Social Media Toolkit Luke Williams Feb 2012 Page 1
Table of Contents Introduction to social media... 3 Social media guidelines... 4 Listening online... 5 Twitter... 6 Facebook pages... 7 Blogs... 8 LinkedIn... 9 Issues management... 10 Emerging platforms... 11 References... 12 Page 2
Introduction to social media This toolkit is an overview of how individuals and groups from Macquarie University can look to use social media. There are many definitions and buzzwords that surround social media, but remember it s just really just about conversations and people. Success in social media is achieved through research, careful planning, strategy and execution with regular and measurable reports helping to form clear action plans. Integration with existing digital strategy and marketing campaigns is paramount to maximise results and achieve business objectives through social media. Before embarking on any social media initiative please ensure you are familiar with the Social Media Guidelines and the Public Comment Policy, both of which can be downloaded from the Macquarie University Policy Central site - http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/ State of the Australian social media landscape as of the 31st of October (UAV/mo = Unique Australian Visitors per month visiting site). [1] 1. Facebook 10,659,580 users in Australia (up 30,980) 2. YouTube 10 million UAVs / mo (up 100,000) 3. LinkedIn 2.2 million UAVs / mo (up 400,000) 4. Twitter 1.8 million UAVs / mo (up 200,000) Whether you are a marketing coordinator, professor or leader of a research group use this toolkit to better understand how social media can work for you. Page 3
Social media guidelines Users can approach social media with the help of these six best practice guidelines. 1. Be Transparent - be open and honest within the online environment and remember comments are forever. If you re blogging or creating content about your work at Macquarie University identify yourself / your role. If you publish to a website external to Macquarie University (for example a blog about teaching at Macquarie University) follow the social media guidelines provided by the University to ensure transparency. 2. Be Respectful - when engaging in conversation with, or about individuals, online communities and companies, be polite and respect the opinions of others. Try to avoid statements that could be perceived as critical. Present a balanced and careful argument for discussion and refrain from becoming inflammatory. Respect copyright and privacy laws when publishing content on social networks. Don t make negative or disparaging comments about competitor universites or programs. It is better to say nothing. 3. Be responsible - Common sense should prevail. Remember that what you publish is ultimately your responsibility don t write anything online that you wouldn t do in the course of your daily public duties. Familiarise yourself with the Group s code of conduct. Illegal, offensive or derogatory comments are definitely prohibited. As a general rule, if a mistake is made, admit to it. Being upfront and timely with content and corrections avoids most repercussions. Be discrete and remember that Macquarie University s confidential internal operations are not for public consumption and should not be disclosed online. Similarly, commenting on contentious issues on company sites may imply that Macquarie University endorses your personal views. 4. Be sincere - if you re not, it will be spotted. Be yourself, highlight your personality, and use common sense. Be a leader in your online community and demonstrate best practices at all times. Be meaningful and demonstrate your passion for a topic. Show expertise, and help fellow social network members. Speak the same language unless of course the language used is abusive, obscene or discriminatory. Personalise messages, and check your spelling! 5. Be useful and relevant - engage, but don t just post for the sake of posting. Social media is not magic. Take time to understand the medium you re using. Provide value, expertise or entertaining content relevant to your target audience. Reply to feedback, comments and responses in a timely manner and don t repeat postings. 6. Be a team player - Present a united front, but be yourself and have fun doing it. Find out what your colleagues are doing, join in and support! Page 4
Listening online There are several free tools you can use to listen and monitor social media channels. Start by setting up Google alerts for brand names, people s names and other specific terms that might be relevant to a campaign, event or department. You can run searches using sites such as 48ers and Social Mention. These are great for seeing real- time and recent mentions. You can also run searches on specific channels, but these tools allow you to look across multiple social channels at once. It s also important to monitor social media channels that have already been set up. Monitor incoming comments and replies to respond to appropriately. Page 5
Twitter The common purpose for a company s Twitter presence is to connect to people based on geo- location, interest or reach. It is also useful for conferences and events (using hashtags). Features: spreads messages/news rapidly, receive market intelligence, provide customer service, share testimonials Twitter is a network that moves quickly. It is appropriate to tweet 3-5 times per day. Grow a following by updating regularly, engaging users, having conversations, and following new people who might be interested in your brand or cause. Twitter is very conversational. Complete your bio, add a location and add a link to your website or blog. This will allow new followers to learn more about you do when viewing your account. Before embarking on establishing a presence on Twitter, create a content calendar so that you can plan your upcoming messages for the coming 2-3 months. This will allow you to make an assessment of whether the tone of voice, message selection and interest of content is on track. Add a profile image and background image with your logo and more information about you. Some Twitter must- know language includes; o RT (retweet) - placed before the retweeted text when users manually retweet a message o DM (direct message) a private message that can be sent if a user is following that account o @ Reply a public reply to a user. It will be seen in anyone s feed following both users o For a complete list of terms, please see Twitter s Glossary. Would you like to read more about Twitter? Read Mashable s Twitter Guide Book. Page 6
