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Social media is on top of most organisations’ communications agenda, from UN agencies to businesses and governmental bodies. They acknowledge its value in disseminating messages, reaching key audiences, and ultimately promoting the organisation’s aims.

Today, around 2 billion people are online, including over 700 million who use Facebook (and sure enough, we are looking ahead at an early billion user milestone in 2012). Twitter crossed the landmark of users now sending over 200 million tweets per day, and with the integration of tools for sharing photos, videos and more content from popular streams, it will be a platform to monitor for brands across the globe. LinkedIn crossed the 100 million member mark in early 2011 while YouTube has reached a turning point with over 3 billion videos viewed a day.

The notion of driving a media campaign or even doing business without social media in the coming years will be as old-fashioned as working without using email.

For organisations, some of the key questions posed by the takeoff of social media are:

1)      How can they engage strategically with social media?  Starting small and coordinated (get everyone on the same page and up to speed on what is meant by digital/social) is often a good way to go – a rush to embrace social media does not equate to success. Social media engagement requires a concerted effort and defined roles within the communications team to share content, participate in conversations and support community interests.  The organisation needs to think about a clear and over-arching strategy with editorial planning and content management across all social platforms.

2)      How to best plan and execute social media strategies. Planning is essential, however any approach should be flexible enough to react to unforeseen developments and discussions. Integration is also paramount. Sure, you can easily create a new webpage and a profile for your organisation in a matter of minutes but what truly matters is how you decide to use them and how they’re integrated to work together, play off each other, complement one another in order to reinforce messages and monitor how effective they are at driving traffic and engaging users. Consistent contribution and integration from all platforms (online and offline) are a must for communication success.

For example –you could issue a press release (and post it on the organisation’s website) as well as a blog on the same topic or campaign and link them together, which will increase traffic. Have the blog set up so that it posts to the organisations’ Facebook and Linkedin pages. Craft tweets and schedule them to go out at different hours on several days to reinforce messaging. In between, post relevant articles, updates or statements from spokespeople.

3)       Who matters to the organisation and what do they say? Organisations must deeply understand communities of interest in order to engage effectively. There is an endless number of conversations driven by more sources than ever and it is important to map out and monitor key influencers and advance the organisation’s mission or support its campaigns. In the case of international organisations, a social media strategy should also reflect the range of official languages if possible. Engaging with specific communities is most efficient when done in the local language.

Building rapport, trust and credibility with individuals in your community of users goes a long way and can generate positive contagious feelings among the community.

Marian Hens, MediaTrain

 

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