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>> Good afternoon.
My name is Vanessa and I will be your conference operator today.
At this time, I would like to welcome everyone
to Social Media Success: Thinking Ahead
and Keeping it Going wbinar.
All lines have been placed on mute
to prevent any background noise.
After the speaker's remarks, all lines will be opened in order
for you to ask question.
If you should need assistance during the call,
please press star then zero and an operator will come back
on line to assist you.
Thank you.
I will now like to turn the call over to Ms. Suzanne Knizner.
Please go ahead, ma'am.
>> Thank you Vanessa.
Hi, everyone!
My name is Suzanne Knizner and I wanna thank you for joining us
for Special Media Success:
Thinking Ahead and Keeping it Going.
Again, my name is Suzanne Knizner
and I will be facilitating today's event.
I am with Campaign Consultation
and I am a project coordinator for the firm.
Before we get started I would like to go
over a few details including
if you lose your internet connection or phone connection,
please call or log back in as you did originally
and the conference call line is at the bottom
of your screen right now if you wanna make a note
of it, 1-877-297-9359.
And before I pass the mic over to our presenter,
I wanna let you know that this event is being recorded
and will be available
on the VISTA Campus Social Media Monday [inaudible] as well
as all of those links presented during this webshop will be
available at the end of the presentation.
Let me introduce Michelle Bond, Project Manager
for Campaign Consultation
who will introduce today's presenters.
>> Thank you so much, Suzanne, and welcome everyone.
We're really excited to have you with us today
for another Social Media Monday webshop.
Joining us today are Liz Matthews from the Corporation
for National and Community Service and Danielle Ricks,
the social media specialist here at Campaign Consultation.
And I know that Liz had a last minute meeting so I think
that she'll be joining us a little bit later
in today's session.
So, I'll just go ahead and keep us going
if that is all right with you.
So if we can advance to the next part after Liz, please.
So for those of you who are joining us
for the first time, again welcome.
Social Media Monday series was born just about a year ago,
believe it or not, and we've been doing this regularly
since then really trying to get some social media tools
and also skills in the hands of VISTA really with applications
in mind to everyday work that is going
out in communities out there.
And so wherever possible we try to get technology experts
and certainly VISTA as our guest to walk
through how these social media platforms can be used
in the works that you do everyday.
And so we're lucky enough to hear from a few
of those a little bit later on today.
So, with that I'll get us started.
I'm gonna hand it over to Danielle.
>> Thanks so much, Michelle.
As Suzanne said I am the social media specialist here
with Campaign Consultation.
So happy to pull up on our 12th webinar for you guys.
It's been an honor and a pleasure
and we're glad you're joining us again.
So today's agenda, we'll be talking about developing
of social media plan whether you are at the beginning,
in the middle or towards the end of your service year,
we wanna help you with your social media plan
and help you create a social media timeline
and integrate that into your plan.
We have two VISTAs joining us who have been
in past webinars-- webshop.
We're so glad to have them with us.
We're gonna use them as our case study and they're gonna tell us
about their social media plans
and how they had an exit strategy and what that would be.
And we're gonna start to talk
about creating a social media exit strategy for you all.
What are the kinds of things that you should be thinking
about as you leave your position in social media
and pass a torch over to someone else?
We promise to leave time for questions and answers.
We wanna make sure that we get to those
and in the meantime you'll see that text feature on this side
and you can post questions in there and we'll get to those
from the chat as well.
I'm gonna go ahead and begin this one.
So while we're talking about a social media exit strategy,
we also, you know, wanna make sure that everyone knows
that this is something that you're thinking
about from your first day through the end of your service.
So really we know that VISTA has joined us
at all different points in their service.
And we may even have some alums on the call as well.
So, just to get a sense of where everyone is with us today,
if you would just take a few moments,
if you fill out this quick poll, you can do so by looking
in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen and just filling
out those five questions there that will give us a sense
of where everyone is and what you're looking to gain
from this session so that we can provide the most useful
information to you.
And while you're filling out the poll
and we're getting those results in,
I wanted to go over the plan.
It all starts with a plan.
You wanna develop a project scope
and timeline that's gonna include the evaluation
of the current social media sites that you have.
If you're just starting your position,
you're just starting out,
you wanna see what's already been put up.
Do you have a website?
Is there a Facebook page?
Is there a Twitter page?
Is there a Flickr page?
And then you wanna determine what social media sites would
work best for your organization.
You wanna identify the content that you wanna share.
If you're just starting out, you don't want to roll
out five different platforms at the same time.
So, if you have a lot of contents, say video content,
no one is saying that you have to start with Facebook.
You could start with YouTube and you can have a YouTube content
and to build your audience that way
and then migrate them over to Facebook.
Or you could start with Facebook first and take them
from YouTube then over there.
Do you have a lot of archival footage?
Do you have a lot of archival photos?
If you have a lot of archival photos you may wanna start
with a Flickr campaign.
And everyone does not have to have a Twitter account.
So part of what you're gonna do
when you first get there is figure
out what's gonna work best for your organization.
If you're halfway through, you can look back and see
where you're getting the traffic,
where is your audience coming and congregating, and where is
that organization getting its most pump?
And you might wanna drop off a couple of things
or put them back later in the year.
And to help you do that you wanna develop a timeline
for when and how to engage with social media communities.
You just don't wanna drop into the deep end of the pool
with your bathing suit on
and start swimming and treading water.
You wanna have a plan of how am I gonna get to the other side
of the pool 'cause I can't do 15 laps.
So make sure the community you're serving is aware of how
to use the social media tools.
We can come up with the best plan, the best strategy,
the best way of communicating with people online but we have
to keep in mind that this is going out to the people
that we serve so if they don't get it then that's not gonna do
us a lot of good even though we've developed this wonderful
social media strategy.
And do we have poll results or should I keep going?
We do. Great!
It looks like 55 percent of the audience is a new VISTA.
