Social Media for School Chapters

Social Media 101A School Chapter Guide

Justine Abigail YuSocial Media CoordinatorSeptember 2011

jhr | Journalists for Human Rights

web. www.jhr.ca • tel. 416 413 0240 • fax. 416 413 1832

147 Spadina Avenue, Suite 206 • Toronto, Ontario • M5V 2L7

Table of ContentsWhat is Social Media?....................................................................................................3

Resources.................................................................................................................................................3

School Chapters and Social Media..............................................................................3

General Tips & Tricks................................................................................................................................3

Creating a Dashboard...............................................................................................................................4

Facebook.........................................................................................................................5

Customizing your Facebook page.............................................................................................................5

The Code...............................................................................................................................................7

Twitter..............................................................................................................................9

Who to Follow............................................................................................................................................9

Create Lists.............................................................................................................................................11

Use and follow hashtags.........................................................................................................................11

Troubleshooting..............................................................................................................12

jhr | Journalists for Human Rights www.jhr.ca SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SCHOOL CHAPTERS 2

What is Social Media?Social media are the various online and mobile tools that allow people to share and discuss information

across time and space. It includes but is not limited to social networking sites like Twitter and

Facebook, news sharing and bookmarking sites like delicious and Digg, and photo and video sharing

sites like Flickr and YouTube.

…but as a GenY-er, you already knew that.

ResourcesIn case you didn’t, here are some superb presentations that’ll give you a thorough rundown of social

media and their increasing importance.

Social Media in Plain English

Social Media Revolution

What the F**k is Social Media?

To learn a bit more about jhr’s social media engagement efforts, browse through jhr’s prezi - “WTF is

this Social Media thing?!”

School Chapters and Social Media jhr School Chapters all across North America are already using social media tools to reach out to

students and clubs on campus – the most widely used being Twitter and Facebook. What follows are a

number of tips and tricks to help you maximize your reach on campus and even beyond.

General Tips & Tricks Be worth following! Want to attract more followers? Be interesting! Out of all of the people and

organizations that are online on Twitter and Facebook, why should anyone follow you? Be

outstanding in the content that you push out to your networks! Add value. Share tips, tricks, and

insights. People want to learn something new, so share information that is important to you and

relevant to your followers. Make listening to you worth their time.


http://prezi.com/pzinzyh-dlnf/wtf-is-this-social-media-thing/

http://prezi.com/pzinzyh-dlnf/wtf-is-this-social-media-thing/

http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-is-social-media-one-year-later

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE

Be genuine. Social media thrives on authenticity. Be passionate about what you’re posting and let

that show through your personality. No one wants to interact with a robot so show that there’s a

person behind the screen!

Listen and respond. Show that you appreciate the feedback you receive by responding in a timely

fashion, even if it is just a few words. Remember, social media is a dialogue, not a monologue! It’s a

conversation!

Be generous. The Internet is all about connecting with links, so if you see something interesting,

valuable, or relevant, link to it! Don’t be afraid to share other people’s information. In fact, the more

you link, the more you will facilitate conversation with others and the more you’ll expand your

network.

Have fun! If it’s your first time on a social networking site or blogging, explore the landscape and

culture. Play around with different posts or tweets and discover what’s best for you. Don’t be afraid

to dive in and just enjoy the adventure of sharing information and interacting with new people!

Creating a DashboardManaging a number of social media accounts for both professional and personal use can get pretty

crazy. Luckily, there are tools out there to help make our lives easier – they’re called social media

dashboards and they are a godsend. Dashboards allow you to manage multiple accounts at the same

time on one simple and easy-to-use website.

For example, I currently use Hootsuite to manage four different social media accounts: my Twitter

account, jhr’s Twitter and Facebook account, and another organization’s Twitter account. Here are

some of the great advantages of using a tool like this:

I don’t have to log in and out of my different accounts because Hootsuite immediately logs me

in to all of them.

I can schedule my tweets and status updates into the future so I don’t have to spend my life

glued to the computer updating Twitter and Facebook.

I can see monitor all my mentioned (@) tweets, DMs, lists, home feed, and saved hashtag

searches in one page. No need to click anywhere else!


I can track statistics (quite possibly the most important part about social media)! Hootsuite has

a feature that aggregates the number of times people clicked on your links. This gives you a

chance to assess how effective your social media efforts are.

Here’s just a small snapshot of what I see on my dashboard.

If you want to set up a Hootsuite account on your own and need a little help getting started, feel free to

contact me at [email protected].

FacebookA large majority of Canadians and Americans between the age of 18-24 are on Facebook so having a

presence on this social networking site is absolutely essential. I spent a lot of time on Facebook when I

was in university (ok, even until now) and I know other students do too. Tap into that and make that

time productive by spreading relevant news items about human rights in general and more specifically,

ways to get involved with jhr at your campus.

Customizing your Facebook pageTo make your Facebook page stand out, why not create a custom welcome page to attract new

followers and give them that extra push to click that “like” button! Check out jhr’s custom page:


mailto:[email protected]

To create a custom tab, you need the Static HTML app which you can install into your Facebook page

by clicking here.

Once you’ve done, click on the Static HTML Welcome tab on the left hand panel of your page. At this

point, you’ll need to plug in some coding (which looks like gibberish if you haven’t played around with

HTML before).


https://www.facebook.com/pages/Make-Media-Matter/127581493936533?sk=app_190322544333196#!/apps/application.php?id=190322544333196

The CodeTo make things easy for you, you can use this custom coding I’ve developed for your chapter. Just plug

in the code where it says “Enter your content here”. It’ll look very similar to our official jhr page…feel

free to change it up and customize it on your own! If you’re struggling, hit me up at [email protected].

