the rural development F REE social media toolkit
what’s inside:
• what is social media? • general tips and guidelines • how can I use social media? • this is who we are and what we do • social media in action • social media A-Z 1
what is social media? the basics
Social media is a general label given to websites and online tools that allow users to interact with each other. This can include:
• • • •
Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Content sharing websites like YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr where you can share videos, photos, podcasts and and more. Blogs, forums, message boards and wikis help people to share comments and views and gather information for example via online polls Social bookmarks that enable easy sharing of websites and other content
Social media is more about connecting, communicating and building relationships than the technology.
Why should I use social media?
Because it could help you and your organisation to get things done: to communicate, gain support, organise yourselves and share information.
What level of computer expertise do I need?
Anyone who has basic computer skills and knows how to access the Internet can get started. Most social media is designed to be as user friendly as possible and like most things in life, practise makes perfect the more you use it, the easier it gets!
Where do I start?
Start with your organisation and what you are trying to achieve then think about how social media might be able to help you. Using social media is not an end in itself, rather a way for you to do what you want to do in a new and effective way. It’s important to be strategic and realistic. Have a clear aim, identify the tasks and responsibilities involved, decide who is doing what. Perhaps most importantly think about how much time it will take to set up and then maintain your social media. For example if people post messages who is authorised to reply or “moderate” them? How quickly should they do it?
Social Media Strategy
Simon Duncan, the regional ICT champion, has produced a step-by-step guide to developing a social media strategy. It’s a nine page no-nonsense guide that will enable you to develop and use a social media strategy. The guide is available at www.voscur.org/sites/voscur.org/files/socialmedia.pdf
What are the costs?
Most social media can be accessed for free, as long as you have an active email address with which to create a profile with. There might be other equipment costs, such as a digital or video camera, but the main cost will be the time needed to set up and maintain whatever social media you use. 2
general tips and guidelines Privacy settings
Our top tips to help your organisation get the most out of social media.
Social media is all about sharing, but you might only want to share certain news or content with specific groups of people. Privacy settings are built into most applications so you can restrict access to sensitive information.
Have a clear goal
Review and reconsider
The best idea is to sit down and decide on a social media strategy (see link to guide on previous page.) This won’t take much time and will make your use of social media much more effective. Using social media is a great way of developing your publicity, but remember it is very public, so make sure you have a policy about what can and cannot be publicised.
After you have been using social media for a while (a week? a month? six months?) stop and look at what you are doing and what it is achieving. Is it what you set out to do in your social media strategy? Is it something else? What works well, what isn’t worth bothering with? What have you seen others do that you want to do yourself? Take time to evaluate and improve what you’re doing.
Have a clear identity
Use social media to learn about social media
Decide on the social media ‘voice’ that will work best for your organisation. This needs to be in line with what your organisation does and is trying to achieve. Social media can blur the boundaries between personal and public so if you are representing an organisation make sure you know what you can and cannot say. If you are using your own name it’s a good idea to make your role in the organisation clear and emphasise that any views expressed are yours rather than the organisation’s. In general aim to be positive, honest, open, friendly and fair.
There are lots of helpful guides to how to use social media. The Commoncraft website has helpful video explanations of all kinds, such as an explanation of blogs at www.commoncraft.com/ video/blogs, simply join up to view them. There are many more guides out there, for example on www.slideshare.net/.
Help Spread The Word
If you see another user post something of interest or use to others, don’t be affraid to share, ‘like’, ‘retweet’ or link content to your users. By sharing others’ content, people will be more inclined to return the favour and share your content with their followers.
Be responsive
One of social media’s main features is that it enables users to respond and interact, so make sure you regularly take the time to join in with discussions or respond to messages. Let your audience know that you appreciate their interest and contributions. Ask them questions, set them challenges…involve them and build your support.
Putting the social in social media
‘Think about the relationship between yourself and those who view your content. To get the best responses be as engaging as possible, hold competitions, ask for opinions and ideas to help build relationships. Don’t just bombard people with announcements!
Capture the moment
it’s all about creating content so make sure you capture what you do using photos, video, reactions, quotes, details, diagrams and more.