And it looks like most of them are not going
to transition out of their service.
>> Okay.
>> And is social media part of your current role?
Eighty-two percent said yes.
And do they have social media plan strategy?
Fifty-seven percent said no.
So, we will help them today.
And let's see, the majority of the people are looking
to develop a social media plan followed by learn how
to prioritize your social media tools.
>> Great.
>> Well, you know what?
This is a bright webshop we've got.
Okay. So, let's go ahead and examine the slide.
Michelle is gonna talk to you about,
sometimes it can be overwhelming when you say,
oh you have to come up with a plan.
So Michelle is gonna talk to you about how we started narrowing
down what we needed to do in terms of helping the business
with our social media plan.
>> Great, thank you, Danielle.
And yeah, that's wonderful to see where everyone is
out so hopefully we can give a few pieces of information
that will be takeaways for you all.
What we're looking at right here the 6 D's
of dynamic development is a model that we use here
at Campaign Consultation to help think
through whenever we're starting out a new project
and it's very much what we use sort of as the big picture way
to go about the work that we did around social media
with VISTA and continue to do.
And so that starts with the discover phase
and that is really where you wanna do your research.
If you're just starting out in your service there's a lot
of this in everything that you're doing.
You're trying to find out who the key stakeholders are both
within your organization but also within your community.
And so specifically as it seems like--
as the case for many of you, social media is a part
of your role, you wanna find out who are the players that need
to be involved with that process both
at the decision making level but also, you know,
at the ideal level and that takes us into the dream stage
which is really the brainstorming piece.
Here's where you can have, you know,
the most people involved in the process.
Early on everyone likes to have their fingerprints, if you will,
on when you're thinking about ideas and things and here's
where you're still gathering information
but that you're also gathering ideas.
You know what does your plan need to look like, what types--
as Danielle was alluding to--
what types of platforms do you wanna use, what is already
in place, is it working, is it not.
Here's where you're kicking around all the ideas.
>> Then you move into the rediscovering stage
or sometimes what I'd like to call the reality text based.
So you've done your initial research.
You've done your brainstorming and here's where you come back
and say okay, what's really possible?
You know, yeah wouldn't it be great if we could be on Twitter,
and Facebook, and Flickr and YouTube and we have a context
and they all tie together but hey, I'm only one person
and this is only 10 percent of my assignment.
So, here's where you look at what's possible and really
where you wanna start and Danielle talks this a little bit
in how sort of we ended up.
But for example, Social Media Monday that we're providing
to you now is just one slice of our social media plan.
And so this was really an outgrowth of some of the ideas
that works best in a dream phase where the goals were laid out.
And then you get into design.
This is both creative design, sort of where you're gonna come
up with whatever the look and feel of the branding,
the logo that you need to improve your organization
but it's also designing what your plan will look like.
So, if you've identified one or two places
where you wanna get started or you are already in those one
or two places, and you wanna kick-off a new campaign,
here is where you start to lay out what that will look like.
You know, who were the people
who were gonna help you get the word out?
Who's the person you need to talk to craft the messaging?
Maybe you have to craft the messaging,
who do you need to get approval from?
So those kinds of stuff.
You start to lay out the steps and the process.
And as part of design, some of the things
that you're gonna have to think
about are what are the backgrounds gonna be
for your Twitter page?
What logo are you going to use?
Is your logo going to be consistent?
Is the logo gonna change from a partial social media site?
Even if you look on the slides, the background that we designed
that came out of a dream discussion as well,
what did we want to say on each slide in the background
and that takes some back, check some balances.
But the design phase particularly
since social media is a very visual medium,
you wanna spend a good chunk of your time getting buy off
from supervisors and the organization
that everyone is clear about how you're gonna represent
yourself online.
>> Oh that's a really good point.
And, you know, it can be in social media opportunity to add
in some new things so you wanna make sure
that it's consistent with, you know, what you already have
out there both on and offline so that, you know,
your target audiences can identify with you
when you're opening up a new space.
So once you do that then you move into the development phase.
So this is where really the work starts to happen.
You know, you start to put these plans together.
Maybe, you know, you lay out a timeline for the title work
that you're gonna do for the next few months.
You start to contact the people
who are gonna help you get the message out.
You start to look at models that have worked for other people,
et cetera, and then, you know, deliver obviously
when that work is in full gear.
And then it takes you back to the discovery phase
which is really, you know, looking at things again,
asking questions, bringing your stakeholders, community members,
anyone who is involved back together
and really do some evaluations, figure out what's working.
Maybe you have, you know, three sites up and running
and it's going great and you feel like, oh well,
here's an opportunity to get into a new platform
for a particular reason.
Let's look at doing that.
Or more maybe it's the opposite.
Maybe it's like, well, you know, we've found out that most
of our audience is really on Facebook right now and,
you know, maybe Twitter is not important for us.
So, you know, you just--
you wanna make sure that you're asking those questions all along
the process and that's obviously why this is a cycle
because it's something
that doesn't necessarily have a definitive end point.
>> And it very much is a cycle.
I think Michelle said something
and very important is beginning these goals and that's
to have your goals in mind, why are you going on Twitter
and it can't be just because it's popular.
Why are you going on Facebook?
What type of community are you trying to grow?
If you can answer those questions early on,
it's gonna help you to this entire process
and you will go back to discovery, rediscovering,
discovering and rediscovering.
You got it all over and over again
because it's gonna take a good 30-day if you're starting
from scratch to figure out who your audience is and what they
like and what they respond to.
So as Michelle said this is an ongoing cycle.
We can go ahead and advance the slide.
For us when we did our discovery,
we went through that process.
We realized that it wasn't gonna be of any benefit for us to jump
out there and have all these different social media sites
if we weren't doing due diligence to make sure that you,
the VISTAS, knew how to use the tools as well.
So, we decided that we would come up with these webshops
and we branded them webshop instead of webinar
because they were hands-on workshops.
