Eights Ways to Engage Your Audience Using Social Media Tools
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Please download to read the speaking notes for each slide to get the full benefit of the presentation. How to choose and implement eight social media tools: social bookmarking, ratings and reviews, Scribd, RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Podcasts, and YouTube. Presented at the 2009 Social Media for Government conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
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Eights Ways to Engage Your Audience Using Social Media Tools
- 1. Eight Ways to Engage Your Audience Using Social Media
- 2. Have you tried the I prefer their AGS website? Facebook page. I need info on geology. Follow them Cool, I on Twitter. needed that info, too.
- 3. 93% believe businesses should have a social media presence.
- 6. facebook
- 8. Eight Useful Tools Social Bookmarking Ratings & Reviews Scribd RSS Facebook Twitter Podcasts YouTube
- 14. Sample AddThis Code <script type="text/javascript">addthis_pub = 'ags'; addthis_brand = 'AGS'; addthis_options = 'facebook, twitter, delicious, favorites, digg, google, reddit, slashdot, technorati, email, more'; </script> <a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=ags" onmouseover="return addthis_open(this, '', '[URL]', '[TITLE]')" onmouseout="addthis_close()" onclick="return addthis_sendto()"><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg- share-en.gif" width="125" height="16" alt="Bookmark and Share" /></a><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js?pub=ags"> </script>
- 15. Social Bookmarking Key Points • Easy to set up. • No need to engage your visitors or monitor comments if you aren’t ready for that level of commitment. • Free marketing: your users can promote your website for you. • IT, management and legal should have no issues.
- 17. Ratings Reviews
- 19. Ratings & Reviews Sample Code <!-- Rating Widget Begin--> <div class="js-kit-rating" title="Rated item" permalink="" starcolor="Golden“ </div> <script src="http://js-kit.com/ratings.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <!-- Rating Widget End--> <!-- Review Widget Begin--> <div class="js-kit-comments" standalone="yes“></div> <script src="http://js-kit.com/reviews.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <!-- Review Widget End--> http://aboutecho.com
- 21. Ratings & Reviews Key Points • Requires more coding knowledge to set up. • Visitors leave their opinion on your site others can read. • May require management approval. • Saves time – only answer a question once. • Can reveal common issues your visitors have. • If using an online tool, if that business disappears, all of your comments and ratings are lost.
- 24. Scribd Interface
- 25. Scribd Metrics
- 26. Scribd Key Points • Very user friendly. Anyone can set up and use. • Easy to get management approval. • Greatly increase the reach of your documents. • Currently has a class-action lawsuit against it. So make sure you have a copy of your documents elsewhere.
- 28. RSS in Web Browsers
- 29. RSS in Web Browsers RSS icon in Internet Explorer RSS icon in Firefox In the <head> area of the page you need to add the below code. The title is whatever you want to call your feed. The link is to your xml file. <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title=“My RSS Feed Title" href="http://myrss.xml/" />
- 31. RSS Sample Code <?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?> <rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/" version="2.0"> <channel> <title>Geology News from Alberta Geological Survey</title> <description>RSS feed on geology news and earth science articles from around the world.</description> <link>http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/news/geology_news.html</link> <language>en-ca</language> <lastBuildDate>Thu, 2 Jul 2009 08:22:19 -0700</lastBuildDate> <pubDate>Wed, 3 Jun 2009 08:22:19 -0600</pubDate> <sy:updatePeriod>daily</sy:updatePeriod> <sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency> <sy:updateBase>2007</sy:updateBase> <atom:link href="http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/news/news_rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/> <item> <title>International expedition investigates climate change and alternative fuels in the Arctic</title> <description>Scientists from the Marine Biogeochemistry and Geology and Geophysics sections of the Naval Research Laboratory organized and led a team of university and government scientists on an Arctic expedition to initiate methane hydrate exploration in the Beaufort Sea and determine the spatial variation of sediment contribution to Arctic climate change.</description> <link>http://www.ags.gov.ab.ca/news/geology_news.html</link> <pubDate>Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:51 -0600</pubDate> </item> </channel> </rss> Validate at http://feedvalidator.org
- 32. RSS Metrics http://www.feedburner.com
- 33. RSS Key Points • Easy way to promote any topic. • You control the message – easy to get approved. • Keeps your fans updated. • Spend $50 and buy software to create. • Regularly use validator to check code.
