6 tricks to get more clicks

July 31, 2014Azure Collier Leave a comment

Anyone who uses social media marketing to promote themselves or their business wants people to see and interact with all the content they’re sharing. Sometimes that just doesn’t happen. You have an off day, a post that gets less engagement than you had hoped, or nothing but crickets.

But there are a few things you can do with your social posts to increase the odds of engagement. Here are 6 tricks to get you more clicks.

1. Use hashtags

Hashtags help to highlight the topics you’re talking about in a social post and make your content more searchable. And they’re used on all the social networks. When you use a hashtag, the network will turn it into a link, and when you click on it, you’ll see all the posts on that network that also use that hashtag. When people click on those hashtags, your post will be shown as part of that conversation. Take a look at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram and see what topics are trending. Use relevant hashtags for those topics in your post, and your content will be more likely to be seen by a larger audience.

When Spike TV’s Frankenfood truck stopped by my office to give out free samples and publicize the show, I took an Instagram photo, and shared it on Twitter, using their #frankenfood hashtag in both places. Frankenfood saw the tweet and retweeted it, resulting in a 52 engagement actions, including 14 link clicks, 11 clicks on the tweet to expand it, 9 clicks on the photo, and 7 favorites.

2. Use the hashtag #mostpopular
Everyone is interested in the latest trends – we want to know what everyone is talking about, what’s popular. Why can’t it be your content?

If you’ve been using a link shortener like bit.ly or Hootsuite’s ow.ly when you’re sharing links to your content or curated content, check your stats at the end of the week. Which of your posts got the most engagement? Retweet yourself or repost on Facebook using the same link and tell your followers it was your best content of the week by adding the hashtag #mostpopular. Anyone who read it or missed it will see that it was trending and they’ll be curious – why was this so popular?

A few weeks ago, I tweeted a link to a blog post about the Seinfeld emoji app, and also shared the link to the blog post on Facebook.

It got the most clicks out of my tweets that week, so I retweeted it that Friday as my #mostpopular tweet, and got a few more clicks.

3. Use an interesting fact, stat or tip

People love trivia and learning little nuggets of information that help them connect the dots about what’s happening in the world around them. Think about the content you personally or your friends share on Facebook. I bet there’s at least one thing that shows up in your news feed that makes you think “Hey! I didn’t know that. Pretty cool.” Do the same thing for your followers. Share something that makes you say that, but make sure it’s relevant to your business and your social voice, and link to the news story or blog post that talks about the stat, fact or tip.

Make it stand out visually – create some graphics with free tools like PicMonkey or Canva to Illustrate your stat, fact or tip. Share the image in your social post and link back to the blog post or article.

Here’s a tweet I posted that includes a link to tips on finding the best time to post on social media. People are always looking for tips like this!

4. Share multimedia
By now, it’s no secret that photos, video and graphics get more engagement than a text post. It’s why all of the top networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, and Instagram have either improved the quality of the display of visual posts in their newsfeed, or added it or are all visual. If you haven’t started sharing multimedia, what are you waiting for?

Post photos to visualize your blog posts. Post photos on their own. Show off what you do, what you sell, or what happens behind the scenes (to show off your personality). You don’t need a professional camera for this. Use that gadget you keep in your pocket all day and on your bedside table at night – your smartphone. Smartphone cameras have improved a lot. That’s one of the reasons your iPhone is so expensive. It’s a fancy camera! Just make sure your photos are sized appropriately for the social network you’re posting to. Not sure what size you need? Check out this handy social media size guide for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram.

This is a simple photo collage I shared on Twitter when our office started offering manicures at work from Manicube. You can see it got some nice engagement when you view the stats via Twitter’s analytics tools – 13 clicks to view the photo, 10 clicks on the link (which linked to the original Instagram photo), a few favorites, retweets and clicks on my profile. Pretty sweet!

Please promise me that you won’t use your iPad or whatever tablet you own to take pictures. That’s embarrassing. It looks like you’re holding up a book and smashing your face in it. Just don’t. Cameras are tiny. Use your smartphone.

Your phone also records video, so share that too. Record a greeting to your fans – tell them what’s new. Or try a how to video that includes instructions on how to use one of your products. Just make sure the video is short. Attention spans have changed – more than half of viewers will stop watching a video within the first 90 seconds.