We wanted you all to actually dig in there with us
and put your hands in it and put your stamp on it,
and that's how they became webshops as opposed to webinar.
And we mapped out a whole year
and right here you're just seeing a first few months
and we were very clear of about what the series was?
Who our audience was?
When we were gonna roll out our Webinars?
What the topics were?
Now the reason we're only showing you three months
and we'll make the whole one available if you--
the whole timeline available if you like it
but the point is we were very strategic
about what we wanted to teach first.
Back then Twitter was--
over Twitter because that was the first thing that we rolled
out and then we rolled out Facebook
and December being a time off for many people we decided
to do with Tweet chats.
And we did a 12-month plan but I said to Michelle
and to everyone, you know, I'm gonna go ahead
and do these 12 months but we have no idea what's coming
down the pipe in social media.
What we think may happen 6 months from now may --
the company may fold or the company may move up in stature.
We're gonna do our best to stay on schedule
but this is a living breathing document
and we will change the bits and pieces of it
as the industry grows.
So, it's nice to have a plan.
It takes some of the pressure off of you.
I can't tell you how many times I refer back to this plan
and as we're trying to grow some
and then why are we reinventing the wheel.
We already put it up there.
We already wrote it.
It worked really good.
We didn't say it's a whole lot when we went back.
So, it helps you to get organized and it helps you
to have a look at your work and then isn't that part
of a good point about the fact that no matter where you are
in your service, this would work.
>> Yeah, I think, you know, this is an example of one delivery.
So that's the Social Media Monday webshop but depending
on the scale of your effort, you know, you may have at timeline
that integrates your messaging and we'll see a little bit
of that later on from one of our guests but a plan
that integrates messaging
across the different tools that you're using.
You may have, you know, a six-week plan that's related
to a particular event.
And so, you know, this is just one way to think
through what you're doing and as you all know too,
I mean social media is really about engaging your audience
and so that is something that needs to happen
on a regular basis and again regular is relative depending
on, you know, the scale of your effort
and how much time you have to devote.
But as long as that's consistent, it works.
And so developing a year or a few months or, you know,
anything, if you lay it out, you put the time to the paper
so to speak, it really does help you think through the steps
of that process and that also helps to explain to others
who may not know exactly what it takes to view this kind of work,
you know, helps to see the level
of effort that's being put into it as well.
>> That was a good point.
This becomes part of your reporting.
So as you look back on your year,
sometimes we just do what we do.
We don't write down what we do and this becomes a nice snapshot
of the work that you're doing whether or not it's yearly,
monthly or even if it's a six-week plan I still would say,
write it down and have something strategic
in mind before you jump out there
in your social media spaces.
So, now we're going to go on ahead
and introduce ourselves to Javier.
Hi, Javier!
Are you there?
>> Vanessa, can you open Javier's line?
>> Yes ma'am, one moment please.
>> Thank you.
>> He is joining us for the second time.
He is a second year VISTA and he has been one
of our early adopter in webshop and has helped us out before
and now with so many months under his belt,
we wanted to check back in with you.
Are you there, Javier?
Hello?
>> I am having a trouble locating his line.
Mr. Javier, would you please press star 1.
[ Pause ]
>> Yeah.
>> Hello?
>> Okay. Hey there.
>> Hey.
[ Laughter ]
>> How are you?
>> I'm doing well.
How are you?
>> I'm good.
So, we've got quite a few people who are just starting out
and then some who maybe where you are in the second year
and we wanted to talk to them.
So give us, you've been out just for a minute,
please tell us your title and tell us what you're doing.
>> My title is the WhatcomCounts coordinator
and I manage a community indicators website.
We have health data for Whatcom County
in Washington State that's specific to cities
and the residents here.
So I manage that and I use social media
to let people know what new data we have,
what new reports we have and anything new
and interesting we've added to the site.
>> And particularly what--
I know you use Twitter 'cause we speak back and forth
and what other tools are you using?
>> We keep ourselves to Twitter and Facebook.
Our data isn't too, I would say, entertaining.
The text format seemed to work really well.
>> Great. And so you've been asked this for a while,
what are some of the things
if you would wanna share three takeaways you'd like to share
with us regarding how
to maintain a social media presence?
>> Well, I would say, first off,
document everything you're doing.
If you logged in somewhere greatly accessible as well
as just-- it's one of the things I just started documenting is
you wanna interact with regular rate on Twitter and Facebook
that way whoever takes over my role next year will have an idea
of who they're keeping, who to keep talking to,
who to keep dialogue open with.
I don't think we encourage that,
to get involve early in the process.
Anybody who seems serious about it particularly people
in the communication area
if your workplaces would be good people
to get involved and so started it.
That way you have an idea of what the voice
of the organization is then before and how to translate
that into our future communications online
in Twitter and Facebook.
And I'm sort of thinking
about transferring this right work from the get-go.
So, I wanna make sure
that whenever I was doing wasn't just yeah,
this was the VISTA's project.
This is a VISTA's project that's gonna be integrated
into the rest
of the organization protocol and procedures.
So, I started writing that into our social media plan
from the get-go.
>> That's great and did you have a social media plan?
Did you have that in mind or did it just evolve?
>> I have that in mind.
That was-- that's really something
that my executive director wanted
to have before we jumped in.
She wanted to know why we were doing this and what the outcomes
and outputs were gonna be to measure success for it.
>> Okay. And then once you had your plan and you set off
on this journey, how did you determine what you we're
gonna post?
>> Well, you know, it started--
I started by looking at what other people were talking about.
I tried to find other similar organizations
so can you indicate our projects to see what they were doing.
But also just what other people in town were posting
about whether it be locally specific stuff
or national topics.
I decided to try to match what we were posting
to what the hot topic was
so that we could show how it mattered
and how it was relevant.
>> I think you made a great point
and that is similar organizations.
