Social Media for the Terrified

Social Media for the Terrified
Nina Eggens, Growing Audiences North East, May 2011
Copyright Growing Audiences North East

Today we are going to talk about:
Your fears and barriers
What is social media and how can it help you
How does it fit into your organisation’sstategy
Who you are talking to online
How to deal with negative comments
An overview of the different social media platforms

Social media…What are you scared of?What are your barriers?

What has stopped you until now…
I don’t know where to start, I am hopeless when it comes to computers
I don’t have the time
I don’t see the point; I only ever see people talk about what they’ve had for breakfast
I am afraid people won’t like what we say and will leave negative comments
Our audience is old and grey and doesn’t use computers
I prefer printed marketing

Why get into social media?
It is FREE (other than your time spent on it) and you can measure your success
Your current audience may not be online, but there’s plenty new people out there who’d like to get to know you!
It does not have to take up much of your time – but your time is well spent
Raise awareness of your organisation: higher visibility
Strengthen relationships with existing audiences who are online
You can easily send out reminders, special offers, prize draws etc to get people interested in what you do
You’ll be able to build up an interactive, social network of fans

And more!
Get valuable feedback and insight into who your audiences are
Make your content shareable and create a snowball effect
Make it easy for people to find your organisation on multiple online platforms – and point them to your website for full details
Easily stay up to date with what people talk about, the latest (local) news/trends, be part of the conversation
Easily stay in touch with other organisations in your local area or sector – and mutually support each other
Recruiting staff or volunteers is easier through social networks
Anything I forgot….?

Some colleagues from the North east who have recently taken the jump:
“Puppet Animation Scotland ventured into the terrain of social media relatively recently. Twitter has started a lively conversation with our fans which has been a great catalyst for raising our profile in a very natural way.
The best thing about social media is the learning curve - no one can teach you more about your audience than your audience themselves, so keep listening!”
“Social Media sites have enabled Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums to reach out and respond to audiences in an interactive way on a more personal level. AAG&M can immediately respond to their audiences queries and comments which creates a lively and engaging dialogue. Through social media AAG&M has also been able to create stronger links with other organisations that are active on a daily basis.”

A few things to remember…
Social Media =
All about listening to your audiences
Building up trust and relationships with audiences
NOT just another place to advertise your listings
About showing the human side of your organisation

Social media = like a cocktail party!
Is he ever going to shut up and ask us a question?
Hi there, nice to meet you, did you know my exhibition opens tomorrow?
Jeez, the guy is only talking about himself!
The exhibition is going to be great and includes all of my best works
And why is he so pushy? We’re only having a chat!
By the way, my exhibition opens tomorrow and you should really come and see it. It is going to be great. Really, don’t miss it!

What makes social media different from your other marketing tools?
SOCIAL MEDIA
> Two-way street: immediate feedback possible
> No costs involved other than time
> Audiences can easily share and forward your information with friends online: snow-ball effect
> Easier to find people with similar interests
> You can participate in online discussion and debate
> Show the human side behind your organisation: build up trust with your audiences
> Drive traffic to your website by linking on social media platforms
TRADITIONAL MARKETING
(brochure, flyer, poster, advert,
email, etc):
One-way street: you talk at
your audience
> Less personal
> More costly (printing, postage)
> More formal and ‘official’ tone
of voice
> No direct feedback possible
> Mailing lists get out of date

Why, how, who?
Why, what and how?

When thinking about using Social Media for your organisation, ask yourself these questions:
Why do I need an online presence?
Who is my online audience? What do they they want from our organisation?
What experience do I want online visitors to have when they visit our website, blog or social network (i.e., Twitter or Facebook)?
How do I want to portray my organisation through Social Media? Fun and accessible? The prime authority on the art & artifacts you show? A friend? A specialist? (This will help you decide who needs to be the one engaging with the online audience: front of house staff of curator?)
How much time do I intend to dedicate to social media? How many resources do I have?
What are the skills within our team; who is already active on Social Media themselves?

Any questions?

Exercise 1: your online audience
It’s easy to get caught up in what you want to communicate, but be sure to first identify your audience – it starts with them
Take 10 minutes to write out the type of audience or audiences that you want to focus on when using social media for your business or organisation:
What are their key characteristics?
What do you think they want to hear from you, how often, in what shape or form?

A few different types of audiences and characteristics they could have: use this to your advantage!
Young people: online all the time, accessing social media on their smart phones, sharing things with friends, short attention span.
People working in offices: many who are on facebook/twitter tend to check these first thing in the morning, around lunchtime or just before they go home (5pm).
Stay-at-home mums: active online, on forums and facebook. A way to stay in touch with friends and family. Looking for family activities.
Colleagues in the arts: very supportive online, happy to help and share your news

Five important ingredients for writing a strategy!
MISSION > Review your organisation’smission: what are your
aimsand objectives? What do you want to achieve?
2. MESSAGE > Develop a message that supports your mission
3. AUDIENCE > Identify your target audience
4. PLAN > Determine how social media will support your communications strategy and marketing activity
5. CONTENT > Create consistent – not overwhelming – messaging across all communication channels, both on and offline

Social Media plan example: GANE

Any questions?