5. Tag people
If you want people to see your posts, sometimes you have to do something that personally asks them “Hey would you please click on this?”.Try tagging people in your posts. When you tag someone, they get a notification and they’ll be more likely to click on your post and share with their networks, which gets you more clicks.

But don’t be obnoxious about it, like this person. It’s like they’re on a public sidewalk shoving a flyer in my face: “HEY I DON’T KNOW YOU, BUT READ THIS THING!” First of all, I don’t know who you are and if you’re credible. Secondly, you clearly aren’t a social media expert because you didn’t shrink your link in your Twitter post and you maxed out your 140 characters with a long link. So no, I might not like your post. Also, I might just block you and report you for spam.

How do you do it the right way? Relevance. Tag them if you or someone else mentions them in the thing you’re linking to (like a blog post). Tag them if you have a relationship with a person and you know them well enough that they would be interested in the thing you’re linking to. I tag my alma mater, Purdue University, when I see a blog post or news article that mentions them or their community (which is also my hometown). Sometimes they are very generous and retweet me, which gives my tweet more exposure to their 44,000 followers. Here’s a recent tweet I shared about a Forbes article that listed my hometown as one of the top places for small businesses and careers. It’s relevant to Purdue so they retweeted it. According to Twitter’s analytics, the link got 66 clicks!

6. Post on multiple networks

Another great way to get clicks is to post the same content on multiple social networks so that more people will see it. You don’t have to be on every network – just the ones that are relevant to you and your audience.

It’s OK to post on multiple places because your followers aren’t exactly the same people following you every place. If you were to print out a list of your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, etc., you might have some overlap, but there could be some people who follow you on one or a few places, but not all. Don’t isolate your content to one network – people might not catch it there if they follow you on a different network. Or if they are following you on multiple places, well, clearly they like you. They won’t mind seeing the same thing a few times – in fact, they might scroll by and make a mental note to read your content later when they see it on Facebook, and make the move to click when they pass by it on Twitter.

Just make sure that you are not auto-posting and blasting out the same exact thing to multiple places. Keep in mind the nuances and etiquette of posting on each channel. If you’re auto-posting your Facebook posts to Twitter, those Facebook posts won’t work as tweets. If you exceed the 140 character limit in your Facebook post, it will get cut off on Twitter, which means a long link you post on Facebook might end prematurely in your tweet. Also, if you’re not changing up the content a little bit for each channel, you’re not really giving people a reason to follow you in multiple places.

Also, make sure you are shrinking your link so you can tell where the traffic came from. I shortened the link to an infographic I created and shared it on my personal Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Notice how each of the posts are a little bit different:

According to HootSuite, it got 22 clicks in the first 24 hours. On the day I posted it, it was the only one of the links from my tweets that I shared on multiple networks. You can see referrals came in from LinkedIn and Facebook.

How do you get clicks?

These are just 6 examples of how to get engagement with your content. How do you do it? Leave your tips in the comments or link to tips that you’ve seen on other blogs. I’d love to learn a few new tips!

4 common mistakes people make on social media posts (and how to fix them)

June 29, 2014Azure Collier Leave a comment

Admit it: You’ve looked through your Facebook or Twitter feed and cringed when someone uses the wrong your/you’re, its/it’s or they’re/there/their. I know I’ve done it.

Here are 4 more mistakes to add to the list. If you’re doing this, don’t worry. You can fix it. I won’t tell anyone:

1. He he vs. hee hee

A lot of people are laughing the wrong way on the Internet. Laughter is not the pronoun he. If you’re saying “He he he!”, what you’re really saying is “A male person a male person a male person!”

There’s actually another e. It’s hee hee.

2. Whoa or woah?

People are also expressing shock or surprise the wrong way. Crazy, right? It’s actually spelled whoa. You know, like what cowboys yelled to stop a horse. “Whoa, Nelly!” If you don’t remember which spelling to use, just write wow. That one’s hard to screw up.

