Social Media Training: Not Just for Chickens

Elaine EdwardsNews Media and Marketing

LeaderK-State Research and

Extension

Why social media?

• Flexibility• Efficiency• Scalability• Multi-purposing• Timeliness• Relevancy• Discoverability• Collaborations

Define your Social Media Goals

• Drive people to website• Build relationships• Build educational content• Be responsive/timely in meeting

needs

… and more goals

• Be more relevant• Get those outside of your

organization talking about you• Multi-purposing your work• Energizing client base/community• Establish support among community

Think about

• Key customer, client, community member• Why would they care?• Do you have ways for members of your

community to interact, comment• Is your information mobile accessible?

Expectations

• Transparency• Sharing• Attracting• Experiential Learning• Co-learning• Co-creating

CommunicatorsMedia Gardeners

KansasResearchers

Commodity organizations

Ag Businesses

Ag Media

Big thinkers

Farmers K-Staters

Universities

Extension

K-State Research and Extension communities/circles

Stakeholders

Science based information from K-State Research and

Extension

Where the people are

Youtube

Facebook

Blogs

Twitter

Flickr

Slideshare

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4

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4

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Supporting Social Media Platforms (Link,

embed)

Conversation spaces

Facebook: The Connection Tool

FB Factoids

• Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February of 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.• As of June 2011, Facebook has more than 674 million active users – more than 149 million users in the United States alone.• According to the Nielsen Company, the average active social media user, logs in 19.2 times per month on Facebook, spending an average of 5 hours and 52 minutes on the site.• According to a study by Starcom MediaVest Group and Rubinson Partners, Facebook makes up 56% of all shared content (up from 45% in August, 2010) on the web. Facebook allows you to share your passion and conviction.

Personal, Groups, PagesPersonal Groups Pages

A means to interact and connect with friends and to portray yourself

Connecting like-minded people or give information about a topic that is of interest to you and others in the group.

A way to promote your business, product or service or to represent a public figure, celebrity or band.

Off-limits to companies and nonprofit organizations.

If you are an administrator, your name will appear with that group.

Admins names are not revealed.

Can be open, closed or secret.

Promotional widgets

Vanity urls

Targeted stream posts

Metrics

Easy as 1-2-3Facebook marketing can becost effective but it requires alot of time, effort and a fewpassionate communicators tomaintain a dialogue with youraudience.

Putting in the effort,your page will show your realinterest in your audience.

Don’t expect to get thousandsof fans to your Facebook pagewithin your first month, but seta realistic goal and try to makeprogress towards it every day.

Make your website social

• Insert the Facebook image on your website home page and link it to yourFacebook page.

• Use the Facebook Activity Feed plugin to show your audience what theirfriends are doing on your website through likes and comments.

• Link your Facebook page to Twitter.

• Announce your Facebook page to email lists, meeting rooms,email signatures, flyers for events, presentations, websites, wikipedia ...

• If you are addressing a live audience, encourage people to join your pagevia SMS. Facebook users can send a text message to 32665 (FBOOK) withthe words “fan yourusername” OR “like yourusername” (without the quotes).

Create a vanity URL• The URL of your Facebook page is randomly generated until you reach a certain amount (currently 25) of fans, then Facebook lets you pickyour own vanity URL.

• If you are the administrator of the page, go towww.facebook.com/username/ to create a username for your page.

Invite People

• Invite your Facebook friends to your page. You probably have your own friends on Facebook and odds are some of them are interested in the work you do. Send them a personal message inviting them to check out your organization’s Facebook page.

• Create and promote giveaways to people that comment to a certain post of you. Because they have to “like” your page to comment, giveaways are likely to increase your fan base.

Fbsearch.us is a quick and easy way to search for content on Facebook by key types, for example, posts, photos, people, pages, groups, and events. It returns only “public” results so you won’t see everything, but it’s a good starting point. http://www.fbsearch.us/

Invite interaction

Another example: Photo contest

How often should you post?

• Try 5 to 10 times per week, and don’t forget weekends.

• Important to maintain social connection with your friends.

Give them a reason to like youGive your audience a reason to ‘Like’ your organization. Add content to your page your fans cannot get anywhere else.

Keep the content varied, fun, and interesting. Think about exclusive videos, bonus material, bloopers, podcasts, tips, gifts, discussion threads, coupon codes, etc.• Post good content• Be social• Engage and have conversations with

friends/fans• Be passionate• Demonstrate energy

Tips

• Include numbers in your titles and status messages.• Post on weekends as people tend to share more on the weekends.• Believe it or not – certain words get shared more.Good words are “why”, “most”, “world”, “how”, “health”, “bill”, ...• Write articles with a positive spin.• Write in plain English – as the complexity of a post increases, the number of times it gets shared decreases.• Include videos if possible.

