5 minute read
8. Social Media and how to use it
by iankerry
SOCIAL MEDIA FOR TOTAL BEGINNERS What’s all the fuss about?
Social Media is the collective term for the various sites that allow users to build social networks, and share information with their network. Two of the most popular sites are Twitter and Facebook. Social media is an incredibly useful and FREE tool for publicity, marketing and customer service. We use Twitter and Facebook to promote your Arts Alive events, to connect with companies and performers touring with us, to talk to audiences and potential audiences, to raise the profile of Arts Alive, and of rural arts as a whole. Here is some very basic information about both.
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➢ Twitter enables users to send and read 140 character messages called tweets ➢ You can include links and photos in these tweets to pack more information in ➢ There are two main displays on Twitter: - profile page, where you will see the user’s information and the tweets they have written or retweeted - Your twitter newsfeed, where you will see all the tweets posted by your followers ➢ The main terminology you need to get to grips with is:
RETWEET – retweeting a tweet posted by another Twitter user means that it will show on your profile and your followers will be able to see it (when people write “Please RT” they are asking for retweets!
FAVORITE – They use the American spelling, sorry! Favoriting a tweet will put it into your
‘favorites’ list, so that others can see what tweets you have favorited
HANDLE – your twitter name. Ours is @ArtsAliveEvents. It always starts with an @ symbol, and if you include somebody’s handle in your tweet, they will be notified of it and can retweet you /reply
HASHTAG – putting a # before a word or phrase to turn it into a search term, so that you can search for other tweets about the same subject
➢ Facebook enables users to add other users as friends, exchange messages, post status updates, share content like photos and videos on their own page and on others’ pages, and to like fan pages (like ours!) ➢ You will need to set up a Facebook Fan Page to act as your venue (or just for your AA events), so that the public can like the page and see the information you post. To create a fan page you need to already have a Facebook account from which to run it. ➢ Main Facebook terminology:
LIKE – if a member of the public “likes” your page the things you post will appear on their
Facebook home page. You can also “like” individual posts, i.e. demonstrating your approval!
COMMENT – Self-explanatory! A comment on a post on your FB page
SHARE – If somebody shares your post, it will appear on their profile so that their friends/page fans can see it. You can also share others’ posts.
This may look confusing written down, but once you’ve grasped the basics it becomes much easier!
As with everything, the best way to improve your social media know how is through practice. It will become much clearer once you start tweeting/Facebooking, and the more you use it the easier it will become.
HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA EFFECTIVELY Arts Alive’s Social Media Marketing Tips
This handout is intended to accompany the social media handbook which you can now download from the promoters section of our website. It is a guide for using social media for total beginners, how to get started, and how to develop your online presence. Do have a read as it goes into a lot more detail than we can here and will hopefully be useful to you and your team!
➢ Post regularly. This doesn’t mean spending all day online (as too much posting is also detrimental!) but do try and post at least a few times a week, and check your notifications regularly to see if anybody has contacted you, and try to respond promptly. An inactive social media account is worse than not having one at all.
➢ Keep your posts relevant and interesting to your target audience. Facebook uses an algorithm to determine who sees your posts; if they are irrelevant to your fans then they won’t appear in their newsfeed and your efforts will be wasted!
➢ Don’t over retweet. Do retweet things that you think will be interesting to your audience, and to help out your community (for example retweet an upcoming local charity event) but if you retweet everything you see then your own message will get lost!
➢ When you have booked your shows, follow the companies/performers on Twitter. When you write tweets promoting your event, include their handles, and ours (@ArtsAliveEvents), so that we will be notified of the tweet. We will definitely retweet you, and it is almost certain that the company will if they are active on twitter! This will massively increase your audience per tweet.
➢ Add photos to your social media posts. There is no doubt that this increases the number of people who will read and engage with your post as they are more eye catching than a block of text. The e-flyers we produce for each show are very useful here!
➢ Try and keep the number of people you follow on Twitter fairly balanced with your number of followers. Obviously at the start you will be following more people than you have followers, but once you start to build up an audience don’t let the gap widen too much. You don’t need to follow every random account that follows you! Your Twitter account will look less credible if you follow 2000 people and only have 84 followers…
➢ Keep your social media “voice” friendly and informal. One of the great advantages of social media is that it allows you to connect with your audience, and what makes Arts Alive events unique is their friendly, informal atmosphere. Build on this by making online connections.
➢ Sign up for webinars. These are really helpful thirty minute online audio seminars, which explain many different aspects of using Twitter/Facebook for marketing, including the latest updates. There are lots of different ones which a quick google search will bring up, Twitter Academy is particularly good. There are also plenty of useful articles online! Make use of these resources.
Speak to Cerin if you have any social media questions you want to discuss! You can email her cerin@artsalive.co.uk or ring the office on 01588 620883 (option 1)
