Recent presentation for Guardian Housing Network

1. Social Media for Housing
Friday 29 June, 2012
#gdnseminars

2. Proportion
of UK
adults with
broadband
= 76%*

3. Proportion of
UK adults
who use
social
networking
sites
= 51%*

4. Proportion of
people who
use their
mobile
handsets to
access the
internet
= 34%*
*Ofcom http://media.ofcom.org.uk/facts/

5. Social Media Usage UK
• More than half of pensioners now on
Facebook
• 37.4m adults use Facebook regularly
• 32.1m adults use YouTube regularly
• 15.5m adults on Twitter
• 7.9m adults on LinkedIn
http://www.umpf.co.uk/blog/social-media/social-media-usage-in-the-uk-the-findings/

6. Why social media?
• Your end users want and expect easy access
to information about you and from you
• Done well and with a clear strategy, social
media can save you time and money
• Engaging with

7. Where do I need to be?
Picking the right platform

8. Factors to consider
• Which platforms are community using?
• Are they open to talking to you on that
platform?
• Are there alternative ways to reach them?
• How will SM enable you to reach your
ultimate goals?

9. Facebook

10. http://mashable.com/2011/11/18/facebook-stats/

11. User Perspective
• Facebook algorithms dictate the
Newsfeed
• Interaction happens within the
Newsfeed
• Limited tolerance for “Page Noise”
• Text vs picture, video & poll
• Influence of the Ticker

17. Plan with a goal in mind
• Use facebook Insights to inform future
posts
• Is “Places” a tool you can use?
• Photo & Video tagging
• Optimum time for posting (to your
audience)
• Questions & prompts
• RESPOND!

18. Twitter

19. Lead the conversation
• Keep an eye on trending topics and if they
are relevant to you, get involved
• Use a popular # strategically to get more
clicks on links
• Mention @ figures within your community
and ask them questions
• Don’t be a broadcaster, be a
conversationalist

23. LinkedIn

27. Give your profile some personality
• Profile Apps make it easy to showcase
your social media content / activity
• Empower other employees to share on
LinkedIn. There is often less noise for
updates etc
• Groups are a great way to get in front of
the right people but…
• Remember – check stats!

28. What’s new?

29. • Sharing on Instagram gives you content
you can also share on other platforms
• Using tools like searchinstagram.com you
can find out if others are talking about you
(also web.stagram.com)
• Use #tags to bring your community
together. Even consider using as a
reporting tool

31. In the US Pinterest
refers more web
traffic than
LinkedIn, Google+
and YouTube
combined

32. • 55% of consumers share their purchases
socially on networks like Facebook, Twitter
&Pinterest
• 59% of Pinterest users have bought
something they have seen on the site
compared to only 33% of Facebook users
• US online consumers follow an average of
9.3 brands on Pinterest compared to only
6.9 on Facebook

36. • Tell a story with your pins
• Celebrate the iconic history of your
organisation – create a time capsule
• Use it to create a resource for users
• Don’t just use Pinterest for marketing and
SEO – Plan your work and create mood
boards
• Use Pinterest to give your brand
personality
• Don’t forget to post video

37. Creating Great Content
Where to begin?

38. Key elements of success
• Plan your content, do your research
• Don’t forget about SEO
• Text descriptions, titles and tagging
• Link planning – where are you driving
traffic?
• Ease of sharing
• Infographics / Video / Instagram – does
your content have value?

42. Key points on sharing
• Stick to key values of content marketing –
make sure anything you want shared has
inherent value to the user
• Mention video when courting PR and media
attention
• Ensure there are links from your clip to
appropriate pages on your website
• Remember YouTube is now owned by
Google so clips give you more opportunities
to appear in search!

44. Community engagement
• Does “How to” fit with your organisation?
• Could your content work as a series?
• Are there opportunities to get your
ccommunity involved?
• Spend time and effort engaging with
bloggers in your sector, encourage them to
embed your content

45. Remember:
Engaging with bloggers is about you
providing content that’s interesting and
beneficial to THEIR audience. Don’t try to
sell them on your business, spend time
learning about their audience and (provided
the audience is relevant to you) build
content they will enjoy.

46. You’ve thought about visual
– what about audio?

49. Get your audience involved!

51. Running competitions
• Have clear guidelines
• Make it as easy as possible for potential
entrants to be included
• Use Playlist functionality to shortlist videos
• Use multiple marketing platforms to invite
entry
• Make your timeline realistic

54. Social Media Dashboards
Make sharing easier and
more efficient

58. Tweetdeck

59. Measuring & Improving

60. Evaluation
Website Metric Stat • Measure stats
GAnalytics Twitter Visits 104 collected against
GAnalytics FB Visits 78 campaign goals
GAnalytics LinkedIn Visits 47 • Constantly assess
Bitly.com Link clicks 20,000 what’s working for you
BufferApp Retweets 1,000 and be agile
TweetReach Exposure of 342 • Look at comments for
tweet
feedback
Blog Stats G+ shares
Blog Stats StumbleUpon
• Storify your activity to
shares remind you of
YouTube Views successes and
YouTube Likes improvements

67. Troubleshooting

68. 3 choices!
•Reply
•Delete
•Ignore

70. Social Media Guidelines
• Encourage staff to engage and talk about
your activity on twitter
• Be clear about your company caveats
• Keep your community rules simple &
share them with everyone
• Request that employees using their own
accounts preface their comments when
they relate to your brand

71. socialmediagovernance.com/policies

72. Remember: Your social media
policy / code of conduct, should
not differ wildly from the normal
standards of behaviour and data
management you would expect
from an employee.

73. Staying faithful to your goals
• Set your organisational goals before
deciding which platforms to use
• Know what you want success to look like
(don’t be surprised if / when it looks
different)
• Don’t be afraid to measure but pick your
metrics carefully
• Don’t shy away from user generated
content, it can surprise you

74. Keeping ahead of the curve
• Find SM ambassadors amongst your staff
• Bring naysayers on board to fix problems
• Follow influential & well informed bloggers
• Take part in appropriate twitter chats
• Keep an eye on case studies from an array of
different organisations

75. Most importantly
• Don’t jump on every new (or old) platform,
especially if you have limited time and
resources
• Don’t write off new platforms, play around
with them and assess how you might use
them
• Be open minded, sometimes it’s our
clients that tell us how we should be
communicating

76. Useful resources
• Mashable.com
• TheNextWeb.com
• Technorati.com
• Reddit.com
• SocialMediaToday.com
• FastCompany.com
• BitRebels.com

77. Questions?