• If you host events, be sure to take plenty of photos, load the photos to your Facebook page and tag the people on the photos.• Encourage fans to tag themselves.• This, again, pushes that photo and the link to your page out into the walls of your fans and their friends.

Tag Your Page

Use the @ tag. As long as you like your own Facebook page, you can “@ tag” your page on your own personal profile wall. Tag your Facebook page by writing a personal status update.

If Facebook does not automatically link to a friend’s name or page name, starttyping the “@” symbol and the first few letters of your fan page name, and itwill appear from a drop-down menu to select. This makes it an easy link thatyour friends can choose to click.

This also can be done when you post messages on other people's walls orfan pages. But keep in mind to not just spam other pages.

What is Your Call to Action?✓signing up for a workshop✓signing up for a newsletter✓signing up to become anadvocate

✓making a gift✓volunteering their time✓buying a product

Stats and DataK-State Research and Extension

DemographicsK-State Research and Extension

What is Twitter?

Micro-blogging service140 characters or lessFreeHistory of: Twitter Graphic

What’s in it for you?

• Helps you write clearly, concisely.• Gives you confidence in your work.• Helps you understand your audience and what

they are interested in.• Provides community atmosphere.• Provides a place for wit, humor, emotions.

@elainecarol

@kstatenews

The Twitter “What for?”

• Connect with Interested People• Challenge/Ask questions• Share Interesting Information• Be Present at the Social Media Table• Serve our Clients• Track/Monitor • Share Crucial Information

Easy, Simple, Saves time

• 140 characters• Hashtags for sorting• @ for direct contacting• Direct messaging available

Tweeting Defined

• Tweet (both noun and verb): Posting or writing a 140 character message

• Handle: your twitter name• Follow: Adding someone to the list of people

whose tweets show up on your page• Followers: People who add your twitter stream

to their homepage• Replies: When you send a tweet to someone

directly

Definitions continued

• RT or Retweet: When you repost another person’s tweet, can often add text to personalize or give your spin

• DM or Direct Message: When you send directly to another user. They must follow you in order to direct message.

• Hashtag: Using the # symbol, a way for categorizing tweets

• Trends: What is popular on Twitter worldwide

Know what people are saying

• Twitter chatter• Google Alerts• Comments on Facebook/Youtube

Tools: Dashboards

• TweetDeck• Seesmic Desktop• Hootsuite

Use AddThis Button

Hashtag: #CESCValue

Lists: categorizing information

Building Relationships

Passion is the key to success

• The “Chosen Social One” needs to have passion for the audience.• Your organization needs to understand that Social Media should not be just another task on your list of duties.• To be successful and social, it means for you to show passion for your audience every hour of the day, every day. • While you don’t have to be in the office all of this time, you must be prepared for passionate “chatter” from all angles and all times.• Keep in mind, people that like your page are your friends and advocates.

ReferencesThis information is supplied with the understanding that no discrimination is intended andno endorsement by Kansas State University is implied:News• Social Media News – http://socialmediatoday.com• Facebook Marketing Statistics – http://www.checkfacebook.com• Nielsen Wire – http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/• Facebook Resource – http://www.allfacebook.com• Techcrunch – http://techcrunch.com• socialbakers – http://www.socialbakers.com/Tools• Facebook Applications – http://www.involver.com• Facebook Applications – http://fanpageengine.com/• Facebook Plugins - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/• Facebook Vanity URL - http://www.facebook.com/username/• Facebook Link to Twitter - http://www.facebook.com/twitter/• Static FBML 2011 - https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=225821460764691• Hootsuite - http://hootsuite.com/• TweetDeck – http://www.tweetdeck.com/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/03/despite-living-online-teenagers-dont-like-companies-on-facebook.php

Ohio Farm Bureau Social Media Guidelines http://ofbf.org/media-and-publications/social-media/

http://blog.eloqua.com/eloqua-social-playbook/

This presentation developed from:

“Secrets of a Successful and Effective Facebook Page,” Peter Tögel, Clemson University, July 2011. “Social Media Brownbag,” Developed for Kansas State University, March 2011 by Elaine Edwards (elainee@ksu.edu)http://www.slideshare.net/elainecarol

This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.