Social media strategy
This template accompanies section 4.3 (pages 55-67) of your training manual.
1. Who/what are you promoting via social media? Are you promoting your own personal research, a project or a group/institution?
2. Objectives Describe your /or your project/organisation’s objectives for your social media plan using SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely) strategy.
Objective 1:
Objective 2:
Objective 3:
Describe how these objectives support your project/organisation’s mission, and how your organization might be able to help you achieve your objectives:
3. Existing policies Does your organisation have a social media policy, if so what does it include?
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4. Audience Who is likely to be interested in your research and who might use it? What aspects of your research are they most likely to be interested in, and how might they use your findings? Think of as many different groups or types of people and organisations as you can, and consider if they will be interested in different aspects of your work. Use this to come up with a few different key messages from your work that these different audiences might be interested in:
Audience name
What do you want to happen as a result of engaging with them via social media?
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Key messages you want to communicate to these audiences
5. Content Integration To make life easier and keep a steady flow of material on your key messages, have a look at what you and your colleagues are already doing with traditional and other forms of digital media. Identify content that can be repurposed, remixed, or recycled for your social media strategy. Did you just integrate your findings into a conference talk or lecture? Can you put the slides online (e.g. via SlideShare)? Can you turn your speech notes or the class handout into a blog?
Channel
Current Activity
Website
Live Events
Mainstream Media (TV, Radio etc.)
Identify content that can be repurposed, remixed, or recycled for your social media strategy.
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6. Mavens, connectors and salespeople To influence and achieve change, you need mavens, connectors and salespeople in your social network (see Box 7, page 57 of your manual). Think about what type of person you are, then identify people in your project/organization who you might complement your skills, who could work with you to implement a social media strategy for your project/organisation. Highlight those individuals who may play multiple roles.
Role
Individuals
Maven
Connector
Salesperson
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7. Tool Selection and Techniques Can you repurpose material for use on multiple networks, for example posting longer versions of key tweets as Facebook and LinkedIn posts? Bear in mind that there are different styles, conventions and types of content suited to different networks. Something with a slightly more personal edge might work well on Facebook, but everything needs to be strictly professional on LinkedIn. Pinterest and Instagram will need a powerful image (and this is also a major bonus for the Google+ interface)
Tool
Use
Blog
Others
8. Running a social media campaign Think of a central activity around which you could build a social media campaign linked to your project/organisation/research (e.g. a new publication, event or call to action)
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9. How could you make your social media content more creative and PUVV (personal, unexpected, visual and visceral)?
10. Do, Share, and Gain Describe how you will build in elements of Do, Share and Gain into your plan. What do you want to get people who engage with your social media messages to do? What do you want them to share and what might make it attractive for them to share this? What will they gain personally from doing what you’re asking them to do and sharing your message?
Tool
Use
Do
Share
Gain
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11. Evaluation and piloting What metrics will you use to assess whether you are being successful or not? Do you want to measure this entirely in terms of interaction or can you also look at ways in which your engagement with social media is leading to measurable impacts on society? How will you use this data to improve your practice? Is there a small element of your plan that you can pilot with a particular audience? How will you collect and implement feedback?
12. Timeline and budget Include a timeline for major tasks and identify if you will need a budget to implement any part of your plan.
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