How many of you have a personal Facebook page? Twitter account? Linked In? Others? How many of use these social networking sites in addition to email and/or newsletters/flyers for your organization? How many people participate in your monthly meeting? How many people are in your subdivision? How do communicate with the rest of the people who aren’t at the meeting? Communication methods have expanded beyond the telephone, the letter, the fax, and even the email to an entirely new level of conversation through what is called social media. Know your community. You may not be able to give up these methods but look at incorporating social media into your toolkit.
Who do people trust? A study indicated that 78% of people follow peer recommendations. Where do people get information. You will see news faster on Facebook or Twitter than on the evening news. Find your friends and family. Find useful business contacts. Follow elected officials or organizations you identify with.
Talk about this before you start. Determine who will make updates and who will respond. Decide if you need a policy - keep this simple. Know your community. Listen to the conversations. What interests them? Plan ahead. You will need content on a regular basis.
Engaging is about building and cultivating trust. Give them a reason to look to you and your organization. Repetitive posts will lead people to disengage and hide your organization. Use your creativity and your followers are more likely to remain interested and interact with your posts. Humanizing the account will encourage more users to interact with you. Create content that easily shareable and your fans will share with their friends. Build trust.
There are a lot of analytical tools out there for measuring. It can help you track what is creating the most interaction and engagement.
There are multiple ways to use Facebook. Build trust, raise awareness, Exchange ideas, discuss issues, promote events. Westbury uses it for a wide array of items. My civic club uses it as a group and individuals post about advice or items needed such as who has a good mechanic, does anyone have a good housekeeping service or pet sitter. I’ve seen it used to make people aware of possible criminal activity. You can use it for a virtual garden tour or to post their favorite holiday yard decorations to your site.
I’ve combined a couple of postings from the HPD Facebook page. They do an excellent job of engaging their readers. Who here has seen or participated in their Friday – give this photo a caption contest? They can also use it to tell you about events that benefit their charity. The Houston Police does a name that caption on Fridays. People respond in a great way. Be real, not a news release.
How many people show up at your civic club meeting? How do you get important news out to the rest of your subdivision? How about a welcome message that shows up when people are searching You Tube for your neighborhood? How about a short video tour of the great places in your neighborhood? Ask people to post a video about their favorite place and tell why?
Here are some of the things you can do: Invite people to an event, remind residents of their recycling day or heavy trash pick up day, talk about construction in the area, let people know there is a traffic jam, a momentarily flooded intersection, mention a new restaurant opening, tweet out information from a meeting. The possibilities are endless. What are some things you have seen or can imagine would make for a good tweet? But don’t tweet erroneous information or crap. People will call you on it. You lose credibility fast.
If you are busy or managing multiple accounts, many of the products now connect. You can have your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others all in one place for easier managing.
You don’t have to use or know all of these, but as you get more experienced with social media consider what other tools are out there to help you. For instance, create a Flikr page to showcase places in your community. Don’t forget to post historic photos as well as present day pics. What about using some of the location based programs and gaming mechanics to help people explore and learn about their community? You can create a scavenger hunt using FourSquare. Engage the local high school folks to help you set this up. It helps get the kids interested in the community. Someone may want to set up a blog. What about QR codes? These are free and easy to set up. They are being used more and more in real estate and to advertise businesses, why not use them to market places or events in your neighborhood. Perhaps local retailers would allow your club to post one in their window or on a flyer. There is so much more. Don’t do everything at once. Pick one social media, learn it and grow from there. Watch what other clubs and organizations are doing. Don’t be afraid to borrow ideas. The possibilities are endless.
Here’s hoping we didn’t cause you to run screaming from the room!