Every social media network ever (subject to change without notice). Via Wikimedia.
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google+, Vine…the list goes on, and more are added every day. Social media platforms give organizations and campaigns an unprecedented ability to engage directly with the people you’re trying to reach, provide your audience a chance to connect directly with you, and allow your fans to help spread your message directly to their networks. An effective social media presence is not just a simple matter of logging in once in a blue moon and sharing a couple of posts from other outlets. To make it work, you need to be investing thoughtfully in the following practices:
1. Prioritize
Don’t try to be everywhere at once! Unless you have a bottomless well of staff time and creativity to draw from, you need to prioritize. Better to be on just a couple of networks and doing it well than to be spreading yourself too thin trying to be everywhere at once. And where your you should focus is going to vary quite a bit from organization to organization — if you have access to a source of rich visuals, it’s probably going to be Instagram or Pinterest; if you have a clever staffer who can be given some free reign, they might want to be on Instagram; if you are trying to educate about a complicated topic, perhaps a Reddit AMA might be worth exploring. There are dozens of social media networks appealing to all sorts of audiences, from broad to more niche and specialty. Define your audience and the style of interaction that will suit you best and focus your efforts there.
2. Produce Good Content
Constant information bombardment, access, and overload are an inescapable feature of today’s wired world. To have any chance of breaking through the noise requires content that the audience decides is worth engaging with. It must be thoughtful, emotionally rich, self-referential (i.e., relevant to THEM, the audience, not YOU, the content publisher), funny, timely, interesting, shocking, and/or make people feel like part of a movement.
3. Be Consistent
Social media campaigns are too often treated as an afterthought, something that can be done on a catch-as-catch-can basis. To be effective, however, a social media campaign needs to have strategic vision, a sense of consistency of voice, and a sense of consistency with timing – the audience needs to know what to expect from the campaign, and the more that expectation is of good, timely content, the more interaction with the campaign will result.
4. Interact
The social web is not a one-way street, a simple one-to-many form of communication; it needs to be treated as truly interactive. An effective campaign cannot simply publish a stream of good content and walk away – there needs to be a sense of true interaction with the audience – answering questions, responding with genuine care, having a distinct voice/personality…in other words, there needs to be a really person at work, not merely a ghost in the machine.
5. Engage
A strategy that engages your audience – one that makes them feel like they are doing something – is key to bringing new supporters on board. A good social media campaign should regularly integrate asks of all shapes an sizes – polls, posts, questions, surveys, petitions, events, etc.
6. Be willing to pay
The social landscape – especially with respect to Facebook’s algorithms (e.g., how it is Facebook decides what to display in a user’s feed) – is shifting rapidly, but one thing is clear: Facebook (the largest and most trafficked social network to date) is more and more moving to a “pay to play” policy. Page managers can not expect content – even good content – to make it into users’ news feeds without ongoing investment in Facebook’s ad ecosystem. The good news is, the ads are relatively inexpensive, highly targetable, and generally quite effective. Other social networks – notably Twitter and Instagram – are making ads more affordable and integrated into users’ feeds, as well.
7. Analyze and iterate
Understanding what is – and isn’t – working for any audience is a key to a successfully executed social media campaign. Regular analysis of posts, progress toward goals, and high and low performing actions needs to be undertaken to refine the plan and inform the tactics of the campaign on a regular basis.