Exercise 2: writing a social media planTake 30 minutes to answer the following questions. Keep it short and to the point.
1. MISSION > - Write down in a few lines your organisation’s mission: what are your aims and objectives? Why do you exist?- Who is your audience? Who are you doing it all for?
2. SOCIAL MEDIA>- How is social media going to help you achieve this mission?
- How you would like to portray your organisationthrough social media: fun, informal, serious, formal, informative, engaging, friendly, etc ?
- Who in your team is going to be responsible for social media? - How much time are you aiming to spent on it each day / week?
3. CONTENT IDEAS> Come up with three differenttypes of messages / updates / links you think your online audience will like to receive from you on Facebook and/or Twitter

Social media guidelines for your team (if you have one!)
Agree with the people in your team who are going to be responsible for social media :
Tone of voice – how to portray the organisation
Type of content
Frequency of posting
How to deal with complaints / negative comments

Exercise 3: how to deal with negative comments
“I thought £12 for last night’s performance was a right rip-off. The venue was cold, there were no drinks served beforehand and staff was unfriendly. I’m not going to come again.” Joe Bloggs
You open Facebook in the morning and find this posted on your organisation’s page. Oh no! What a disaster!
What do you do?
Do you delete it? Do you allow it to be seen by others?
How would you respond?
In groups of 4 discuss how you would tackle this problem. You have 10 minutes!

A wee break! Back in 10 minutes!

Examples and best practice
Facebook
Twitter
Blogging
Youtube / vimeo
Flickr
LinkedIn

[Facebook]

Best practice: Facebook
It is NOT a one-way system. Don’t just post listings.
Don’t bombard your fans with too may posts, this will put people off (decide yourself what is too many, look at how others do it)
Don’t only talk about yourself and what events are coming up – people can find listings anywhere. People following you on Social Media want to build up a relationship!
So build up that relationship. Be interested in your followers.
Mix up posts about your events with press reviews, background stories, local news and links to relevant websites you think your audiences would appreciate.
Be kind. Also share relevantposts by other local organisations and people. They may return the favour!
Encourage comments and conversation by asking people questions: you may get some useful feedback!

Best Practices: Facebook
Set-up a FacebookPage for your organisation, NOT a profileNB: you will need a personal profile in order to set up a page
A Page:
Provides analytics
Enables Fans to share your content with their Facebook friends
Use Events to generate visibility and attendance

Creating a page
When visiting a page, scroll down and find ‘create a page’ in the list at the bottom

Decide your category and follow the sign up steps…

On your Facebook page:
You can make colleagues or friends administrators to share the workload
You can create events and invite people
Post videos, photos and choose your profile picture
Update ‘likers’ with your news, pictures, videos and links
See statistics on how many have visited and what they liked

Include links to blogs and videos to give your audience rich experience

Mix up posts about your events with interesting articles that trigger a response:

Be brave! Ask people what they thought of an exhibition.
It’s OK for them to say they didn’t like something.

Keep it varied and interesting! Mix your posts about upcoming events with funny status updates, pictures and sharing colleagues’ links

How to add your event and invite people
Click on Events here:

Click on Create an Event
Fill in the details of your event, add a nice image and select guests (your own friends and/or ‘likers’ of your page)

This is how your event would show up on your page and the ‘wall’ of people who ‘like’ your page:

How are you doing on Facebook? Check your ‘insight stats’!

Facebook insights

Safety online…choosing your privacy settings (on your personal profile). Go to Accounts and select Privacy settings

Any questions?

[Twitter]

Best Practices: Twitter
5 Easy Things To Do Daily:
Check most recent @replies
Look at what people are saying and decide if anything is worth a ‘retweet’.
‘Join the conversation’ (=write something in the status update box), for example:
Share a link
Post an event
Respond to a comment
Search for keyword-based conversations (for example your local town or arts related topics)
Chat with your community (not at them)

Twitter ‘Timeline’: updates from people/organisations you follow

Twitter profile page: showing your details and your own tweets

Twitter Tips for Creating Content:
Promote and talk about your organisation / events, and
Listen to community concerns
Share and comment on their stories
Share expertise and information on your subject
140 charactersmeans being to the point! Summarise your message and shrink links if you use them (www.tinyurl.com)
Use a ‘hashtag’ # to link to other people talking about the same subject or encourage followers to use your hashtag when tweeting about you. For example: #GANE
Establish reputation and expertise
Focus on a call to action, including:
Announce events
Prose questions to the community
Options for volunteer involvement