Facebook pages The common purpose of company pages is to bring customers together onto a platform for discussion. Pages give the functionality to have multipe administrators, add applications, etc. A study in May 2011 showed that Australian social media users are most interested in what businesses can give them in the form of discounts (57%), giveaways (45%), invitations to events (41%) and product information (41%). [2] Beyond discounts and giveaways, content should also reflect passion and expertise. A basic content plan for Facebook includes 5-7 posts per week on average. Half of that content plan can be evergreen (can be posted at any time) the second half is reactive, based on currents news, events, or responses from the community. Again, utilise a content plan to plan your messaging. Sharing multi- media content, such as photos, is important. Facebook prioritises images and video content in the newsfeed. It also engages users. Use Facebook insights to better understand what content is popular and how users are interacting with a page. Insights gives details such as page views, user demographics, number of tab views, number of impressions per post, and more. This will help refine and optimise future content. Administrators of a page can view the insights when logged in. Grow your Facebook presence through strong content, paid Facebook advertising, on- site integration (use a social plug- in or Facebook link on your website) and exposure through other marketing efforts such as e- newsletters, print, etc. Would you like to read more about Facebook? Read Mahsable s Facebook Guide Book. Page 7
Blogs Blogs provide both user and SEO benefits. They allow brands and groups to communicate interesting and relevant information to both an existing and potential audience, highlight expertise in a specific area and create a community. From an SEO perspective, sites that upload new content regularly are indexed more frequently by Google a frequently updated blog can positively influence your natural search rankings. Add social buttons to the bottom of all blog posts to make sharing posts easy. If you re going to have a collaborative (team) blog, have one point person driving the blog activity that can monitor the quality of submitted posts, suggest topics and get others excited about contributing. Create a content plan. Try a schedule where everyone on the team is encouraged to blog once a month (or every two months depending on time restraints). Make sure blog posts have multimedia content such as photos or videos, which are more engaging for users, and bring your posts to life. Share new posts on current social channels to drive traffic back to the blog, and encourage further sharing on those networks. Plan your blog posts in advance and review the tone of voice and messaging that your topic selection creates. Would you like to read more about blogging? Learn more tips from ProBlogger.net Page 8
LinkedIn LinkedIn is a more professional social network. In fact more than 40% of the members have the job title, Manager, Director, Owner, Chief Officer or Vice President listed. [3] On LinkedIn there are employee profiles (these are personal profiles individuals can setup), company profiles that you can manage as an administrator and groups that users can create about interesting topics and allow other users to join. Encourage all employees to update their LinkedIn profiles to list Macquarie University as their employer. This helps gain exposure for the University and can direct people through to the company profile when they click- through on the company name. Link Twitter and list any relevant blogs, websites on personal profiles. Visitors to a profile want to learn more about that person and what they re working on. Starting a group allows you to bring people together to discuss a specific topic, group, cause or organisation. You can share relevant links within that group s forum, and send a message to all group members (one message when they join, and once a week after that) which is delivered to their email inbox. Would you like to read more about LinkedIn? Read Simply Zesty s Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn. Page 9
Issues management There are situations where a community manager has to respond to negative comments on social media. This chart takes you through the process of how to evaluate a negative post. Not every comment requires a response, but every comment should be evaluated. Companies sometimes fear social media because criticisms can be published publicly for all to see, but this is also an opportunity for that brand. A public response demonstrates both that they re listening to customers or audience and they want to help. Remember the rules around transparency, respect and sincerity to ensure the best response and outcome from the interaction. Social media moves quickly, and once something is published online can it live there forever (even after you click delete). Refer also to the Social Media Guidelines which can be downloaded from the Macquarie University Policy Central site - http://www.mq.edu.au/policy/ Page 10
Emerging platforms Social networking evolves quickly and new platforms are constnatly emerging. While this toolkit covers some of the most popular channels in Australia now, new networks might soon be relevant to your organisation. Remember, don t jump on a new network just because you re hearing a lot of buzz online about it. Consider your target market and ask the questions, Are they relevant for this new platform? Are they already particpating in this space? Are they especially excited about this new network? Also consider if the resources exist to properly manage a new community and to promote within this new network. It is better to do fewer social channels well rather than trying to have a voice everywhere. [4] Page 11
There s no need to re- create everything from scratch Look at some of the early adopters, see what they ve done and see if it makes sense for your organization. And then think about what you need to do to customize it. Dave Fletcher, Utah chief technology officer References [1] http://apo.org.au/research/state- media- social- media- report- q3 [2] http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2011/05/31/sensis- social- media- report- online- reviews- affect- purchasing- decisions/ [3] http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/linkedin- demographics- statistics- stats- 2011/ [4] http://www.theconversationprism.com/ Page 12