Funding Formula Stage 4

More Tips On Social Media

When Twitter expanded its character limit to 280 from 140 late last year, users could express themselves better on the social media platform. But do development organisations need that much space?

The answer varies. For many, the rule has been to keep it short. If you use the 280 characters, cut them up in bullet points etc. – but do not use them to add the title of the people or a meeting. Twitter is basically a ‘headline.’ When it’s well written and engaging, followers are likely to click on the attached link and read more, or retweet a message.

But tweets and other forms of social media require great care and thought. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have forever altered the way people and organisations communicate:

• allowing for dynamic conversations that lead to powerful advocacies and strong calls to action
• a lazy post or a careless tweet can be ineffective – and damaging.

The challenge for many development organisations is that their social media teams are very much in their infancy, composing of a few or only one person. Social media platforms, to some, are nothing more than an ‘add-on,’ an avenue to broadcast press releases, or sometimes, a means to ‘impress leadership.’

But what counts are the connections. It doesn’t matter if you have 50,000 followers or several million. It’s more how well your message resonates with your audience, and whether your audience will take action. There’s no sure-fire way to reach these milestones, but here are a few tips.

1. Keep it short

The rule applies not just in text, but in videos too. Different social media platforms apply different time limits, but if your video runs several minutes long, you might want to reconsider. You lose most of your viewers after a minute. You should ensure the first three seconds of a video are ‘contagious’ or at least capture the viewer’s attention.

2. Sub your videos

A lot of social posts contain visual content, which help to tell a story with only a short description. For organizations using video, make sure you add subtitles –  not only to address language barriers, but also to ensure the video actually gets viewed. A lot of people watch their videos on mute, whether as a courtesy to other passengers on the train or bus ride home, out of privacy, or keeping co-workers — and the boss — from catching them watching other content at work.

However, if the sound plays an important part in the video, say so from the very first shot.

3. Tweet and retweet

One of the most active international organisations on Twitter is the World Economic Forum, and it publishes about 106 tweets a day. Some of these tweets, however, are recycled content that’s been shared on the social media platform in the past week or so. The reason: not everyone in an organisation’s follower list will see the tweet when it is published the first time. Only a small fraction will see it. So, if organisations share the same content over a period of a few weeks, it allows for their message to reach a wider set of audiences.

4. Add a call to action

Whether to make a pledge to use antibiotics responsibly, or a simple request for people to retweet if they agree with the statement the organisation published – make sure you add a call to action. For example, UNICEF gathered nearly 1,000 retweets agreeing to their statement on the benefits of investing in girls.

If you don’t ask, people won’t do it. It’s good to encourage them to do something that really going to drive the engagement!

5. Careful with that ‘boost’ button

Social media platforms give organisations an opportunity to promote their posts. This helps organisations to promote their brand, and to engage a wider set of people, some of whom may not yet be following them on Facebook or Twitter. But these ‘boosts’ come with a price – only consider boosting a post that’s already performing well.

If you see a post is working well, you may want to promote it for a specific group of people or in a certain country. However, some posts were clearly promoted, but didn’t get engagement because the message didn’t resonate with the audience. So, you can throw as much money as you want behind a post, but it won’t go viral. It may get a lot of likes, but not the outcome that you wanted to have, such as the click throughs and interaction.

6. Allow for creativity

Organisations often post links of press releases and reports on social media, assuming their followers would click through. But what if they don’t? Then the hours and months spent working on that document have come to nothing.

Writing for social media requires creativity. If it’s a 50-page report, find a way to whittle down the report’s message in as few words, like coming up with a series of 10 tweets, or through the use of visuals, such as graphics. Organisations can try suggested tweets or Facebook posts as well, that other members of the organisation can push on their own social media accounts.

When you write social copy for social media, always think about your audience. Don’t just think ‘we’ve been asked to post this news release’. It will never fly. You have to think about how is this going to be interesting for our audience … but often a lot of organisations forget that.

7. Analyze

Just like evaluating their programs, organisations need to analyze how their social media content performs. It is crucial to see what works and what doesn’t. For example, the World Economic Forum has a team behind the organisation’s social posts, and they meet daily to discuss what performed well on their social feeds recently, and what their plans of action for the day.

8. Get your executive on board

An executive can bring in a lot of attention for the work the organisation does; gather support around an issue; and build the organisation’s brand. Organisations should also think about how to build their executive’s profile online, if they are not yet active on social media.