Social Media Best Practices

SOCIAL MEDIA For Live Event Reporting www.equalvoice2012.org

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equalvoiceforfamilies

Best Practices for Live Event Reporting via

start by:

Twitter

1. Start by announcing that you’ll be live tweeting the event and what the event is. Tweet that intro to others who are live tweeting and/or to those who might want to follow the coverage.

2. Use a mix of tweet types: a shout-out, a retweet (RT), a photo, an update on the event, a quote from someone at the event.

3. Use consistent hashtags, and rotate them.

4. Direct individual tweets to the most appropriate people (rather than bombing every tweet with a dozen Twitter handles).

5. Use quotation marks when reporting what people at the event are saying.

6. Periodically remind people that you are live tweeting so that they don’t think you’re spamming them. This practice also informs people just joining in.

7. To close, thank everyone that collaborated with/retweeted your live tweeting, and bow out.

Live tweeting is unique because it is about reporting the events of a live event. Live tweeting can be very successful for influencing public opinion because while the public follows the happenings of the event, they are also attune to the messages you weave in during the event.

For example:

TWEET 1: This is Jean and Adrian, live-tweeting the Equal Voice Youth Convening in Chicago. Stay tuned! #equalvoice TWEET 2: We are here because the key to the strength, security and success of every community, and of America itself, is families.

TWEET 3: #familyfirst #equalvoice [picture of event] TWEET 4: Albany Park Neighborhood hosting us today. Youth filing in. #equalvoice #chicago TWEET 5: Amazing how many youth are affected by the issues of child care, health care, immigration rights. Every issue is a family issue! #equalvoice

Best Practices for General Use of

start by:

Twitter

Twitter was created as a SMS texting service. Think of Twitter as a place for public texting conversations.

1. Tweet once every 20 minutes, unless you are doing live event reporting.

Tweets generated more frequently are often regarded as spam.

2. Credit tweets that are not your own with the abbreviation “RT” (retweet).

3. Put quotation marks around quotes from people, and assign them accordingly.

4. dOn’T wRitE lIKe tHis. It’s hard to read.

5. Don’t put too many hashtags in one tweet. One or two is a good amount; four in a row is confusing.

6. Take note of Twitter trends, and try to participate in them in a way that relates to your organization’s or project’s missions and objectives. Participating in trends boosts your organization’s visibility because it will appear on popular searches.

7. Be clear and brief. 140 characters is not a lot of space, so clarity is important.

8. Be fluent in Twitter abbreviations. See the glossary in this curriculum.

Best Practices for Use of by an Organization

Facebook

Facebook was created as a social networking site. Some of its capabilities include forum discussions, event creation/promotion, photo/video/link sharing.

The power of Facebook is in socializing, which is more dynamic and complex than connecting or promoting.

When your organization is on Facebook, socializing requires giving your organization’s social media presence a brand image, a voice and a style. Your interactions with others should be “human,” that is, they should be consistent (don’t reach out only when you want something from your followers), be full of character, care and thought, and vary in tone.

Here are some best practices on using Facebook as an organization:

start by:

1. Post at least once a day and no more than five times a day. Space out your postings by at least an hour (unless you are a 24-hour news service, reporting on a live event or there is a world emergency and you are providing a public service).

2. Consider the “voice” in your posts. Will you use the first person or third? Will you have a formal tone or a casual tone? Your voice will influence how people respond to you.

3. Put up posts that are interesting and not just self-serving. Vary your posts in content and media type (photo, video, link, question, poll).

4. If someone comments on your content, encourage discussion using open-ended questions and statements.

5. If a conversation has begun among two or more users, stay out of it (unless offensive language or material is being posted).

6. Remind people who you are. Every once in a while, post something that brings people back to your mission and beliefs. You’ll be surprised how many people “like” this.

7. At least once, take advantage of Facebook’s highly intelligent, highly customizable online advertising system.

Facebook for live event reporting:

Facebook

Since frequency on Twitter is vastly different than frequency on Facebook, live event reporting at a micro-level is discouraged. Overposting can clog up a fan’s newsfeed and often pushes fans to “unlike” a page. However, this doesn’t mean that Facebook can’t be used for a live event. Facebook is great for promoting events. The site even allows the ability to create an event page, where invited guests can RSVP or invite more friends. The best way to take advantage of Facebook for event promotion is before and after an event, with a tight blast of activity during the event.

Before the event: 1. Create event graphics that can be easily understood and circulated to a wide audience. Release the graphic by posting it to pages with which you have a mutually beneficial, already established relationship. Post your graphic to pages that don’t know you with caution (they may ban you or mark your post as spam, and that may ultimately hurt your overall efforts).

2. Update your organization’s profile to reflect the upcoming event. You can create a banner image, create a landing tab via websites like Pagemodo or Involver, and change the “About” text.

3. Follow up those posts with comments, and encourage recipients to share the content.

4. Complement your online promotion for the event with on-the-ground work, such as calling partners to encourage them to check their Facebook pages and interact with your content.

