Social Media
On a social network, you’ve crossed the line from speaking from your organization’s of?cial platform (i.e. your website), to speaking in the reader’s space. Your message is side by side with updates from close friends, family photos, and casual banter. