Web Strategy and Development Blog

Recap: Find Your Place in the Digital World – Session 2

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The office of Web and new media recently presented an afternoon of training for University website editors, bloggers and social media managers.

The second session focused on the following topics in social media:

  • Best practices for all platforms
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Other visual platforms

Best practices for all platforms

Courtney Wendel-Stevenson opened with a discussion of best practices that serve as a strong foundation for any social media strategy. A few highlights:

  • Use social media as a way to interact with and listen to your audience, not simply as a way to share information.
  • Whenever possible, tag relevant people, organizations and locations in your posts.
  • When applicable, include properly sized photos and hashtags in your posts.
  • Write short text that showcases the most important information first and include a link for more information.

Facebook

Courtney Wendel-Stevenson provided perspective on Facebook, including a breakdown of its sometimes-confounding algorithm. Among her insights:

  • Boost engagement on your page by tagging followers in posts whenever possible and enabling followers to tag themselves.
  • Capitalize on the unique functionality of Facebook events to promote your activities.
  • Include all logistical information and tag the event location’s Facebook page in the location section if possible.
  • Maximize your visibility by adding other Facebook pages as event co-sponsors when possible.
  • Provide a direct link to ticketing or an event website.
  • Understand that your followers’ Facebook news feeds are dynamic. Boost your page’s visibility by encouraging followers to comment, like or click on your posts.
  • Regularly track major insights including your number of followers, post reach and post engagement.

 

Twitter

Kevin Agee led a section on making the most of Twitter. His top five tips:

  • Build your credibility by posting on a regular basis.
  • Think about voice. How would my organization sound if it was a person?
  • Listen to your analytics to give your followers the content they like.
  • Connect with millennials by engaging, not advertising.
  • Partner with other profiles and topics to tell a bigger story.

 

Visual platforms

Courtney Wendel-Stevenson closed the session with a discussion of additional social media platforms — particularly ones that highlight visual content. Key takeaways:

  • Understand that mobile usage has led to a surge in photo and video content.
  • Pictures are now one of the default ways we sort through information.

And a few tips for specific visual platforms:

Instagram

  • A great platform for visual storytelling. More than 810 photos shared per second.
  • It integrates well with other social media platforms.
  • To be successful, users need to have visually interesting content.

YouTube

  • YouTube has an immense user base. 82% of teens 14-17 regularly use YouTube.
  • Videos can tell your story in a unique and engaging way. To be most effective, videos should be two minutes or shorter.
  • Missouri State has great videos University units are welcome to share.

Aggregators

  • Aggregators like Tagboard and Storify connect user posts from a variety of platforms around a common theme – typically a hashtag
  • Aggregators can serve as an archive of the social conversation after the event.
  • Aggregators are most helpful for larger-scale campaigns and events.

Access the presentations

PDFs of the presentations are available below:

Read the recap of Find Your Place – Session 1.