A lot of times people don't know who to tweet with or who
to interact with and similar organizations is s a great way
to start people that support your mission.
>> Yeah, just sort of filling up,
for us it was there weren't too many community indicator sites
out on Facebook and Twitter yet.
So, we just started looking at what we valued
as an organization and what we would talk
about when we would do presentation with WhatcomCounts
when we have community meetings and sort streamline
that for an online audience.
>> That's perfect.
And then how often do you post to Facebook and Twitter
and how did you decide that ratio?
>> I decided that ratio based on what--
I hate to put it this way--
but what would annoy me is how you think about it.
If I log on to Facebook and I saw that somebody
who is updating constantly about the Farmville or something
like that, I would get a little annoyed so I try
to keep Facebook update really to once a day,
twice if there's something really interesting
that happened to this site.
Twitter, I feel a little more free to post about.
I read a lot of research
of the most frequent times they most read.
Most times people read tweets is after lunch and towards the end
of the day which makes sense during the work day.
So, I would try to keep posts limited to those times.
>> And what tools have helped you manage your account?
>> I love HootSuite.
It's an online-- I get to interface
with Twitter and Facebook.
It allows you to schedule a post.
It formats them properly.
You can add links and you can create custom color
to track specific theme.
An online resource I find really helpful is Mashable.com.
They have a lot of the generous guides for Twitter and Facebook
and just give you this feel for what's going
on in the social media community.
>> That's great find, Javier.
We're-- you're not going anywhere.
We're gonna bring you back a little bit later on
but if you have to give advice to the VISTAs
who are just coming into their social media role,
what would that be?
>> Well, first off, have fun with it.
Don't stress too about it.
But definitely have a set plan.
Treat it with the importance that you would any other project
that you're undertaking.
That way the organization knows that it's relevant
and you can demonstrate results to them.
>> Great. And for those of you,
it's Mashable.com is the website.
We just put it into that
and HootSuite was the tool that he referred to.
Alright, great, thank you.
We can go ahead and advance the slide.
>> Vanessa, can you open Robin's segment line, please.
>> Yes, ma'am, one moment.
>> Thank you.
>> So that's Mashable.com, www.mashable.com.
And HootSuite, H-O-O-T-S-U-I-T-E, dot com.
And we'll put both of those in the chatroom for you.
>> Ms. Stegman your line is open.
>> Speak.
>> Hello.
>> Hey there Robyn, how are you?
>> Good.
>> And this is your second year as a VISTA.
Let us know what your title is
and what projects were you serving.
>> Yeah, I'm serving at the Spencer Center for Global--
for Civic and Global Engagement which is a long name
for an organization that basically works with everything
from study abroad to service learning, to community service,
to getting students more involved in the community
at Mary Baldwin College.
>> Great, that's great.
And you've been doing this for a while.
You are also one of our early adopter.
Talk with us for a minute.
So tell me when you started thinking
about your social media exit strategy.
>> Yeah, I probably started thinking about it.
It may go about 5 months before I actually transitioned out.
I think with this position I started thinking
about it on the second day.
So I think there's a lot of those new people
that there was-- 5, when I was 5 months to the end,
I had to remember a lot of what I had done where if
on the second day, I can kind of start where I have gone.
>> And then we talked about, you had some key findings and one
of those was to make a list of everything
that you've done, correct?
>> Yeah, I think when you're looking for sustainability,
the good thing to do is to make a list
of everything you've done.
And then once you start getting towards the end of your service,
you can decide, look at all of the materials you've created
and see what of that list can be duplicated based
on the information that's available
to the staff and to the VISTA.
And then, anything that can't be duplicated on that list,
start documenting what you've done, where do you go,
and the information that's kind of needed for that duplication.
> Okay, great.
So we're gonna go on to then the next slide.
And this is what Michelle is talking
about a little bit earlier, the messaging.
We were going to a Conference on Volunteer--
the National Conference on Volunteering Service.
It left my thought for a second.
And we knew that we were gonna have a lot of messaging
that was gonna be taking place.
There were several of us that were going
that we're gonna be tweeting.
And instead of trying to recreate the wheel,
I came up with a document that we all used.
And it had not scheduled tweets necessarily.
But anything and anybody wanted to pull
up at the last minute 'cause many of us were gonna be
in conferences and we were gonna be in panels
and some standard things that could be used for messaging.
And this really is old school.
You got it done in public relations and media relations
for reporters who just need key messaging point.
And we did about 5 pages of these and it was easy
for anybody on the team.
If they didn't know what to tweet and they didn't know
when to tweet, we did a schedule of which ones were gonna go
on which page, what was gonna go in Twitter,
on the Facebook members page and the alumni page.
We have a courseware contents going on.
And really, it was a way to just keep us organized while we were
there and to make sure that we didn't miss any messaging.
And then obviously, we have reporters there,
Robyn was one of them.
We did some live reporting as well and live tweets.
But if ever we got lost,
it was nice to have this document to go back to.
And Robyn reminded me of this and we can go ahead
and advance the slide because she is then took that principle
of messaging and you developed this
for Learn and Serve - Michigan.
So you wanna tell us a little bit about it.
>> Yeah, it kind of started with we are looking for.
We had a big conference called Team
Up that was gonna be in October.
So after all of the VISTAs left and there wasn't anybody
who really had enough of a grasp on social media that they felt
like they knew how to do something of that conference.
So I took up this documenting, kind of created it
like what would standard messaging look
around collaboration that we can tweet during the conference.
And it was such a great tool that I used it
for scheduling messaging because there wasn't going
to be a new VISTA until November.
We really wanted to have a couple of messages everyday
from both our Twitter and Facebook
that was gonna keep it active, you know.
We didn't want it to go silent for those dates.
So I created this document as a way to make sure
that everything we did stayed relevant but also
for people who, they might be staff members
who wanna get involved in the social media
but don't really understand what it entails.
They could start seeing what was our messaging looking like
and what-- they could start looking
at where schedule messaging was.