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how can I use social media? Facebook
Facebook has over 750 million members (individuals and organisations) and is very likely to contain people that your organisation wants to communicate with. It can be a quick and easy way to establish a home on the web. You can make your Facebook page public and therefore visible to anyone using the internet, but you can only communicate (using Facebbok tools) with people who are registered with Facebook. Once you exist people have to ‘friend’ you or become your ‘fan’ to receive your updates and see what you like. Your Facebook profile can be used to: • Post updates to let people know what’s going on with your organisation • Share photographs • Establish an event page, making it easy to invite people and get an indication of whether or not they will attend. Good for: campaigning; fundraising; involving people in events and sharing photos. Can be linked to: Flickr, Twitter, YouTube etc and blogs Similar to: LinkedIn; Google+, MySpace
Twitter is a service that enables you to send and read short updates known as tweets. It’s useful for asking questions, appealing for help, getting the latest news and events, sharing successes and more. Tweets are restricted to 140 characters (same as a standard text message). Once you register you choose a username which has @ at the beginning. This could be a personal name (@ marysmith) or a version of an organisation’s name or something that captures what you are about, such as @greenweekends or @shelleyfamilysupport. This will be your identity on Twitter. You can then choose who to ‘follow’; maybe similar organisations? People in your local area? Established experts? To help you can use the search facility on Twitter or other search tools (eg Twellow or Wefollow that can find people by areas of activity/expertise). People posting tweets of interest to you will often be following others that will also be of interest. Twitter has a number of unique tools, including: • Mentions - tagging other Twitter users by including their username in your tweets. This is useful for starting public conversations (direct messaging can be used for private ones). • Hashtags (#) -a way of gathering all the tweets on a particular subject together, done by simply including the # symbol with a keyword (eg #greennews) • Trending - The most frequently used hashtags at a period of time • Retweeting (RT) - reposting / sharing a tweet to your followers, helping to spread ideas and information Good for: Finding likeminded people or organisations, finding news and information, raising awareness of what you do and building support. Can be linked to: photos, videos, blogs Similar to: Texting 4
this is who we are and what we do
Social media gives us new ways to tell people about our organisations. The jargon for this is ‘creating content’. Content can be words, pictures, films, interviews, opinion polls, news and more. The exciting thing is that rather than relying on others (eg local newspapers) you can create your publicity directly and then hear what people think about it. Short, newsy and chatty usually works best. Think about what you like to read or watch. What questions are you always being asked? Photos and videos mean you can show what you do rather than tell. You can capture the buzz at an event or make short videos about your activities and the people involved. Making an audio recording means you don’t have to be good at writing to create content and you can interview others and let others speak for themselves.
You will need to decide how you want your blog to look, this means choosing a template/format to use and tools/add-ons/widgets to feature (such as search bars, archive lists and links to your Twitter or Facebook profiles). Blogs are public and people can register and comment on what you have written. You can monitor comments and decide which ones can be shown.
Whatever content you want to create there will be a way of making it available on the internet, usually for free.
There are different ways of using sound and video to tell your stories and promote your organisation. You don’t even need expensive equipment, many of us have phones in our pockets that have video cameras on them. Flip cameras are inexpensive, easy to use video cameras and similar digital sound recorders are also available.
Audio, video, podcasts and vodcasts.
Blogs
Blogs are online journals or diaries. They are mini websites that have regular news updates or opinions (known as posts). When you look at a blog you’ll see the most recent post first. You can usually scroll down to read the last few entries, but older posts will be archived. The person writing the blog (the Blogger) usually puts labels on their posts (depending on the style/subject matter) so that people can search back and find things that interest them.
If you are recording a quick interview or a snapshot of an event you won’t need to edit it. You can record it, transfer it to your computer and then upload it to a site such as YouTube or Vimeo to make it publicly available. Your computer might already have video or audio editing software built into it. If not you can buy specialist software or download free software (known as freeware). Audacity is the best known freeware for editing audio and Avidemux is the equivalent for video. Google them to find out where you can download them.
They are a great way of developing a home on the web and can be free (ready-made templates are available) and your posts can build up to give a rounded view of your organisation.
What is a podcast or vodcast?
How to get blogging
A podcast is an audio recording designed to be downloaded or listened to online. You could think of it as a radio programme (that can be made by anyone) that can be listened to without a radio. A vodcast is the video equivalent, YouTube is full of them, people making their own programmes and presentations.