- 39. Facebook Metrics
- 40. Facebook Key Points • The hardest tool to get approved. • Don’t use Facebook if your audience isn’t. Do your research. • Must update regularly to keep fans interested. At least weekly. • Photos are very popular. • Check if someone else has already created a page on your department/organization. • Update your Contact Us page to include your Facebook link.
- 47. Twitter Key Points • You can’t control what people write about you. Take deep breaths. • Difficult tool to get approved. • Update regularly to keep fans interested. At least weekly, daily if possible. • Tweet useful and interesting information. • Respond to people right away. • To do well, it can take up a lot of your time. • Practice with a personal account to learn the etiquette and software. • Update your Contact Us page to include your Twitter name. • Claim your name.
- 48. Podcasts
- 50. Podcast Software Audacity Camtasia Soundbooth Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net) Camtasia (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp) Soundbooth (http://www.adobe.com/products/soundbooth)
- 51. Podcasts: iTunes
- 53. Podcasts Key Points • Requires equipment, software and modest level of technical skill. • Need regular content to keep fans interested. We make ours quarterly. • Almost anything can be a podcast: interviews, articles, policy explanations. • It’ll take about 6 months before the world will find and care about your podcasts. Don’t give up too soon.
- 55. YouTube Videos
- 56. YouTube: Making a Video Storyboard Paper (http://xinsight.ca/tools/storyboard.html) Adobe Premiere (http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere)
- 57. YouTube Keywords
- 58. YouTube Keywords
- 59. YouTube Metrics
- 60. YouTube Key Points • Requires equipment, software and good technical skills. • Most popular videos are fun and entertaining. Government doesn’t have to be boring. • Spend the time to research your keywords. • Always display your call to action at the end. • Claim your name now for future use.
- 61. Final Thoughts • Be prepared to fail – often. • Don’t take it personally. • Social media evolve quickly. You’ll change tools many times.
Editor's Notes
- And maybe your boss isn’t convinced about all of this social media stuff. Or maybe your IT department has locked down Facebook and Twitter. So where do you start?
- How do you dip your toe into the social media waters and feel like you’re doing something productive?Well first off, you always want to focus on the ones your audience will want and is already using.
- What I’m about to say now is evil in social media circles, so I hope you’ll forgive me. Because an advantage to social bookmarking is you aren’t engaging in conversation. You don’t have to monitor anything other than the popularity of your pages and how they’re being used. If you’re a one-man web team with no time, or your boss is terrified of Web 2-point-anything, this is a great way to ease into it. Of course, you’ll eventually move on to meaningful conversations, but we all have to start somewhere.
- ...a person wanted to know more about our data. At first it looked negative because she wrote she was unhappy that she couldn’t find the data she wanted. My response pointed her to the correct reports. This not only helps the original person, but helps any future visitors because they may have the same question. This helps you because it can reduce phone calls and e-mails. And for the record, the delay in my response was because I was on vacation, and don’t have a backup person.
- I use Echo to create the ratings and reviews tools. Here’s a sample of the code. It requires a little more coding knowledge, but the site’s help files are very good. Unfortunately, its reporting tools are very basic. The upside is it’s an online tool, so you don’t have to get IT to install or maintain anything. The downside is if you decide to change tools, or if the company goes bankrupt, any ratings or comments you’ve received will disappear.
- Reviews and comments are a good way to slowly start that social media conversation with your website visitors.
- Other than red tape, what does government have a lot of? Documents. People are always asking for your latest policy, report, map or brochure. And since most people don’t know which department handles what, they’ll use Google and hope for the best.
