This document summarizes a class on social media best practices for communications professionals. It includes tips for using Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms effectively as well as search engine optimization. The class covered personal profiles, groups, brand pages on Facebook; types of tweets and structures; and social media metrics. It emphasizes quality over quantity of posts and using hashtags, questions, photos and videos. The guest speaker was Tony Adam, President and CEO of Visible Factors, and topics included online reputation management and how to "dilute" negative search results.

1. Instructor:
Erik Deutsch (@erikdeutsch)
#SocMedUCLA
Best Practices in Social Media
for the Communications
Professional
Meeting 4 (April 26):
• Facebook & Twitter Best Practices
• Nothing is “Off-the-Record”
• SEO for the PR pro
• Online reputation management
• Guest speaker:
Tony Adam (@TonyAdam)
President & CEO, Visible Factors
UCLA X469.21 Spring 2016

2. 1.Personal Profiles
2.Groups
3.Brand Pages
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- Local Business or Place
- Company or Organization
- Brand or Product
- Artist or Public Figure
- Cause or Community

3. Facebook “Customers” vs. “Users”
- Advertisers are the “Customers”
- Users are the “Product”
FB is a consumer data collection engine
and ad serving platform
UCLA X469.21 Spring 2016

4. • Organic vs. paid (sponsored posts)
• Edgerank algorythm (affinity, weight and
recency)
• Facebook insights (publisher analytics)
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5. UCLA X469.21 Spring 2016

6. • Quality over quantity.
• Shorter posts (to generate more engagement).
• Provide a link (and hashtag)
• Ask questions (to ignite a dialogue).
• Use photos, links and videos (particularly
native video) for higher edgegrank.
• Get creative.
• Pay to expand reach
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7. 1.General Status Update
2.The Retweet (RT and MT)
3.The @Mention
4.The @Reply
5.Direct Messages (DM)
6.Hashtag Tweet (#)
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8. Tweet Structure
Dissecting the semantics of a tweet
gives us a sense of best practice, but
keep in mind this isn't a one-size-fits-
all deal. Keep it real and get in your
own groove.
Start with:
- Headline or phrase
- Link
- Hashtag
UCLA X469.21 Spring 2016

9. • Tweets with image and video links have 5 times the
engagement rate
• Tens of millions of fake Twitter users – plus 44 percent
of users have never sent a single tweet
• The cost of a 24 hour promoted trend costs
about $200K
• Katy Perry is the queen of Twitter with nearly 70 million
followers
• Ellen’s photo of celebs at the Oscars generated 3.4
million retweets within hours
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10. • Follow others (reciprocity)
• Complete your profile and look “legit” (photo, keyword and links)
• Engage!
• Leverage what’s trending (#hashtags/keywords)
• Post when/where your target followers hang out
• Attend events (online/offline; e.g., Twitter chats)
• Mention other users in your posts (“ego bait”)
• Promote everywhere (email sig, website, marketing collateral, etc.)
• Buy them... literally (but don’t)
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11. • YouTube & Vine - Video
Sharing
• Instagram (know hashatags,
no links)
• Pinterest – Scrapbooking
• LinkedIn – Professional
Networking
• Snapchat – Messaging
• Swarm – Geolocation
• Blab and Periscope
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12. Social Media is:
• Easy to post
• Easy to share
• Easy to find
• Hard (if not impossible) to delete
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13. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of
improving the visibility of a web site or a web
page in search engines via the "natural" or un-
paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.
Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM)
target paid listings.
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14. 1) Relevance - How relevant is your page content to
the keyword query of your visitor?
2) Authority – Based on the company you keep. In
other words, which sites link to your site, and who
shares your links on social media
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15. • Visible (on-page) and non-visible (source code) content
• Meta Tags - Optimize your Title and Description tags
• Alt Tags - Alternative text attached to images (to provide
search engines crawlable text in the webpage code)
• Headings - Titles and subtitles (e.g. H1 and H2 tags) on the
page help break blocks of content into smaller, clearly labeled
sections.
• Body Text - Focus on 2 or 3 keywords per page and write for
users, not the search engines (avoid “keyword stuffing”)
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16. • External inbound links – Value depends on credibility and
popularity of sites that link to your site. Note .edu and .gov
trump the rest, and the NY Times trumps a small-time blogger
(links from spammy sites can actually reduce authority).
• “Anchor” text – The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink should
be keyword-focused.
• Link relevancy – How relevant is the content on the linking
page and the target page?
• Popularity & Trustworthiness – What’s the “Page Rank” of the
linking page?
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17. SEM - Search Engine Marketing
• Purchasing links
• Akin (in PR speak) to "Earned" vs. "Paid" media
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18. The results that come up when you
perform a Google search
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19. And remember...
all content and links are not created equal.
"The solution to pollution is dilution."
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20. Develop multiple content assets to help push down negative links (as well as
negative, autosuggested searches).
Tactics: YouTube videos, topic-specific landing pages (with embedded YouTube
videos), press releases through online wire services, blog entries and social
media profiles.
"The solution to pollution is dilution."
UCLA X469.21 Spring 2016

21. Instructor:
Erik Deutsch
(@ErikDeutsch)
#SocMedUCLA
Best Practices in Social Media
for the Communications
Professional
Meeting 4 (April 26):
Guest speaker:
Tony Adam (@TonyAdam)
President & CEO, Visible Factors
UCLA X469.21 Spring 2016