3. Decades and the apostrophe

The poor little apostrophe. It’s misunderstood and abused! One of the uses of an apostrophe is a contraction. If you’re using a contraction, the apostrophe is taking the place of something that’s missing. When you list decades and leave off the first 2 numbers of the century, the apostrophe should take their place. So 1990s becomes ‘90s. If you’re using the apostrophe between the numbers and the s, you’re making the decade possessive. And that’s just weird.

4. Using symbols in a hashtag

I don’t think this person was deliberately trying to use an exclamation point in her hashtag. But you can see that it’s right next to the words in the hashtag and isn’t part of the highlighted text.

A hashtag on Twitter – or really on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram because you can also use hashtags on those networks – is the pound sign in front of a word or a phrase that uses letters and numbers. Twitter will take whatever you put after the pound sign and turn it into a clickable link that you can use to find other tweets with that hashtag. But it doesn’t use numbers or symbols. So don’t even try to use them in your hashtags. They won’t work.

What mistakes do you see most often?

These are a few of my pet peeves. What drives you nuts in a social media post? Let me know in the comments!

Need proof that social media marketing works? Check out the movie Chef.

May 31, 2014Azure Collier Leave a comment

Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) starts a Twitter feud with a food critic in the movie Chef.

When I went to the theater to see the movie Chef last weekend, I expected a quirky independent comedy with a lot of delicious cooking scenes. And I wasn’t disappointed. But what I didn’t predict is a subplot about the power of social media and how it helps small businesses. It’s a movie about marketing!

In case you’re not familiar with the film, Chef is about a Los Angeles celebrity chef, Carl Casper, (Jon Favreau) who gets in a public Twitter feud with a food critic and loses his job. He decides to start a food truck with the help of his son and a former co-worker.

The trio finds their footing in the food truck biz by taking a culinary road trip across the South, and this is where the marketing kicks in. Carl’s 11-year-old son Percy starts tweeting – using his dad’s Twitter handle (which has tens of thousands of followers thanks to the feud with the food critic) – about their itinerary. And he creates a Facebook page that is quickly filled with road trip and food photos. They’re greeted with long lines in each city and the movie does a great job visually of showing how social media helps generate new customers. The folks waiting in line start typing on their smartphones, and Twitter graphics appear like thought bubbles over their heads as they write tweets about the food truck. Once the customers press “tweet,” the tweets turn into a flock of Twitter birds that fly off to spread their messages to the followers of each person in the line.

Boom. Social visibility and word of mouth marketing.

I know it’s a movie, and in an ideal word, every single customer would tweet about their favorite businesses like the people in the food truck lines. And every business would send out interesting, relevant messages to their followers and be greeted with lines around the block.

But don’t ignore the reality here. Social media does work. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do have to be visible and use social media as an extension of who you are and what you do. If you have the right amount of personality and engaging content, you can connect with customers who will spread the word about you to their networks and attract new customers.

3 things you should know about the new Twitter profile design

April 30, 2014Azure Collier Leave a comment

It’s been a few weeks since Twitter unveiled a new look for profiles, and it’s very similar to Facebook. Which is not a bad idea. If you want to increase user engagement, draw new people to Twitter and attract an older demographic that may be more comfortable with the look and feel of Facebook, why not borrow some of Facebook’s design? Google+ and LinkedIn are already doing it.

If you want the new design, you can get it here.

Before you do that, here’s a few things you should know before you make the switch.

1. Do not use your old Twitter header photo as your new header photo.

When you switch your profile and opt to use your old header photo, you’ll notice right away that it’s not the best fit, especially if it’s from a low resolution photo you took with your phone. The size has increased to 1,500 pixels wide and 500 pixels high, and that translates to a giant, stretched out header photo from the old format.

What should you do instead? Use a higher resolution image that fits the space, or a photo that looks crisp when you resize it for the new header dimensions. If you want to use a lower resolution photo, consider doing a collage using a free tool like PicMonkey or Canva, and set the collage dimensions for the new size.

I didn’t have any high resolution photos that I wanted to use, so the college option really worked well for me.

2. Pinned tweets

The new profile lets you off a favorite or important tweet with the pinned tweets feature. Have a prolific, visual, newsworthy, event-related or time-sensitive tweet you want people to notice on your profile? Click on the more option on the bottom of a tweet (the icon that looks like dots), and then select Pin to your profile page.

The tweet will appear right below your header photo at the top of your profile, and it will be labeled as a pinned tweet. You can only pin one tweet at a time, and if you want to change the pinned tweet, just use the same steps. Twitter will ask if you want to unpin your current pinned tweet before you replace it.

3. Highlighted tweets

Twitter will now highlight your most popular tweets by making them appear larger in your Twitter profile tweet stream. How does it choose which tweets to emphasize? It’s based on engagement – tweets with more retweets, replies and favorites will get the special treatment. This is an interesting feature because it’s out of your control. Highlighted tweets are dictated by your followers, not you. It’s easy to see which kind content your followers like based on those highlighted tweets.

What’s your take on the new Twitter profile? Love it? Hate it? Did you switch yet?

How to get volunteers involved in social media during your nonprofit event

September 30, 2013Azure Collier Leave a comment

I recently volunteered with the social media marketing for my local United Way’s Day of Caring for the third year in a row. If you haven’t heard of this event, it’s a day-long volunteering event where United Way chapters pair employees of local businesses with service projects at local nonprofits. I’ve written about volunteering for them before, and focused on how nonprofits can use social media to promote their events.

This year I noticed more social media participation from volunteers, which is key for nonprofits. Their volunteers are their biggest supporters, and social media provides an easy way for them to create social visibility for nonprofit causes. What did we do this year to encourage conversation? Check out these tips to get volunteers to share your event on social media.

My Instagram college from the Day of Caring kickoff.

Start at the kickoff

Over the last 3 years, we’ve become more vocal to volunteers about sharing their day on social media. Don’t just assume that people will take photos and post them or tweet using your event hashtag. Tell them to do it. Encourage them. The event kickoff is a great place to plant the seed. We add it to the “housekeeping” portion of the event kickoff speeches. Everyone is listening to instructions at that time, so we will list Facebook and Twitter URLs and the event hashtag on the screen, and our speaker will hold up their smartphone and reassure volunteers that they can and should use them during the day.

Send staff to the sites

The Day of Caring involves more than 600 volunteers at 62 project sites. Throughout the day, the sites are visited by project leaders, United Way staff and volunteer photographers. The organizers and photographers remind the volunteers – many of whom are already capturing their day with their smartphones – to share their experience on social media. And the volunteer photographers remind them that their photos can be found later on the United Way Facebook page.

Encourage people to tag themselves

When I posted the event’s photo album on Facebook, I tagged businesses, nonprofit agencies who have Facebook pages, and any people that I was personally connected to as friends. They’ll all get a notification that they’ve been tagged. The tagging and any activity they create when they check out the photo album will be seen by their friends in the newsfeed, and that creates social visibility among their networks.

Post when your fans are online

One of the best updates to Facebook Insights has been the When Your Fans Are Online stats. This tool looks at your fans over the most recent week, and determines the average number of your fans who are using Facebook on each day of the week and each hour of the day.

If you haven’t found this tool yet, the steps are below:

The Day of Caring took place on a Thursday, and Facebook Insights showed me that the highest number of fans were online at 9 pm on a Thursday. That’s when I shared the photo album and got great results – our content got 52 likes, 18 comments and 8 shares.

Share your volunteers’ posts

One great way to capture the conversation online during your event is to create a Storify story, which is a collection of social media content from Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and more. You can do a search for your event hashtag and save all the public content that’s been posted. When you publish your story, you can also notify the people you quoted that they are mentioned in your content. Here’s a partial screenshot of the Storify story I created for this year’s Day of Caring.

Want more nonprofit tips?

Check out my previous posts on social media and nonprofits:

5 years, 1,000 followers, and (almost) 5,000 tweets: What I’ve learned on Twitter

April 25, 2013Azure Collier 2 Comments

This month is my fifth anniversary with Twitter – I joined as @azurecollier in April 2008 – and as of today, I’ve grown to have a smidge over 1,000 followers and I’m pretty close to posting 5,000 tweets. To celebrate, I thought I’d take a look back and share some of the lessons I’ve learned.

1. Tweet like a person, not like a robot

People do not want to interact with a robot that auto-generates posts when you update your blog, Facebook, Instagram, and anything that you can connect with Twitter, and just “set it and forget it.” They like helpful information, but they want to know why they should click on a link you’ve posted in a tweet. So, when I find interesting things I want to share, I try to make a comment about what I like about the thing I’m linking to or share a cool stat that I found in a blog post or article. Sometimes that’s hard to do in just 140 characters, but it’s worth it if you can be helpful to your followers!

2. Negative words get attention, but make sure you include a positive message

Every time I post something that includes the words “Don’t do this!” or “mistakes” or “things that make you look dumb” or “social media crisis/fail”, I get lots of clicks. Why? Because you want to make sure you’re not doing these things! The negative words will catch your eye, and the reward is usually a post that includes not only the things you shouldn’t do, but also how you can fix it or how you can do it the right way.

3. Sometimes reading is overrated

I’m a recovering ex-journalist, so I hate to say this, but it’s nice to take a break from scrolling and reading chunky paragraphs on a screen. Give the people what they want: something pretty to look at or listen to. Share infographics and videos, and make sure you use those words in the tweet. And write them in all caps to get people to notice (oh Twitter, when can we start using bold for emphasis instead of shouty caps?). Tell people there is a VIDEO or INFOGRAPHIC in this tweet.

Fellow tweeters also like PODCASTS. I’m a podcast junkie (what else are you going to do on an hour-long commute?), so when I hear something that’s relevant to what I do or is just really cool, I like to share it. Need podcast suggestions? I have a ton: The Speakeasy Marketing Roundtable (shameless plug, I am on this podcast), On Point, This American Life, Car Talk, Pop Culture Happy Hour, Radiolab, On the Media, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, WTF with Marc Maron, and Fresh Air. If you listen to ANY of these, your brain will thank you, and you will be on your way to becoming an official smarty pants.

4. People like tips and things they can pin to their cubicle walls

I am always in search of social media stats, tips, trends, what’s new, and any best practices that I can have on hand for reference. So are the people who follow me. When I find something that is reference-worthy and can help me with content creation or can function as a marketing best practices checklist, I often include words like “bookmark this” or “print this out and pin it on your cube wall” – those tweets get lots of clicks and retweets. If you are someone who uses that kind of information, sign up for Diigo – a social bookmarking site. You can tag anything you add to your Diigo account so it’s easy to track down later.

5. Tweet chats are helpful and will get you more followers

I’ve been a bit of a tweet chat slacker lately, but I definitely recommend them. I usually learn something, meet some new and smart people on Twitter, and get a few followers (if I add something interesting to the discussion!). Find tweet chats by topic on this Google Twitter Chat Master Schedule. If you see one you like, create an appointment for it in your calendar to remind you to attend.

6. People like shoes, food, hilarious signs that have bad grammar, and videos of cats on Roombas wearing shark costumes and chasing ducklings

Since we’re not auto-posting robots and we’re talking like people on Twitter, it’s OK to not be all business all the time. Share your Instagram photos of your pets or a PacMan doodle on an office whiteboard. Post a link to 33 ingenious ways to store your shoes. Do not keep awesome things a secret. If you find an epic video of a cat wearing a shark costume who is riding on top of a Roomba and chasing a duckling (I am not making this up), you are obligated to share it with the Internets! Hilarious and interesting things are clicked, shared and retweeted all over the place. They might even cause you to ask a real live person sitting next to you: “Did you see this?!” You will laugh, have a shared experience with another human being, and enjoy yourself.

I have many more lessons to add to this list, but these are at the top of my mind today. Do you have any Twitter tips to share? Or more podcasts? Let me know in the comments!

How your social media content can drive traffic to your fans’ content

March 29, 2013Azure Collier Leave a comment

Social media marketing is about getting the most exposure and engagement for your business to help you spread word of mouth, create community and grow your business.

Notice I said the word “your” twice.

What about the people who follow those businesses? We don’t often talk about exposure, engagement and growth for the customers and fans.

Recently, I had a few interactions with businesses that helped me get a little social media love, and it was a great thing – it’s nice when a brand or businesses send some clicks, views and followers your way.

Sharing followers’ content

One of those interactions was with the Content Marketing Institute. I retweeted their post about creating engaging content using Facebook’s Graph Search. They answered me and asked for more tips. I just happened to write a blog post on this topic a few weeks before (wink, wink), tweeted it to the CMI, and they retweeted it.

Score!

Thanks to their huge readership, I got a bit of blog traffic. In the next 24 hours, I had 54 unique views to my blog, and that post is my third most viewed post. That may not be a whole lot for some people, but that’s fantastic for me and my little blog.

The Content Marketing Institute did not have to retweet my post. They could have said nothing or a simple thank you. The fact that such a prominent marketing blog shared a post on a blog from one of their followers who they’d never interacted with before made me feel pretty special.

Putting the spotlight on what others are saying

The second thing that happened was also Twitter-related. I tweeted about a recent episode of the NPR show Radiolab (if you have not listened to it, make some time to check out their podcasts – amazing stuff).

Radiolab’s website had an embedded widget that didn’t promote their tweets – the widget found tweets that included the search term Radiolab. My tweet appeared in their stream, which, according to HootSuite’s analytics, led some visitors to the link that I shared:

The important part of this example is not the number of clicks (I know, it’s a small number). It’s the fact that Radiolab shared what their followers were saying, not their own Twitter content. Yes, it’s still content that promotes the show, but it was a nice way to spotlight what their fans were saying about Radiolab. Embedding your fans’ tweets on a site that gets a lot of traffic has the potential to direct readers to any content the fans share, whether it’s their own or yours. It’s nice exposure for the people who provide positive word of mouth for what you do.

Share the love

I know this is another item to add to the Social Media Marketing To Do List, but helping your followers get a little social media love is a win-win. Awesome Merchandise, a UK promotion and printing company, does this well – they asked fans to send them photos of their products, and then promoted the fans’ businesses in a Facebook photo album.

Keep an eye out for the people who tweet your stuff, comment on your Facebook posts, or share your pins on Pinterest. Ask them for their tips or blog posts, and share them with your audience. Take a look at your followers’ profiles, check out their work, and link to it. Carve out a little space on your social profiles to show off your fans. It makes the loyal supporters even more loyal, and gives those fans a wider audience for the work that they’re doing.

We’re getting away from Marketing 101

February 22, 2013Azure Collier Leave a comment

This is a guest post by my friend, photographer and social media marketer Dana Dillehunt. If you have a minute (or two), please check out her photography website, read her blog, Like her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter!

Dana is tired of brands and businesses abusing social media marketing. She’s got 4 tips on how you can redeem yourself:

If McDonald’s was showing clips of ‘80s movies instead of advertising their food on TV, we’d all surely enjoy the commercials. But we’d have no idea that they were created by McDonald’s, and they wouldn’t exactly inspire a surge of Big Mac purchases.

So why are brands abusing the largest marketing opportunity available?

Somewhere along the blue-brick road, companies lost their way. They decided it was more important to have 1 million likes than 1,000 sales directly inspired by content. They wanted ALL THE FOLLOWERS, regardless of the actual audience composition.

So they stood over their social media minions (with whips! and fire!), evilly cackling away at LOLCATZ and ehrmagerds, completely neglecting their actual message. And no one bought anything from them, ever, and they went bankrupt and the media minions rose up and bought the company and renamed it something awesome and made all the bosses work as janitors.

Don’t let this happen to your business! Here are four no-fail ways to make sure nobody ever thinks of you (or your company) as a giant douche.

1. Stop asking your followers to LIKE, or SHARE, or COMMENT. They can read (they’re on Facebook, after all). Allow your content to inspire them, to drive them to do any (or all) of those actions. Even the least savvy of followers might be dissuaded from acting, just because you told them to. (We all have a little rebellious streak).

2. Don’t exploit memes because people “like” them. We don’t need any more stock Victorian imagery over pastel backgrounds with snarky text. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Does the meme somehow communicate your brand’s message? And on the rarest, (read: RAREST) of occasions, can it be modified or stretched slightly to align with your brand?

3. Don’t capitalize on national tragedies to leverage engagement. This is the douchiest move of all. We all groaned as brand after brand posted stock images of candles or flowers and aligned themselves as keeping “the victims of Sandy Brook Elementary in our hearts.” Just don’t do it. It’s tasteless. It’s OK to NOT acknowledge awful things. In fact, a nice way to acknowledge without being a total douche would be to NOT post. By not posting your typical upbeat, on-brand (albeit trite, in the face of tragedy) message, you are paying respect without exploiting. And we all know that it’s better to do a good thing without telling everyone that you’ve done it. Trust me. People will notice.

and of course, the most important lesson:

4. DON’T POST ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT DIRECTLY RELATE BACK TO YOUR COMPANY OR MESSAGE. Just re-read that a few times.

We’re all capable of producing fresh, inspiring and fabulous content, and have no need to resort to these awful (and surprisingly still prevalent) tactics.

15 tips for using social media marketing for nonprofit events

January 30, 2013Azure Collier 2 Comments

Yes, I know it says Tweeter (I didn’t create it). But having the social info on table tents was progress!

I’ve volunteered for my local United Way the last two years, but I’m not building houses, helping with community gardens or raising money. I’m using my social media marketing skills to help the agency with social media for their events.

My role is to engage their audience of volunteers and supporters before, during and after events, including traditional save-the-date/registration, thanking volunteers when the work is done, and creating and sharing multimedia. Most of the work takes place during the event day – including live posting and working with a group of volunteer photographers who provide images and video content.

After helping with several events – including annual Martin Luther King Jr. service days and the Day of Caring – I’ve learned a lot of tips on how to use social media for nonprofit event marketing, and I’d like to share a few of them with you:

Working with the nonprofit staff, volunteers and supporters

1. Create a content calendar – Meet with event organizers at least two months prior to your event to plan out your social media communications. Include save-the-date messages, registration reminders, linking to monthly newsletters, and highlighting sponsors and participating organizations. Balance your event content with your everyday content so you’re not just talking about the event all the time.

2. Meet with everyone who has access to the organization’s social media profiles – It’s important to review basic social media marketing best practices to prevent oversharing, to know who is posting what content, and to review social media etiquette (such as not liking your own posts).

3. Look before you post – If you are a Facebook admin, you will get alerts when a fan interacts with your page or content. You don’t get alerts if another admin has posted to the page. Even if you have planned your content with the other admins, someone will forget. Check the time and the date of the previous post to avoid oversharing.

4. Integrate your marketing – Remind event organizers to include links to the nonprofit’s social media sites on every communication that goes out about the event, and make sure you have a sentence or two that lets volunteers know that they can find event updates there during the event day.

5. Follow your supporters – It’s important to thank your supporters – those who gave money to your cause, as well as those who sent teams to participate in your event. Get a list of supporters before the event day. Make sure your nonprofit’s page likes their pages, and your Twitter account follows their accounts. When you thank them on Facebook or Twitter, tag them. They’ll be notified that someone’s talking about them, and any interaction they have with that content will be seen by their fans, and so on.

6. Encourage volunteers to participate – If your volunteers don’t know that you’ll be providing live updates throughout the day, they won’t know to check your Facebook page or tweet about the event. Let them know in your event communications. Tell them at the event kickoff. We have lots of younger volunteers at these events, so – at one point during event kickoffs – one of the organizers holds up their smartphone and tells volunteers it’s OK to use it. We usually create an event hashtag for Twitter, and we’ve been getting better about sharing it and the social media info during the kickoff –we had table tents with the Facebook URL, Twitter handle and Twitter hashtag on display at the Martin Luther King Jr. service day this month. Volunteers had plenty of time to pull out their smartphones and follow us as they were having breakfast.

Working with volunteer photographers

All of the events I’ve worked on have involved projects that require physical labor. A few of them have involved multiple locations, so the following are tips for working with volunteer photographers under those conditions:

7. Use Dropbox to gather multimedia –You’ve got multiple people who are shooting at multiple locations and are producing dozens of large image files. Dropbox is the easiest and best way for you to receive those images. Create a folder for the event and share it with your volunteers ahead of time. New Dropbox users have trouble navigating the site, so setting this up ahead of time and providing instructions for uploading photos will make it easy on your volunteers and yourself.

8. Minimize your uploads – During an event day, I’ll edit as many images as I can and post them all at once in a Facebook photo album around lunchtime to show fans the progress that’s being made. I’ll wait for more photos to come in, and then add the rest of the images that night or the next day in one bulk upload. By adding a ton of photos at once, that action appears once in the newsfeed and will keep me from oversharing.