- Modern browsers can handle RSS feeds. This is how Firefox displays the information.
- Browsers even know if you have an RSS feed on your website – if you tell them. In Internet Explorer, the RSS icon will become orange, instead of grey, if it detects a feed on that page. In Firefox, the icon will appear in the address bar, otherwise it’s not even there.However, most people forget to add the required code. Make sure your site has it. Have your webmaster add this code in the head section of the relevant pages.
- Add the RSS link to all relevant pages. Use the standard icon because it’s understood - don’t get too creative and confuse people. The Government of Alberta website has RSS feeds for news releases for most departments; however, the subscription links are hard to find and inconsistent. Don’t make that mistake.
- You can either buy software to generate the code or hand code it. I hand code it, but I don’t recommend that for most people.Regardless, always use a validator to test your page. I use Feed Validator, which is free. It tells you what’s wrong and provides suggestions on how to fix it. Even after you’ve done it for a while, don’t get cocky. Regularly check that your feed still validates. One little mistake, like an incorrect date format, will completely invalidate your feed. And that means no one is getting your news.
- What about metrics? How do you know if anyone’s listening to you? Use Feedburner. This free tool was bought by Google and works very well. It isn’t the easiest thing to set up, but it’s worth the effort. It shows the number of subscribers and how people are using your feed, like if they’re posting it on Facebook. Even if you use an analytics program that tracks RSS subscriptions, like WebTrends, I still recommend setting up Feedburner, too. It provides more information.To use FeedBurner, you first need to create a Google account and then add the FeedBurner option. Just go to feedburner.com and read the instructions.
- So, what are the downsides of Facebook? Because there are some. You can’t have a personal page and a corporate page as two separate accounts. It violates the terms. So I have to log into my personal page to administer the AGS page. Whoever first creates a corporate page is forever an administrator, so choose wisely. You can add other administrators, but you can never delete the first one. Many features and applications don’t work for business pages, and you don’t get notified when people interact with your page. So you have to remember to regularly check it.
- However, what happens when you leave the organization? Does your company have the right to your followers and your profile? And there has been talk of legal action about this very thing.Since I’m not a geologist, my personal interests don’t match our organization’s, so I prefer to have 2 accounts. The Alberta government has 5 different Twitter accounts.
- The best use of Twitter is to share useful information and links. Think about what your audience would like to know and share that. And trust me, it isn’t what you had for breakfast that morning.
- Unfortunately, Twitter is another hard-to-get-approved tool. Although your boss trusts you to send e-mails without his approval, for some reason he’ll think you’ll lose your mind on Twitter. Now before you think AGS is completely enlightened, I can only use Twitter to broadcast our RSS feeds. But it’s a start. I’ve slowly built more than 850 followers, of which 80% are genuinely interested in geology.
- From a business perspective, I think the best tool to manage Twitter is HootSuite. It allows multiple people to have access to the same Twitter account. This lets a team all tweet on behalf of your department. You can link your RSS feeds to it, so it’ll tweet them when you update them. It provides good metrics on the popularity of your tweets. And it’s free – always my favourite.
- As you can see, HootSuite offers a variety of information to see how popular your tweets are. Use that information to decide on future topics.
- iTunes has custom tags you have to include, but its website has excellent documentation and examples. As with RSS feeds, use Feedburner to track your podcast subscribers because iTunes doesn’t give you any stats.Set up the Feedburner account first because you’ll want to use the URL it generate to your iTunes RSS.Since we started podcasting in 2007, podcasts have consistently been our most popular downloads.
- If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, what’s a video worth? YouTube is the perfect tool to display complicated instructions or answer common questions. I suggest you brainstorm the top 10 questions your public asks you. Then imagine which would be the easiest one to make a movie answer for.
- As with Facebook, YouTube provides a variety of metrics to help you gauge your visitors and the popularity of your videos.