>> Great. And let's go ahead and advance this slide.
And so then what Robyn did, she took it one step further
and she created a social media guide
which I just think is phenomenal.
I think this was just a great thing to leave behind
for the next people that were coming onboard
to do what you were doing.
And we're gonna take it section by section and the first one,
walk us through what you did in that particular section.
>> Yes, so the first section, it was really just an introduction
to social media and the way we were using it.
So it looked at the introduction in purpose of the guide.
So what this guide was for.
And then, an explanation of where were--
what were the pages and things that we had on social media,
what were the platforms we were using,
and briefly how they could find resources on those platforms
and other sections of the guide.
Then I kind of-- then I showed them
where they could find the schedule messaging 'cause it's
always good.
If they, you know, do come in November,
they need to know what messaging is gonna come
out so they don't go, "Oh, where did that come from."
And then at Learn and Serve - Michigan,
one of the things we did was we are really fans
of special initiative
so we would do a dropout prevention week
where we post resources and comments
about dropout prevention or we would do a, for World Water Day,
we did a water week where we posted ways schools could get
involved in water conservations
and different issues relative to that.
So, and we really wanted to duplicate those.
So I wrote down all of our special initiatives from.
We did allocating Mondays and Global Youth Tuesdays, Thursdays
and all of these weeks.
And then, we have some special initiatives that were coming
out that were kind of scheduled to roll
out after my year of service ended.
So I put where they could find information
for the scheduled messaging and the messaging related
to those weeks as well.
>> And as you talk about scheduled messaging,
we talked about HootSuite.
But also Social Amp is a really good one to use
for scheduled messaging.
And two other tools that they're talking about in the chat
that I wanted to share with the folks
on the phone listening is Seesmic.com which I also have
that app on my iPhone and TweetDeck and I have
that app on my iPhone.
So I didn't want you all to think we were doing an ad
or doing tweets, not that we love that tool.
There are others that are out there that we're using first.
This is again for the scheduled messaging.
Social Amp is a great one.
>> Okay, let's advance the slide
and we're gonna go to section 2 now.
And if you wouldn't mind walking us through,
this was just like Twitter.
It was like everything that you ever wanted to know about Learn
and Serve- Michigan as it related to Twitter.
>> Yes, so I think I, you know, I kind of did this
so that people who were familiar to Twitter could kind of get it.
But somebody who is new to Twitter would also kind
of have an understanding.
Just-- we have developed kind of our standard
for how many times we tweeted per day,
what we use our Twitters for, our content.
I think the policy to keep in mind was really important
because we were a state organization and the Department
of Human Services which we were
under had some very particular policy
like you couldn't use URL shorteners on Facebook
and you could only use bit.ly as a URL shortener on Twitter.
So I wanted to make sure that they knew
that so we wouldn't have to go do this entire process again
of figuring out what we could and couldn't do, and then also,
additional resources and some good examples I think
that I've always recommended to people who are near to Twitter
to choose about 5 to 8 organizations
that do a really good job of tweeting.
And just for the first 2 to 3 weeks, all you do is follow
and interact with those organizations
so that you can get this feel in the language of Twitter.
So I wanted to give them some examples
of some really good organizations
and why they were-- and give them a reason like why they were
such good organization.
So was it good because they were interacting
or was it a good example
of how local Michigan schools were using Twitter,
you know, et cetera.
>> Okay, and let's go ahead and advance the slide.
Jewel [phonetic], I see your question
and I'm gonna get to you in a minute.
And section 3 was Facebook.
>> Yeah, so Facebook was similar.
I did a lot more about the differences between Twitter
and Facebook, so for Learn and Serve - Michigan we decided
that Twitter was a really great resource to share resources
because a lot of the people who are interacting
on Twitter were service learning practitioners,
leaders in the field, national
and local organizations whereas Facebook,
we were getting our students, our parents, our teachers
who wanted good stories, bright pictures of, you know,
different kids doing service learning.
They wanted videos.
They wanted a lot more of that personal stories
and personal messaging.
So that was part of it but also, you know, things like,
this is one thing to consider.
We had a landing page that use HTML and it was very simple HTML
but if you were to open up the edit page and have no experience
with that, it would look like a bunch of jargon.
So I made a kinda clear guide to really kind of edit that page
or anything like that that might require a little bit
of an additional skill to make sure you document that as well.
>> Okay. So that's great.
So tell me how long did this take you?
>> It took me I think maybe about a day only.
It wasn't, it actually wasn't that hard
because we had been doing some social media training already
so again between stuff that was available
through Social Media Monday and other places.
It was pretty easy to just copy and paste and then add whatever
that I didn't have on hand.
>> I know they were eternally grateful to you
and then let's fast forward to the next slide about blogs.
And blogs are still social media, you guys.
You know, I know that they seem like they're apart and aside
but bloggers are actually starting to get
as much recognition as traditional media.
In fact, they are getting invited to places
where you wouldn't normally see a blogger go
and risking their press credential.
So this is still a tool in the social media space to be used
and you did a guideline for that as well, correct?
>> Yeah. I think, well, it's one of those things
that are particularly good to have a guideline
because blogging and different organizations use blogs
in such different ways and for us it was really a great way
to share resources.
And I would say about 80 to 90 percent
of our content wasn't actually from any staff member
but they were from just blogging.
So they were leaders in the service learning field
or a national service field that we would invite to write things
about proper reflection practices or how
to build partnerships in the community or things like that.
So it was really important for me
to show them how they could recruit bloggers,
where could they go to recruit bloggers, you know.
Where are the places that I would look to find these people
but also we had different theories
like why I do service learning which was a series where we went
out and asked teachers in Michigan to submit stories
about why they got into service learning.
So I wanted them to have those things for them
so they could kinda get a look at how Learn
and Serve is using their blog.
>> Javier, do you all have a blog?
Are you off?
Is he? Hey, Javier.
