Social Media Promotion 101 How groups can leverage the power of digital, realistically Julie Pippert, Artful Media Group

What We Are Doing Today Talk through strategy and tactics for top social media platforms Discuss top techniques for success, from engaging content to promoted content Walk through how to measure results--and how to understand those measurements meaningfully Get down to business!

A GOOD STRATEGY IS CRUCIAL Don’t trap yourself into an outline. Web your strategy or create a chart! State Your Mission Set Your Tactics Identify Your Objectives Acknowledge Your Challenges Define Your Audiences Specify How to Achieve Decide Your Platforms

A GOOD PLAN IS CRUCIAL You need a plan and you need to make sure your plan is up-to-date and reflects your business goals. Social media is a business tool; use it intentionally, with purpose. It can be simple and aligned with your business plan WHY are you on social media—what are your objectives? WHO do you want to reach? Build a portrait. WHO do you want to be? Build a persona. WHERE do you want to post? Are you using the platforms you like and that work for you? WHAT tools do you want to use? HOW will you measure your effectiveness?

Mobile apps for content management can be your best friends. HOW TO BE EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT Invest a penny in planning and save a pound in time and effort. Ad hoc feels easy but it costs you: disorganized, easy to miss things, that “too overwhelmed to start” thing, not to mention writer’s block Get a calendar and stay on top of internal and external events Setup a schedule for what to post and when to post Use a timer to stay on schedule Mobile apps for content management can be your best friends.

TOOLS I LOVE IN 2017 CANVA – Free! Graphic tool! With preset optimal sizes for social media BUFFER – Plays well with others, RSS feed and image capabilities but miss the dashboard FLIPBOARD – Ezine style curated content BUNDLEPOST – Replaces keywords with hashtags. Yes please and thank you! FOLLOWER WONK – Excellent for finding who to follow on Twitter and when to engage with them. SOCIALRANK – Free at basic level, lets you find and get to know followers NATIVE PLATFORMS – Twitter offers scheduling for business accounts, and each has really improved metrics.

YOUR BEST CONTENT First and most importantly VISUAL content. GIFs, Videos, Photo albums and arrays…lots to encourage images. Take action! Buttons and functionality enable you to encourage actions such as SHOP NOW (Facebook) or engage in polls (Twitter) and more. Live streaming! Facebook and Twitter now let you run live video. Facebook even notifies your community when you are live! SHARE and TRENDING (that’s relevant) connect & engage Improved access via messages. Facebook improved both its Business Messenger and controls for on or off to receive messages and respond, including autoreply. Twitter dropped mutual follow for direct messaging. Bonus points for good response time! Mobile! Mobile! And did I say MOBILE?

BUILDING BETTER CONTENT THAT ENGAGES Best content tactics and what works are moving targets – it depends on current algorithms, audience, and audience preference. TIP: Target The best way to stay engaged is to engage yourself! So here are my top tips: Use images. Make sure you’ve got great visuals with your content. Buffer says tweets with images got 18% more clicks and 150% more retweets Post your important content multiple times: freshen the text and aim at different time slots Create engaging content. Sure this is vague. What grabs your attention? What makes you click like, comment, or share? Use features such as polls in Twitter, attention-grabbing text, and eye-catching visuals. Mix it up with text on visuals. Use video. Follow similar pages and pages your audience likes, see what works well there

WHAT ABOUT ADS? Yes For best performance, ads and boosted content are necessary Facebook straight up admitted it suppresses business content (as of Jan 2015) Figure out your objective then design an ad that way. Use shortcuts such as creating an audience so you can reuse. Run ads or boost on a semi-regular basis to ensure your content stays visible. Try different things to see what works INSTAGRAM run ads from Facebook TWITTER ads and polls, as well as cards, are very effective and cost-effective

HOW DO I MEASURE EFFECTIVENESS? You want to see steady growth of your community, and strong engagement with your content. Facebook Insights Actions on Page: if you have a call to action button Page Views: how often people viewed your page Page likes: your new followers Reach: the number of people who saw your post, as well as liked, commented or shared it Top posts Twitter Top Tweet Impressions: number of times your tweet was seen Engagements: number of times someone interacted with a tweet Engagement rate: engagements divided by impressions Link clicks Retweets Likes Replies There are great dashboard tools such as Sprout Social and Klear, and tools such as Hootsuite include analytics, but native analytics are quite good. BuzzSumo is also popular

LET’S GO! Your Mission Choose an Activity and a platform: Create a post: status, photo, video OR Create an event or poll Make a Plan and Do Your Research: what’s your objective, who’s your audience, what should it look and read like (is there something similar that’s been successful on your page or a page popular with your audience?), how will you measure it Boost, promote, or run an ad Measure