Wordpress, LiveJournal and Blogger all offer free blogging. Go to their website and sign up and they will give you a blog site with its own address. The website will give you access to a control panel where you can write your post, read it through and then publish. Once published it will appear on your blog site. 5
social media in action Community Reporting People’s Voice Media, an organisation based in Salford, have pioneered using community reporters as a new way for local communities to have their say in their own words. After basic training in using simple audio and video recorders anyone can become a community reporter and interview people to find out what they think about… anything. People’s Voice Media has helped young people branded as troublemakers to present their views to their local residents association (as well as going on a blog). On another occasion residents of a housing estate in Preston felt that a report on Granada Tonight had represented them badly as it stuck to the same old stereotypes. Local people were keen to have their say about what living in the local area was really like. A group of people were trained as community reporters, their brief was to get as many interviews as possible that reflected the positive aspects of living on the estate. This was then edited and made publicly available on YouTube. To be inspired and find more examples go to http://communityreporter.co.uk/
Radio on the Internet Two Valley’s Radio is a community Internet radio station that runs six broadcasts a year (but all past broadcasts remain as podcasts on their website to be listened to at any time). Based in the Colne and Holme Valleys near Huddersfield, the volunteers who put the broadcasts together want to promote the good things that are happening locally. From pantomimes to community agriculture, brass bands and school fetes. The idea is to get people of different ages talking together and to have some fun. To find out more go to: www.twovalleysradio.co.uk/ Facebook: Two Valleys Radio Twitter: @twovalleysradio
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Thumbprint Texts Most of us use mobile phones and are happy to send and receive texts. This means that text messages are a good way to reach a wide range of people on their own terms. Thumbprint City (based in Huddersfield) offers a service for organisations to use text messages to find out what people think about issues and also to send out news and information. Sharon Beck helped to set up ‘Lend an Ear’, a service for carers of children with additional needs. As their Thumbprint City web page says ‘We all feel alone at times with nowhere to turn, sometimes we just need to know someone’s listening. Lend an Ear is here to listen, share ideas, advice, tips and help with any problems you are going through.’ Members of the group text their messages in to the group’s page where they all get shown. It’s also possible for the group organisers to send text messages direct to people’s phones. Sharon explains that, “People text in to find answers, or failing that an ear to listen. Not everyone will tackle a computer but nine out of ten of us have a phone.” The service is different to Twitter as users can remain anonymous. It’s free to set up a page and it does not cost to receive texts. To find out more go to http://thumbprintcity.com/
Muck:up! The muck:up! campaign was started in January 2010 by the parents of small children in Otley, West Yorkshire. Concerned at the amount of dog fouling in the streets the group set up a simple website. Facebook page and Twitter account. The goal was to get people talking to encourage all dog owners to clean their dog muck up, every time. “We wanted to start a dialogue between dog owners and find out why they choose not to pick up, and more importantly provide them with information to hopefully change their mind,” says Sara Quin the group’s founder. To find out more go to: www.muckup.org.uk/
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social media A - Z Blogs: a space online to share your thoughts & opinions.
Smartphone: A mobile phone that in addition to calling and texting also allows advanced functions such as Internet and Social Media access.
Dashboard: The content management page of a Wordpress blog.
Social Media Management: Software such as Hootsuite or Tweet Deck that allow users to manage multiple Social Media accounts at once.
Downloading: Transferring a file from the Internet to your own computer.
Tags / Tagging: Categorising uploaded content to make it easier to search for.
Embed: To place an image / photograph / video within a webpage
Trending: Using the # and a word on Twitter to create a trend. The most popular trends will be listed in Twitter’s Trends list
Favourite: To bookmark a webpage for future viewing Friends / Followers: People who have access to your posts / tweets on Facebook / Twitter
Tweets / Retweets (RT): The 140 character messages Twitter users post. Users can repost / retweet tweets by others they are following
Forums: Also known as message boards, a place online where people can leave messages for others to read and to discuss common interests
Uploading: Transferring content from your computer to online, making it available for others to access.
Hashtags (#): used to create a trend on Twitter
URL:: Uniform Resource Locator or as it is better known, a website’s address
Mentions (@): used to mention others on Twitter Moderate: The process of reviewing and approving comments made on websites, forums and message boards. Inappropriate content is deleted by the moderator.
Wall / Timeline:The space on Facebook / Twitter in which your and your followers posts will be displayed
RSS: Really Simple Syndication: an RSS feed is a list of information taken from a website or service, updated in real-time with any new information added to the website.
Full glossary available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/a-z/a/
Website: A place on the Internet made up of one Networking: Communicating with other individuals or many webpages or groups who share common interests / goals Widget: A box containing information from Podcasts: An audio file recorded to be another site which you can change to suit your downloaded from the Internet. Can be listened to needs, and which you can put on your desktop or either on a computer, or on a MP3 player. embed onto another website.
The Rural Development - Social Media Toolkit Produced and Published by Voluntary Action Kirklees, 15 Lord Street, Huddersfield, HD1 1QB Design & content by Caroline Oubridge & Tom Bailey, ‘what is social media’ content provided courtesy of NAVCA ICT Champions & Paul Webster. Photographs provided courtesy of Gary Copitch (Peoples Voice Media), Adrian Sinclair (Heads Together / Two Valleys Radio), Andrew Wilson (Thumbprint City) and Brian Cross (Artimedia) Toolkit funded thanks to The Big Lottery Fund and RISS. Also available online www.creating-connections.org/ OR www.voluntaryactionkirklees.co.uk
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