>> Hello.
>> Hey. Do you guys have a blog as well?
>> No, we have a section
on WhatcomCounts called Feature Article
that is we use essentially as a blog.
It's more, it's just slightly different.
>> Okay. And so to you two, to Robyn and to Javier,
when would you recommend that you should
or should not start a blog?
>> Robyn?
>> I think it totally depends on what you want to share.
So for us we wanted to share more than--
we wanted to share all of these resources that we connected
to people and they were giving us so we started a blog.
If you have use for giving, for telling long-term stories,
for giving long opinion, then use a blog.
But if you are simply posting cool pictures
and cool small things that you can use your other medium
for it, it's very difficult to get readership on the blog
and to start it with that kind of support.
>> I would second that.
One of the reasons we haven't started a blog is we don't have
the fat resources for it.
A lot of our articles were just submitted from the community
but we don't have them coming in on a regular enough basis to,
I feel, sustain a blog.
>> Alright.
>> Or have a good maintenance of this.
>> And I want to say about half to almost
at some days two-thirds of the time I spend on social media
with purely getting guest bloggers.
So it's a real commitment to start a blog and I think
that your organization has to be kind of honest
about what resources you can spend on that.
>> Okay. Let's go ahead and advance the slide.
So covering some of the things that both
of our VISTAs have talked about is some social media plan tip.
So you're ready to start your social media plan.
One of the things that I highly suggest is that you have more
than one administrator and so you want to make sure
that there is somebody else that can get into the account
and it's not just you.
And you want to be able to set up an easy
to remember login password and agree who will be responsible
for the daily check in, determine the frequency of posts
and this will come with experience but it's not--
there is no formula for how many, how often you should post
to Facebook and how often you should post to Twitter.
>> But whatever you're doing you need to be consistent with it
and the same thing with the blog that once you start a blog,
if it's a weekly blog, then you have
to make a commitment to a weekly blog.
And if it's a daily, then it has to be a daily.
So frequency is more important than the amount although
as Javier says you do not want to irritate people.
You wanna know who is gonna answer complex question.
Michelle, you can speak to this a bit.
We often get some questions that are, we have to tear up.
>> Yeah, and I think, you know, as Danielle mentioned have more
than one administrator and this certainly fits in with
that in terms of having like so to speak in order to, you know,
add or remove things from pages.
But it's really important that even if one
of your administrators never even touches your page,
they have enough understanding of, you know, the organization,
and internal politics, and all those kinds of things
to answer the tough question.
Because, you know, social media is a space where you wanna have
that transparency and you wanna be able
to just answer those question and not have to do so offline.
And so even if it takes you a while to get that response,
something that we've adapted kind
of as an informal policy is that, you know,
if there's a question that we need to check on,
we'll either say we need to check on it and get back
on that person or we just won't post anything else immediately
until we have an answer.
So it's not like you're ignoring the person in the space
so to speak while you go and try to find that out.
And as I said earlier, you know, it's whatever does work
for your particular situation and the culture
of your organization and your project.
But you're gonna fill that out as you go in as long
as you're consistent, you know, that's the important term.
>> Great. So moving on, social media exit strategy checklist.
So we were hoping that this would help you as you try
to form that exit strategy and this is keeping in mind
if you're in the beginning of middle,
this is still something you can start now
and that's create a password folder.
And it should be a physical folder that lives
on somebody's desk and then an electronic version
that would live on your server
and everyone should have access to it.
And just for true transparency I had to do this myself
as I was preparing this for you all and realized
that I had a folder with posted notes here
with the password scribbles over here with the password
and emails over there.
And I have to tell you I feel lighter and I'm much better now
that I know that they're all in one strategic place
and everybody can get to it.
So if I get abducted by an alien,
the social media plan marches on and you wanna create a folder
with all the login information
and that may vary from site to site.
Something we set up on the behalf of VISTA
and some were already set up before we got here
so we inherited some login information
and we created some login information.
Again, you wanna try to make them as easy to remember
as possible so that when we're sitting
across from each other going oh men,
what was that email, I mean what was that.
We know we're only off by a letter or a date
or two to get in there.
Create a generic email account and share with the team.
I think this is very beneficial as opposed to having--
you can't start a business page on Facebook
without having your personal page.
But you can have other administrator.
But in order to start your Flickr and your YouTube,
you do have to get a Yahoo account for one
and a Gmail account for the other
and it would just take a lot of pressure off of everybody
if there's a generic email account for those
that we've all agreed on and that ties back
to a generic business email account.
So whenever there is any transaction,
the generic email account gets notified
and if you ever get locked out, you can go back
to that generic email account.
It could be vista@learnandservemichigan.com.
It could be just that simple.
But you wanna be able to have one generic email account it can
get back into.
And then identify who's gonna carry
on the social media duties once you leave if that's possible.
I don't know if that's always possible, Michelle,
but if it's possible, you wanna be able to do that.
And create an event that will carry on through the transition
and you did that, did you not Robyn?
You've had some scheduled tweets that were gonna keep
on going long after you were gone, correct?
>> Yeah. I have scheduled these tweets and then we had event.
We did like an inclusion awareness week right
after I guess in October.
They're a couple of weeks after I left in order to kind
of keep it on and to bring everybody together.
>> So events and automatic posts
and tweets can last long after you're gone.
Provide an alternative email address
to your social media content once you transition
out of your post.
For instance, if we booked you for a webshop and you're one
of our fave, we wanna be able to get in touch
with you when you move around.
So the people, I think Javier mentioned before,
there is a core group of people who he follows and he stays
in contact with and there's always going
to be some cheerleaders for you in this space.
The people who re-tweeted your tweets about an event,
the people who liked your events on your Facebook page,
the folks who uploaded videos or, you know, cheerleaders
and rallying around you during your YouTube content.
You want to make sure you keep in contact with those people
and when you transition out of your position they have a way
to get in touch with you.