9. Provide some photography guidelines

No butts – Volunteers who are working at the Day of Caring or the Martin Luther King Jr. service day are typically doing a lot of bending over – working in gardens, painting rooms, or hammering nails. So you’re going to get a lot of photos of butts unless you point this out to your photographers. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want a photo of myself bending over to appear on Facebook. Ask your photographers to slow down, take their time and find a more flattering angle.
Smiling and candid shots are great – These events are about working hard, but they’re also about teamwork and having fun. Encourage your photographers to get group shots at project sites. These are great images for nonprofits to add to their website, blog or promotional pieces about their programs.
Ask for the top 10 – Save yourself and your photographers some time by asking them to send you the top 10 photos from each project site. It’s not realistic to use every image that was shot that day – no one wants to look through a Facebook album of 300 images to try to find themselves.

Working at project sites

On event day, your role is dependent on technology, so make sure you have everything you need:

10. Wifi – Does the event site have wifi? If so, get the account name and password ahead of time. If not, consider purchasing a mifi/wifi card to create your own wireless hotspot.

11. Social apps – Are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, HootSuite, or TweetDeck installed on your phone? Do it before the event day so you’re not trying to remember logins and passwords on the fly.

12. Electricity – Are there outlets on site, and are there enough? You might think about bringing an extension cord to support your laptop power source and any chargers you need.

13. Batteries – Are all batteries charged for digital cameras and video cameras?

14. Cell phone contacts – Add your event staff and volunteer photographers ahead of time so you’re not digging through notes or paper lists to find their contact info.

15. GPS – If you’re traveling to several project sites, consider using an app like Waze to get turn-by-turn directions.

This is a long list, but it’s essential if you want to get the most out of social media for your nonprofit’s service days and events. If you can think of any other tips, please share them in the comments!

Sort through the Twitter clutter with Twitter lists

January 24, 2013Azure Collier 1 Comment

Even though Twitter’s been around for a while, and I’ve been tweeting since 2008, I forget that there are people who don’t know about it and haven’t used it. I’ve run into several Twitter newbies or on-the-fence-Twitter-newbies lately, and thought I’d help with one question I hear a lot:

“So you follow a bunch of people, and you post tweets, right? But how do you FIND anything?”

Welcome to your new best friend, Twitter user. It’s called Twitter lists.

What’s a Twitter list?

Think of a Twitter list as a separate feed for people you follow that you’ve grouped in a theme or category. Your regular Twitter feed is full of everything the people you follow are posting on Twitter. Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not (yet) use an algorithm like EdgeRank to determine what you see based on your interactions with your network. It’s like drinking from a fire hose – it’s all coming at you at one time. The list allows you to clear through the clutter and find the information you’re most interested in.

How to create a list

Start by going to the settings icon in Twitter and choose lists. This takes you to your lists – click the Create list button.

Name your new list and add a description if you like. Then save your list.

Add people to your list

After you create a list, Twitter gives you some tools to search for people to add to your list.

Click on the person icon for anyone you want to add, then select the Add or remove from lists option.

Check the boxes for the lists you want.

Access your list

If you’re using Twitter to read your lists, you can find them by clicking the Me tab on the top, or choosing lists from the settings icon.

For even better access, use HootSuite

The best way to keep up with your lists is through HootSuite, a social media management system (free for basic tools, and there are paid versions if you want more bells and whistles). HootSuite is what I primarily use to check out what’s happening on Twitter, and it’s where I create, schedule and post my tweets. You can create columns – which are called streams – on HootSuite to check out your individual lists, as well as search terms, your tweets, and your mentions on Twitter.

Add a list to HootSuite

To get started click the Add Stream button on the top of your current streams.

Click the lists tab, then choose which Twitter profile you want, select your list, and then click the Add Stream button.

Your list is now a new stream, and your Twitter feed is a little less cluttered – check out tweets in your list topic to find the information you want.

I hope this helps the Twitter newbies out there – and maybe some of the regular users too! If you have any Twitter tips or tools you want to share – or any questions you need help with – let me know in the comments.

Azure Collier

My take on social media marketing and its impact on how we work, live and consume

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