Social media for beginners
Glyn Thomas
glyn@glyn-thomas.co.uk
@glynmthomas
A bit about me
- Worked a consultant for a range of NGOs, charities and non profits in Europe, Asia and Central America
- Digital campaigning, fundraising, social media, email
- Previously Friends of the Earth, Global Justice Now, now freelance
What we'll cover
- Why use social media?
- Which social media sites to use
- How to use them - the basics
- Key principles for social media
What's your experience of using social media and what do you want to get from today's training?
Why use social media?
John Underwood
- Tweets from hospital
- Story / narrative
- Mix of content
- Engagement
- Humour
- Authentic
John Lewis /
Action on Hearing Loss
- Mobilising people directly affected
- Brand
- Easy win
Georgetown University
- 56% read a story on social media that made them want to do more
- 41% watched a video
- 40% saw a photo
- 36% read or heard through social media about other people taking action
Which social media sites should you use?
What is Facebook for?
Terminology
- News feed
- Timeline
- Friend
- Status update
- Like
- Share
Content
- Text
- Photos
- Videos
Why is this important?
Engagement - Facebook algorithm - determines how many people see your content
Exercise
You've just written a blog post on your organisation's website.
Write a Facebook post to promote it.
What is Twitter for?
- Very short updates - 140 characters max
- All updates public
- Timeline - see updates from people your follow
- Create lists of people you follow
Terminology
- Tweet
- ReTweet
- Follow
- Like
- Quote
- @
- #
The biggest mistake...
Exercise
You've just written a blog post on your organisation's website.
Write a Tweet to promote it.
Key principles
- Include a mixture of content
- Don't just broadcast
- Share other people's content
- Images and videos
- Tailor content to the channel
- Don't delete - apologise
- Respond quickly
Dealing with complaints
'Just been asked to make a donation again! Stop asking me for money!!!'
Dealing with complaints
Thank you!
Keywords - Facebook
- Where
- When
- Tell Us
- Inspire
- Warns
- Amuses
Keywords - Twitter
- ReTweet
- Follow
- Social Media
- New Blog Post
- Check Out
- Help
- Top
Keywords - LinkedIn
- Created
- Improved
- Increased
- Developed
- Reduced
- Researched
Length of post
- Short and concise content - not using lots of abbreviations. Make it easy to read
- Tweets shorter than 100 characters get more engagement
- Facebook posts with fewer than 40 characters
Twitter engagement tips
- Tweets with hashtags attract 2x more engagement (retweets, favorites, replies)
- There’s 21% more engagement on Tweets with 1 to 2 hashtags.
- If you increase the number of hashtags more than 2, the engagement levels fall by an average of 17%.
- Almost 40% of Tweets with hashtags get Retweeted.
Visual content
- Facebook - image based posts 39% more engagement
- LinkedIn - image based posts 98% more comments
- Linking to YouTube results in 75% more shares
- Twitter - including images 200% more engagement compared with simple text tweets
Content
- Getting attention of politicians
- Engaging people
- Recruiting people
- Timeliness
- Grassroots led
- Content that resonates
Concern worldwide
- 2015 General Election campaign
- Pledges from candidates
- 600 tweets - 100 pledges
Nicebot
- Spam for good
- Nice tweet to everyone on Twitter
- Creative twist - gets attention
- Unexpected / subversive
- Taps into something being debated - trolling/abuse
Social Media training beginners
By Glyn Thomas