And then create a guidebook and/or folder for those of you
who are-- may not have as much a robust social medial planner
folder will do where all this information is stored
and I think this will really help you
in the long run if you can do that.
Do you want to add anything, Michelle?
>> No. Well, only one thing to that last point is, you know,
obviously having a paper product that people can get their hands
on it and then have, again, I would just encourage you
to put the-- you know where that lives
on your organization server is somewhere
in that document as well.
This way whoever is coming next that does this so
or not can make adoptions and keep things going without having
to do all that startup work again.
>> Okay. We do have some time for questions.
And I know, and I'm gonna let the VISTAs jump in on here.
Robyn and Javier, Jewel said, she asked, "How do you create
or do you create a social media plan for a community
that may not be comfortable or familiar with social media?"
>> Vanessa, can you go ahead and open
up all the lines while we're picking up the first question?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> Thank you.
>> So I say yes.
You absolutely create a social medial plan at the beginning.
And part of that plan while you're developing it is getting
the community used to what you're doing.
Oftentimes, they're not gonna be on Twitter
and they're not gonna be on Facebook
but what they will respond to is what you put on paper
and how you plan on using these tools.
And then Javier said what the benefit is to them.
It costs money to do a commercial
but you can do a YouTube video that's every inexpensive
to get your message out.
You may not have anybody in your press office
or they may be busy, you can take a press release,
break it down and tweet it and it gets out to
so many more people, the same thing with Facebook.
You can encourage people to come to an event via Facebook.
All these things then can get turned
into your social media plan if you share with the community
and that gets them more comfortable
with this scary thing called social media
and this scary online space
because everybody is not familiar with this
or comfortable with it.
>> Javier or Robyn, do you agree or have something about that?
>> I would agree.
I mean I would go as far as say it's vital
if your community doesn't-- it doesn't understand social media
to have a plan because a lot of times they fear what's unknown
and for me having a social medial plan was finally,
I could go to people who are on Twitter
and say this is what I'm saying.
I'm not saying anything either inappropriate or scary.
You know, these are the messaging, these are the kind
of people we interact with and so they kinda have that--
they can kind of start by seeing the plan as a hard copy
and they can start seeing what you're doing,
that you're not just spending two hours a day on Twitter
for nothing, that you are interacting,
and that you're saying good things about their organization.
And I think too-- I'm sorry I just saw a question
that Mindy had about how you can tell a social media outlet is
much easy to your community.
I think that's a complete thing that I would also recommend
that you encourage people
to start interacting with social media.
Personally, it's the best way to get into a community--
like it's the best way to start doing it for work if you use it
for your personal life.
And I think case in point is
that I use Twitter personally before I use it for my work
and what I ended up realizing was that the community
in presenting was far more vibrant on Twitter
than it was on Facebook.
And it made far more sense for us to post local information,
local events on Twitter than it did to post it on Facebook
because there are more people looking out.
But here where I am in rural Virginia that's totally opposite
the case.
So there-- are very useful on Twitter.
So Facebook has become much more of my focus.
>> And I would suggest, I already pointed
out that some different, I guess,
aspect of our community may not be comfortable with social media
but no community is an island.
So they are connected to someone else who may be all
about Twitter or all about Facebook.
So, in getting your message out there too across audience,
there isn't much a better shot approach but you're able
to reach someone who can then work some part
of that I guess underrepresented community
into this is where's the effort.
>> I think, I mean, I totally agree
with both Javier and Robin.
And I think, you know, one of the things that sort
of the other side of that coin is for so many of you
who are doing social media as part of your VISTA assignment,
I think it's really important
to have a plan even if only for yourself.
I think one of the things that devising up a plan forces you
to do is look at your time and also look at your task
and also see how they can integrate with the social media
so that social media doesn't become an end in itself
but it really becomes this guide that which you can, you know,
interrelate all the other things that you're doing
or your organization is doing.
And so even if your community is not familiar
and it becomes something that you share with them, you know,
as time goes on or as they warm up to it
for your own planning purposes and mapping
out what your week's in and--
[ Music ]
>> Apparently we can hear someone's music from your office
so if you could please turn
that off while we have all the lines open and we can continue
with our Q and A and presentation.
>> Thank you.
>> I wanna jump in on that one too which ties into one of--
someone, I think it was David asked how often do you post.
Part of the planning that Michelle and I did
around the position, the social media specialist position was
how often, not only do we post on our sites
but how much time are we gonna devote to each part
of our social media plan.
And literally, how many hours are we gonna donate to Twitter,
how many hours are gonna go to Facebook,
and how many hours are gonna go to research because part
of your job, if you're doing social media,
is to stay up with trends.
And so, taking this lecture up is a great one
but I would encourage you to take others.
I would definitely encourage you to stay on top of Mashable.com.
I would encourage you to stay on top of the articles
at all times, and to follow some of the
"social media gurus" to see what they're--
>> I'm here to talk to for--
>> Hello.
>> Sir, do you have a question?
>> No, I think they were talking to someone else.
They didn't know we can hear them.
All lines are open just as an FYI, guys.
So, it helps if you can break down your time
and how much energy you're gonna put towards it.
But what you're gonna find when you're experimenting
in your space and what your community responds to,
and I think we have alluded to this a little earlier.
We, in the beginning, posted quite a bit on Facebook
and on Twitter as we tried to grow our community quite a bit.
Your goal is that the community becomes a place
where they can engage and talk amongst themselves.
And you can go in and feed conversation every now
and again.
I probably was a little bit more irritating
than Javier would have liked because we did post quite a bit
to both Twitter and Facebook
because Twitter is very fast paced
and the information is going very quickly,
it would be very difficult
to irritate people in that space, so--
>> Yeah, it's quality versus quantity in that and I have
to say I didn't [inaudible].
>> So I hope that that answered some of your questions in terms
of Dave's question-- Dave's question in terms of posting.
It really depends.