Twitter tips for Having a Conversation:
@ Reply: a comment or reply to a specific user. To do: start with @username - and insert comment specific to that user
Re-tweet (RT): a comment tweeted by another user, but you would like to share. To do: start with or include RT @username - and then the users comment that you'd like to share
Direct Message (DM): a private message between two users, but you must be following one another for the functionality to be enabled
@ Reply v. Direct Message: to many (public), to one (private)

How to keep things simple on Twitter:
Set yourself a time each morning (10 mins should do) to check if anyone is expecting a reply. Decide if you have anything worth sharing and update your status.
Create lists of people you follow categorised by subject or locality. This way you keep it simple. And more interesting for yourself.
Simultaneously update Facebook and Twitter (use www.hootsuite.com or similar).
Don’t feel you have to read all 3 billion tweets! Focus on your favourite people, certain subjects or make lists
It is just about having a presence here so people who prefer Twitter can find you here too.

Tweetstats.com

Any questions?

Best practices: Blogging
A blog is a commitment. If you are going to set one up, make sure you allocate time to update it regularly, share the load with colleagues or invite various ‘guest’ bloggers.
Share the link to your blog on your website as well as affiliated websites
Wordpress and Blogger will give you an RSS feed that can be used by your readers
Keep stories short – and current. Or why not just do a Photo blog?
A blog is not a website; people read blogs to hear the ‘human’, personal voice of an organisation. This is THE place to be informal and share stories from behind the scenes.
Bookmark blogs you really like and use them as an example.

Best practices: blogging
Voice. Pick a voice that is unique, interesting and reflective of your organisation
Links. Be sure to link to other organisations, articles or bloggers
Tip: When setting up outbound links be sure to set the links to be opened in a new window so readers don’t leave your blog.
Create a conversation. Invite and encourage conversation by posing a question at the end of a post and/or replying to comments in the post’s comment field.
Don’t be afraid for negative feedback. All feedback is helpful and can be dealt with.
Make your content shareable, add a ‘share this’ button to your blog

Blogger.comEasy to use

Blogger example

Blogger example:

Statistics on Blogger:

Wordpress.comLots of themes to choose from, easy to use

Tumblr.comGreat for doing photo rich blogs + the blog is automatically readable on mobile phones

PosterousGreat for publishing your blog post to all Social media platforms at the same time

Galleries blog example: giving people a look behind the scenes!

Any questions?

Best Practices: Sharing
Set up a social sharing service for your social network site (i.e., your website, blog, Facebook, YouTube, newsletters and more . . . )
Provides a way for your audience to share your content with their own communities.
Social sharing services include:
Share This: http://sharethis.com/
AddThis: http://www.addthis.com/
FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/

How to let the world know about it
Include logos and web addresses in your printed brochures, leaflets, etc
Include them on your website, easily findable (front page!)
Include logos and web addresses in your email signature
Ask colleague arts organisations and friends to spread the word through Facebook and Twitter
Send out an email newsletter to your network telling the about it and encouraging them to click the links

Display your Social Media links on the front page

Other free tools and tips:
Tagging. Whether writing a blog post, posting a picture or uploading a video be sure to tag (keywords specific to the content of the piece)
Play with podcasts. Check out easy-to-use platforms likewww.mypodcast.com and BlogTalkRadio
Play with free video tools. http://vimeo.com/ or www.youtube.com
Share your photos. Post your organisation’s photos at www.flickr.comand share by setting up a quick photo gallery to share on your website or blog (NB: you need a yahoo email address for this)
Need to tweak those images? www.Picnik.com offers easy (and free) image editing software

Videos…an ideal way to show off your venue, give previews or get young people involved…or why not let your curator or artist talk about a new show coming up?

Show part of your collection or feature public events and customers having a good time!

LinkedInUse it to stay connected with professional contacts. No chit chat, just CVs and professional details (it’s like your 1980s rolodex updating itself!)

Manage and share the workflow: get a dashboard! www.hootsuite.com
Post updates to all your platforms at once
Create access for your colleagues to share the load
Schedule updates for when you’re out of office

Time management: some practical suggestions
Set aside around 10-15 minutes each day (or more, depending on how active you want to be online) to quickly check your different platforms for comments or questions by the public that need to replied to or be dealt with. Don’t leave replying too late.
Decide whether you have anything worth sharing with your online audience – post it. Remember most people are most likely to see it first thing in the morning, around lunchtime or late afternoon.
If you don’t have any news yourself that day, see if you can further build that relationship with your audience by sharing an interesting article or link that relates to the organisation or is otherwise of interest to your audience.
Use a ‘dashboard’ like Hootsuite to keep an overview of your Social Media activity. This allows you to schedule posts, share access with colleagues and track results.

Any questions?

Exercise 4: putting knowledge it into practice!
Write down 3 goals to achieve by next month as a result of this session! What are you going to try?

Thank you and good luck
See you online!

Social Media for the Terrified

by ganeaudiences

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