Social media is ALL about engagement. However, it’s not so easy to create engagement. In fact, it’s darn challenging, as so many organizations and brands have discovered. Creating engagement is one-third natural confluence and two-thirds design. Thoughtfully designed social media programming generates the natural confluences of interest, participation, and content that ultimately … creates engagement. A comprehensive social media strategy should include designed participation opportunities on every platform that add value and creates deeper loyalty.
The key to designing engagement is understanding the value that you can add to each channel and conversation, and programming for it.
No one wants to visit a Facebook Page that is a replica of the content offered on the website. No one wants to subscribe to a YouTube channel that is a placeholder for videotaped lectures. And I can guarantee you that feeding blog posts through Twitter will not engage your stakeholders if you are not also adding value through personal interaction. So how can you get creative and think about offering real value and content that encourages engagement?
To begin, consider these questions:
- Why are people interested in your organization?
- What content creates conversation?
- What content creates community?
- What content creates loyalty?
- What can the community create for your organization?
- What added value can you offer on that particular social media channel that isn’t offered elsewhere?
- What does the medium dictate?
Then consider the channel itself: create a list of features offered by each social media channel. Mash up features with your content to add value and create engagement. What about using Twitter’s hashtag feature to host a twitter chat? Can you create a Facebook application that enhances engagement and adds value? What can you do with the moderator function in YouTube? Or ask fans to upload photos to Facebook to express their beliefs?
Lastly, put it all together in a calendar. Similar to an editorial calendar, think about what features and actions you want to regularly offer on each social media channel and how you will implement them. Plan for engagement.
I recently offered a presentation as a webinar titled Understanding the Engagement Factor. The main ideas are summarized above. The presentation also includes theories of engagement, nonprofit examples, barriers to engagement, and an example of a program calendar for Facebook engagement. I’d love to know of other examples of nonprofits engaging successfully on social media. The full slide deck is embedded below. Enjoy!
Debra Askanase has 20 years of experience working in nonprofit organizations, from Community Organizer to Executive Director. She is the founder and lead consultant at Community Organizer 2.0, a social media strategy firm for non-profit organizations and businesses. She blogs about the intersection of social media, nonprofits, and technology at communityorganizer20.com and regularly provides advice and commentary to our eJewish Philanthropy community.
Debra-
Great post! I think two ideas here are especially important:
1) Increasing engagement to change the “Participation Inequality” rule. Sometimes it is simple things that can make this change – asking interesting questions, responding to those who ALREADY participate, etc. As you said, the key is to not just replicate content from one channel to another. You can repurpose content, but you have to make sure it has the appropriate tone and format for each channel.
2) The content calendar. I expand this to include multiple channels in one calendar. Ideally this calendar would include social media channels, eNewsletter content, website content. It could even include offline content to make sure everyone at the organization is on board with both the messages and the timing of those messages. In a larger organization tracking all of these various channels and the content on them becomes even more difficult. But if this is done consistently, it can make both the messaging from the organization more consistent and make the use of all of these tools more efficient.
I’d love to hear examples from other orgs who have effectively utilized a content calendar or who have tried specific tactics to increase engagement online.
Kevin
Very interesting. The pacing really matters, and the content calendar adds discipline and consistency. In addition to the days, it’s important to pay attention to the TIME. Do you get the most click throughs or responses at 9am, noon, or 9pm? Are your constituents engaging with you on their work clock or their personal time? Or does it vary, and thus you need to vary your engagement times too? There are many tools (Hootsuite, etc.) that allow you to schedule postings, so things really can go up at 9pm or on Sunday automatically. Debra – What are some of your favorite tools for such scheduling?
On additional point: Listening is critical. Listen before, during and after your engagement efforts to know what people care about, what they find valuable, and how you can engage them further.
Great post!
Kevin and Lisa,
Thanks for your thoughtful comments – they really add value.
@Kevin – the calendar that I put up just shows a Facebook channel’s content, true. It’s easy to expand it to include all of one’s channels, and you should. I just didn’t want to go into that much depth in a slideshow, though I did in my presentation. I’d also love to hear examples from other groups – hope they comment!
Also – I was wondering HOW low a percentage we can get lurkers to? Just
pondering it – thinking along the lines of “if there will always be lurkers, then what is reasonable to expect if you have a really engaged community?” A reader of this post on my own blog said that lurkers spread the word, acting as bees that cross-pollinate your organization with other groups and individuals. I like that.
@Lisa – Great point about time. Important to add time of day and day of the week. I’ve done this analysis and it really adds value. Perhaps build in doing this analysis after a few months and adjusting the calendar afterward?
For scheduling, if you want a web-based client then I like Hootsuite. If it can be downloaded, then TweetDeck now allows scheduling and it is easy peasy to do it from there. I also think co-tweet is a great option – a lot of Hebrew clients use that because it was one of the first to support Hebrew and has good metrics as well as scheduling.