We know for instance that the VISTAs
on the Facebook page really responds to "something
that they really enjoy."
And so, if it gets a little bit too quiet
and they're not saying anything, we just quote up and boom,
the conversation sparked.
On Twitter, not so much.
It might get re-tweeted now and again
but for the particular audience that follows us,
they want your information and they respond
to specific statistics and information.
They really want that hard core information about poverty
and how to help alleviate poverty.
You'll get to know your audience some more
that you're in the space.
>> And I would even add to that, that the audience is,
like on Twitter there are different audiences as well.
I've kind of noticed that I, when I post a lot more to people
who maybe only have 30 followers who are following me just
because I know they are like uncle's brother,
I really don't like that.
But the people who are on Twitter all the time who use
that for research sharing really enjoy that.
So even within Twitter or within Facebook,
you'll find that communities are different depending
on what your organization, who is following your organization.
>> Right.
>> I'm looking at some of these questions.
How important-- Jewel asked,
how important do you felt branding is towards an
organization is used to social media?
I think that's invaluable.
We hope that every time you see that AmeriCorps VISTA sign
in the social media space that you know that that's us.
And probably you don't know sublimely that that background
that you're looking at on this page matches the background
to our Twitter page.
It also matches the background to the VISTA campus.
So whether or not you know the branding is tied together
or not, we work very *** making sure
that it's a seamless process.
And Michelle could speak to this a little bit more.
But we also we're very conscious
of what was gonna be our social voice
and what was gonna be our corporate voice
and what those two looked, what the difference was going
to be between the two.
>> Yeah, no.
I would agree, and I think that too to keep in mind,
I mean depending on the side of your organization
if it's affiliated with a national, you know,
headquarters or a national brand.
I mean the brand is more than just, you know,
a logo or a design or a look and feel as well.
So, you know, your brand is also what you stand for
and what your mission is.
And so, if those, depending on how strong those are
within your organization you leverage those accordingly.
So it's the same way with offline media, you know,
the same way that you would be sure to include
that in a press release or something like that.
You wanna make sure that it has the same level of importance
across your social media site.
And that your messaging is in line with [inaudible]
and when it comes to the types
of information line that you're sharing.
>> Brand and mission go hand in hand and you wanna make sure
that you're staying true to both of those.
You guys can keep chatting.
We have a little bit more house cleaning that we have to do
in this 5 minutes that are left, and we will continue to--
we'll move this conversation over to the VISTA campus
and we'll tell you where to get that information as we wrap
up here because we don't wanna cut anybody short.
That's some great question.
So Robyn and Javier, also if you're able to chime in updates
as well, that would be fantastic.
>> Great.
>> Thank you.
>> So a couple of things to keep in mind, as VISTA, you will know
that there are some rules that apply
to what you can do during your service
and we just wanna remind you that that also applies
to the work that you do online in the digital space
if you wanna make sure that you're not lobbying
for any political candidate in your online space as well.
And also, of course, that you are faithful appropriate
in your role as a VISTA.
>> And we wanna make sure that you stay safe online,
protect yourself and your organization.
I think there are some bullet points there for you.
Keep your passwords in secure place.
Don't share it with anyone.
Watch what you say online
and never use a work account for personal use.
You can learn more about using social media
from our Social Media Monday course page on the VISTA campus
and that link is provided there for you.
And you can look at all of our past webshop
and what's provided is the PDF form.
You will hear the audio portion of it and you can also print it
out and use some of those.
When this one is available, please print out the checklist
to make sure that you use it.
And we have some useful web links for you.
And while Michelle reads those to you, I'm gonna go try
to find this VISTA link where we can have this conversation.
>> Oh, you're doing that thing?
>> Yeah.
>> Alright, now she is doing it then I'll keep going.
>> Yeah, go for it.
>> Bright minds thinking alike.
[ Laughter ]
>> So the VISTA course page [inaudible] course page again is
linked first.
And so you wanna make sure that you schedule some time in
and you can print that as part of your social media plan
that you're gonna take 60 minutes a week to get
through these to listen to them as part
of your ongoing learning.
The hot track if you're not familiar with that,
that's available there.
Staying safe online.
Please go check that out especially those of you who are
in this position of social media.
We wanna make sure that you're understanding
that your rights are out there.
We hope that you will follow us on Twitter.
We'll keep this conversation going
in that space and on Facebook.
And please post on that page as well.
And we wanna thank you for joining us
at this particular Social Media Monday.
It's very exciting.
We've got 12 of these, plan is complete
and I'm just so excited.
And we're gonna come back in November, November 22nd
at 3 p.m. eastern standard time.
And that's gonna be Social Media Monday,
the 3 places you want to be.
So we talk about a lot of different places in social media
and we're gonna come back with the top 3
that we think are gonna be the most beneficial.
And if you're not gonna be in any other spaces,
you wanna be in those 3.
I wonder what they are gonna be.
[ Laughter ]
>> So the evaluation, Michelle.
>> Yes, if you can, just be sure to take a few minutes to fill
out our evaluation if you haven't done so already.
And for those of you who did, we appreciate it.
We will continue to obviously improve as we go.
I've posted the links there
where we can continue the conversation and we'll be sure
to go through the chat to make sure
that we can address everything that you're interested in.
So for those of you who joined us
for the first time, thank you so much.
For those of you who have been with us, we really appreciate it
and we look forward to seeing you next time.
>> And Olivia, I see your question in the chatroom.
I hope you'll take it on over to the forum and Javier and Robyn,
thank you for joining us.
I'm hoping you'll have some opportunity
or you'll have a chance to go over and answer some
of these questions as our resident experts on this.
I will obviously go over there as well.
So those of you who did not get your questions answered,
that's the place to go, to the forum, and we'll be able
to answer them all there.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> Thank you.
Thank you so much.
>> Thank you guys.
>> Thank you everyone.
>> Thank you.
[ Inaudible Remark ]