5. Post periodically to your organization’s page that you will be reporting at the event so that people know to expect and anticipate your social media activity.

During the event: 1. First, post that the event is today and that you will be posting to the page periodically with event updates.

2. Post every 15 to 20 minutes with a variety of content. Have an even mix of photos, video, quotes, links and graphics.

3. End your reporting with a “goodbye” and “thank you” so that people know the event has ended.

After the event: 1. Create a visual representation of the event (use the website Storify or infographics, for example) that conveys what the event accomplished, and post it to Facebook and your partners’ Facebook pages.

2. Use Facebook’s polling features to ask your followers about their participation in the event.

Best practices for live event reporting via

Instagram

Instagram Instagram is a mobile-only application that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter and then share the photo on social networking sites, including Instagram’s own site.

1. Use a tagging system to make the photos visible in public searches.

Assign at least three hashtags to a photo.

2. Be specific in your tags. General tags like #photo will reach too broad of an audience for you to be able to connect with likeminded people.

3. Make the tag relevant to the photo. You can get some good ideas for tags for your photo by looking at how other people are tagging similar content.

4. Tag your location.

5. Use quality, interesting photos.

Social Media Glossary Blog (a blend of the term “web log”): An interactive website on which the user “logs” regular entries of text or multimedia that other users can engage with through comments or messages. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order.

Facebook platform: A social networking service/website where users can create a personal profile, share photos and video, join user groups, and chat in real time (“live chat”) and email other users. One in every 13 people in the world log into Facebook daily.

Facebook “Like” page (also known as “fan page”): A public profile that allows fans of an individual, organization, product, service or concept to join and interact around a commonality. *Equal Voice for America’s Families has a Like page.

Facebook Places: A Facebook feature that allows users to “check in” from a location by using a mobile device. Once the user is checked in, the user’s friends know where the user is at the moment. To have this type of page, you must be at a physical location. (See Foursquare.) *Marguerite Casey Foundation has a Facebook Places page, whereas Equal Voice has a Facebook Like page. Both types allow “likes,” but only Places allows the user to check in.

Foursquare: Location-based social networking website based on software for GPS-enabled mobile devices. Foursquare’s GPS capability, coupled with the short messaging service of Twitter, was instrumental in the Iran protests of 2009, a political uprising famously nicknamed “The Twitter Revolution.”

Hashtags: are words or phrases prefixed with the symbol #,[1][2] a form of metadata tag.

They are used within IRC networks to identify groups and topics. Also, short messages on microblogging social networking services such as Twitter, identi.ca or Google+ may be tagged by including one or more with multiple words concatenated Instagram: a mobile application that centers on a photo sharing. It allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it on a variety of social networking services, including Instagram’s own.

QR codes (short for “quick response codes”): A specific matrix barcode readable by camera phones. These two-dimensional barcodes are used in the for-profit world to reveal special coupons, prizes, websites and contests to consumers. For grantees’ organizing, QR codes could be useful in sharing private information quickly, from phone to phone.

Social media: Media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media use Web-based and mobile technology to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Social media include but are not limited to Facebook, Twitter, blogs, virtual worlds, texting, augmented reality, QR codes, and wiki groups.

Twitter: A social media platform that uses SMS (Short Message Service) communications, more common with cell phones. Users generate their own content in 140 characters or less.

Web 2.0: A new version of the World Wide Web that moves away from static pages of information to user-generated content with a user-centered design.

Twitter Glossary @

Reply to [username]

CX

Correction

b/c

Because

BFN

Bye For now

BR

Best Regards

BTW

By the Way

DM

Direct Message

EM

Email

FB

Facebook

FF

Usually #FF for Follow Friday. #FollowFriday is supposed to work better than it does. If you #FF someone, take the characters to explain why.

FTF

Face To Face

FTL

For The Loss

FTW

For The Win

FWD

Forward

FWIW

For What It’s Worth

H/T

Hat tip

HTH

Hope That Helps

IMHO

In My Humble Opinion or In My Honest Opinion

IMO

In My Opinion

IRL

In Real Life

JV

Joint Venture

J/K

Just Kidding

LMK

Let Me Know

LOL

Laughing Out Loud

MT

Modified Tweet

OH

Overheard

OMG

Oh My God

PRT

Partial Retweet (at the start of a tweet). Sometimes “Please Retweet”

RE to

In reply to. As in, use RE for @replies on Twitter. Used in front of the @ ensure all followers can see the conversation.

RT

Retweet

RTF

Read The FAQ. RTF also stands for Rich Text File.

RTHX

Thanks For The ReTweet

Via

“via” is not an abbreviation or acronym. It simply means that a twefet from @username, though in some cases it may mean that it’s also an exact retweet.

YW

You’re Welcome

Writer: Suphatra Laviolette Designer: Adrian Avila Copy Editor: Cathy Johnson Copyright 2012 Marguerite Casey Foundation