illustrate (NOT click here!)

Link shortening services eg bit.ly can give you click through rates, but Twitter blocks these in favour of its own service.

Social Media Content

• First point – be remarkable! Funny, helpful, insightful, quirky etc.
• Be prolific, use insight based on experience.
• Get feedback – what worked?
• Simplify ideas and messages – use shareable formats ie not PDF

Goals for social media channels

• Listening to your audience, understand views
• Generate buzz
• Discussion and response
• Co producing materials with a community (more durable content)

Case studies

Case study: Facebook

• They now use Edgerank to filter your content into Top news.
• Need to be timely and interactive.
• Photos, videos and events are popular
• Join relevant groups
• It’s possible to create a landing page not just the standard status page – have to embed html within the page in a frame.

Case study: Youtube

• Customise your channel with logos, colours etc eg European Union channel.
• Organise content using playlists.
• Optimise file names and tags with keywords to optimise searches.
• Use the Insight tool to assess impact

Case study: Twitter

• Customised pages are good – first impressions count
• Give people a reason to follow you
• Be human – it’s ok to tweet often, but don’t release lots of automated tweets in one go.
• Use and create lists to manage followers.
• Separate accounts for different languages is probably a good idea.
• Build it into your everyday workflow, make it real time – desktop app eg Echofon, smartphone

Case study: Flickr

• Tagging your images is important.
• Can use Creative Commons to control usage and you can search on these.
• Different resolutions usually available.
• Good for stock images for the media.

Events and launches

Before

• Site visits for location stills.
• Identify and invite bloggers.
• Set up threads for forum.

During

• Tweets, photos, hashtags.
• Live blog eg Cover it Live
• Use Twitter to make sessions interactive eg source questions, run competitions

Afterwards

• Search for mentions to identify interested influencers
• Polish and publish stills and films
• Follow up forum threads and blog post comments