HOW TO MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA?

Do you find it difficult to manage social media as a part of the communications? Limited resources is a common problem when it comes to communications, and social media might not be used due to lack of time. If that is the case, these tips could be useful to make more out of social media.

• Commitment - social media doesn't have to be your priority but make it part of your weekly routine
• Continuity & regularity - even if it was something small, doing it regularly will eventually pay off
• Cooperation - ask other people to spread the word, too!
• Time management & planning - this helps to make room for social media and planning ahead makes the actual posting very simple

Tips provided by Lina Marcinkute from the European Commission at the Let's communicate! seminar "Communicating EUSBSR simple but not simpler" at the 9th EUSBSR Annual Forum.

 

MANAGEMENT TOOLS

Scheduling posts

Even if it is just one hour of your week's working hours, reserving a slot for social media management from your calendar will pay off! In a short time you're able to schedule a few tweets and Facebook posts, and your social media accounts will have content throughout the week but you do not need to spend time on social media every day. 

In Facebook scheduling is easy: when you are creating the post, instead of "Publish now" just choose "Schedule" and set the suitable time.

For Twitter Tweetdeck is a useful time management tool as it allows you to schedule tweets. In addition, with Tweetdeck it is easy to track hashtags and tags, and manage multiple accounts.

 

Twitter lists

A Twitter list is a curated group of Twitter accounts. It is an especially useful tool if you have a lot of accounts that you follow - in a list you can gather accounts that are particularly important or thematically relevant to you. You can create your own lists but also subscribe to already existing lists created by others.

Check the lists of EUSBSR account here and subscribe - or create your own.

 

Tagging & direct messages

Make sure your target groups and stakeholders notice your activity on social media by tagging them into your posts. First, take a moment to map your key stakeholders' accounts so that you are using correct tags!

On both Twitter and Facebook tagging happens by using @-symbol. Tagging @EUSBSR (on Twitter) @EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (on Facebook) guarantees you a like or share!

On Twitter a very effective way to notify your stakeholders is to tag them into a photo or visual. When you add a photo to your tweet, you'll be able to tag up to 10 accounts to it. They all get a notification that they are tagged and are thus more likely to like or share your message.

In the following example, CPMR Baltic Sea Commission tagged relevant multipliers to their post about an upcoming event. Even if there are only 280 characters to be used in a Twitter post, using an informative visual increases the amount of information. And the tagged organisations (including @EUSBSR) shared the event invitation further to their networks.

Consider also sending private messages on Twitter and Facebook to your key stakeholders and parters and aske them to share a particular post. In cooperation much wider audiences can be reached!

Tracking your audience

Followerwonk is a website that is very easy to use and helps you to analyse your Twitter account. It allows you to see your own activity, but also who your followers are, where they are located and when they tweet. This in turn enables you to time your tweets to those moments when you audience is active.

If you look at the charts below, you can see that the most active hours of the EUSBSR Twitter account could be better in line with the activity of the EUSBSR followers: they are the most active at 11am whereas the EUSBSR account's peak activity is at 3pm!