We recently presented Making Your Statement in a Digital World, a comprehensive training session for Missouri State website, blog and social media managers.
The session was presented in two parts.
- Part 1 focused on writing for blogs.
- Part 2 dove deep into the social media universe and discussed strategies for storytelling and audience engagement across a variety of platforms.
Key takeaways
Blogs
- A blog is a great place to build a relationship with your audience.
- Use headers, images and quotes to flesh out your blog and make it easier for your audience to read.
- Use classic storytelling tools, like perspective, conflict and tension, to create blog posts that resonate with your audience.
- A blog makes a great content repository. Consider using blog posts for the most in-depth version of your news and events and distributing shorter variations of the post across your social media channels.
Social media
- Good social media is interactive and unpretentious and should look effortless — even though good social media management requires a lot of effort.
- Don’t dive into every social media channel at once. Pick ones that help meet your strategic communication goals.
- When deciding whether to take on a new social media channel, analyze whether it’s a good fit for your goals, target audience and current resources.
- Identify the ideal audience member for your social media. Get specific with the details; even consider giving that person a name. This will make it easier to create conversational, personal social posts.
Access the presentation
- Use Facebook Pages to share your organization’s story and connect with your fans.
- Facebook Pages help you become
- Discoverable
- Connected
- Timely
- Insightful
- That it’s social media’s biggest platform is a benefit for reach, but a challenge for organizations to acquire attention.
- Promote transparency. Allow anyone to publish to your page or tag you in photos.
- Post videos directly to Facebook to boost your posts’ reach.
- Act like your own biggest fan.
- Always respond to questions and concerns from your audience.
- Focus on linking to mobile-friendly content.
- Think about your voice. An institution does not have to sound institutional.
- Use precise university-branded hashtags.
- #MSUBears (athletics)
- #GoMaroon (student engagement, traditions, etc.)
- #BearGrads (commencement)
- #CitizenBear (public affairs)
- #BearsHomecoming (homecoming)
Visual Platforms
- Visual content captures our attention more quickly than text.
- Use Instagram if your organization lends itself to visual storytelling, but note the platform focuses on consumption, not interactivity.
- YouTube reaches more 18-49-year-olds than any cable network in the United States.
- However, there’s no formula for making a video go viral.
- Use aggregators to combine cross-platform posts around a theme or hashtag.