**Don’t forget to change the parts in red.

_______________________________________________________________________________

<center><a href="LINK TO YOUR SCHOOL CHAPTER BLOG/JHR WEBSITE GOES HERE"><img

src="http://justineabigail.squarespace.com/storage/joinus.jpg" height="80" width="560" style="border-

style: none"/></a>

<img src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/welcomeheader1.jpg">

<div>

<img src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/welcomecut.jpg" style="float:left"

height="250" width="130" />

Welcome to jhr (Journalists for Human Rights) [YOUR UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE NAME]

Chapter! We are an organization that works towards a world where everyone is fully aware of their

human rights and where every day citizens mobilize to actively fight against human rights violations

and abuses. 

We believe that awareness is the first and most necessary step towards ending rights abuses.

Take those first steps with us. Join the movement. 

<a href="mailto:YOUR CHAPTER’S EMAIL"><img

src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/email.jpg" style="border-style:

none"/></a><a href="YOUR TWITTER URL GOES HERE" target="_blank"><img

src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/twitter.jpg" style="border-style:

none"/></a><a href="YOUR BLOG’S RSS FEED/URL GOES HERE" target="_blank"><img

src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/rss.jpg" style="border-style: none"/></a>



</div>

_______________________________________________________________________________

Your custom landing page will looking something like this…

TwitterIt’s the growing beast of social networking sites. You already know what it is – the social networking site

that comes in bite-sized status updates of 140 characters per tweet! It’s a great tool to keep on top of

the news in real time, assess current trends, and connect with like-minded others who are interested in

the same things that you as an individual or as an organization may be. Here are a few quick tips to

help boost your activity and visibility!

Who to FollowHere’s just a brief list of industry professionals who I think you should follow to get you started on your

Twitter journey! It isn’t the be all and end all of Twitter lists. Feel free to suggest relevant folks that you

think jhr should follow!

Your fellow School Chapters!

Here’s a pretty natural place to start. jhr’s School Chapters all have the same goal of making everyone

in the world fully aware of their rights. So you can bet that their tweets will be relevant and retweetable!

Carleton U - @carletonJHR

Concordia U - @jhrConU

King’s College - @jhrkings

Ryerson U - @ryejhr

Queen’s U - @jhr_queens

Red River College - @jhrRRC

Simon Fraser U - @jhr_SFU

St. Thomas U - @jhrstu

U of Toronto - @jhrUofT

York U - @jhrYork

Rutgers U - @JHRrutgers

Indiana U - @jhriu

Human Rights/Development Organizations

UN - @UN

Human Rights Watch - @hrw

Amnesty International - @amnestyonline

Global Voices - @globalvoices

WITNESS - @witnessorg


UN Women - @UN_Women

UN Development - @UNDP

UNHCR - @refugeewomen

UNICEF - @UNICEF

World Food Programme - @WFP

Transparency Int’l - @anticorruption

Guardian Dev’t @GdnDevelopment

Journalism Organizations/ Figures

Nieman Lab - @NiemanLab

ICFJ - @ICFJ

CAJ - @CdnAssocJourn

CPJ - @pressfreedom

CPJ Africa - @africamedia_CPJ

UT Knight Center - @utknightcenter

IREX Media - @irexmedia

Lauren Wolfe - @Wolfe321

Geoffrey York - @geoffreyyork

Nick Kristof - @nickkristof

jhr Head Office and Overseas Staff

The following is a list of key people working at jhr’s head office and international offices that are doing

social media right! You can view a list of all our current and former staff at

http://twitter.com/#!/jhrnews/jhrfamily/members

Ben Peterson - @jhrben

Rachel Pulfer - @Rachel_Pulfer

Danny Glenwright - @DGlenwright

Nikki Whaites - @nikkiwhaites

Ken Zolotar - @kenzolotar

Travis Lupick - @tlupick

Katie Lin - @katiechlin

Kathryn Sheppard - @sheppo86

Aaron Leaf - @aaronleaf


http://twitter.com/#!/jhrnews/jhrfamily/members

Jennifer Hollett - @jenniferhollett

Justine Yu - @justineabigail

Create ListsTwitter lets you clump people together into relevant “lists”. So for example, jhr’s followers have listed us

under “human rights”, “world news”, “journalists”, “activists”, etc, etc. Similarly, we’ve made lists of

people we like to follow too: “jhrfamily”, “journalists”, “development orgs”. It’s a great way to organize

tweets by topics and to manage the content coming in from your Twitter feed.

Use and follow hashtagsWTF are those #s that people keep adding in front of words? They’re called hashtags. And again,

they’re a way to organize tweets around a certain topic. For example, if you’re tweeting about

international development, you’d use the hashtag #globaldev. A quick search of #globaldev will show

you what everyone around the world are saying about the particular topic. It’s a great way not just to

see what everyone else is talking about, but it’ll also boost your visibility online as people who aren’t

following you will see your tweet.

You can even save any hashtag search so that you can easily reference it any time in the future on the

right hand panel of you Twitter page. No need to type it in again!

Here are some hashtags that jhr keeps an eye on:

#rightsmedia

#humanrights


#globaldev

#journalism

#media

TroubleshootingIf you ever need any help on the social media front, I’m your girl. You can contact me, jhr’s Social

Media Coordinator, at [email protected] or shoot me a tweet at @justineabigail.

Peace, love, and social media.


http://twitter.com/justineabigail


Social Media for School Chapters

Technology

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