Social Media and the JustFaith Programme Blogging 1. Start! Sign up with a free hosting domain e.g. www.blog.com or www. blogger.com. Find one that works for you and just start writing 2. As you write, decide on where your focus is going to lie. What do you want the blog to achieve? Change in others’ behaviour? A reflection space to reflect on changes you decide to undertake? Or both? And don’t be afraid to challenge people. One of the best ways of doing this is about being honest about who you are! 3. Write from your own experience and learning so that it doesn’t sound ‘preachy’. 4. Sounds obvious but you obviously will want to get people to read your blog! Family, friends, you JustFaith group, fellow workers/students, people in the parish..... It doesn’t really matter in terms of numbers but you don’t want to be talking/ writingto the wall! 5. Use your Facebook page and Twitter to advertise your blog! Tweet and blog! 6. Take the time to respond to comments left so as to generate conversation and to make your ‘followers’ feel you’re actually listening to them as well! 7. Don’t lose interest or get disheartened. If you don’t stay committed, how can you expect your ‘followers’ to! Don’t stop believing! 8. Engage with other blogs! This is about connectivity and sharing after all! And this will generate more traffic to your blog too. 9. Short is sweet! 500 words maximum! Until you get more experience, keep it short (not Twitter short) but short enough to keep your readers’ attention! And convey information in descending order of importance - get all top line info into first couple of paragraphs, less important info in subsequent paragraphs. The reader should be able to stop after first few lines knowing what the story is about. 10. Enjoy! You’re potentially convincing and converting – don’t be afraid of the power within you to effect change in people’s hearts, minds and behaviour!
Twitter 1. Connecting with ‘multipliers’ to spread your message of change How do you do that - look at who you follow and who follows you and add people so you can connect with other people, groups and influencers in your area through twitter and promote events & evenings in the same way. Try to connect with similar groups who may want to connect with your work and you can build up a wider network. 2. To enhance your audience size beyond key people, groups and influencers that you can add directly, participate in #followfriday #ff to grow your followers and audience size to spread your message 3. If you are putting on a local parish event and to get publicity follow local papers and media and engage in conversation directly about your upcoming event - to this by using @ symbol eg. @localjournalist We are running an event 21 May, hope to see you there, on the day follow up with picture of the event send to @localjournalist great energy and community spirit at the ..... 4. Use pictures to engage audiences through ‘twitpic’ to upload photos directly onto your twitter account 5. Use # to make something topical and join a wider global conversation. Eg. You are running an evening on climate change #uptous #climatechange to spread your message. Look out for Trocaire # to connect to other volunteers in Ireland #justfaith #trocaire 6. Keep in contact with @Trocaire account about what you are doing. We can ‘retweet’ your message to reach a wider audience.
Facebook 1. Share photographs of events and meetings with Trocaire facebook page 2. You may want to set up a facebook group ‘Just Faith ...... Parish’ to communicate about upcoming events and to target wider community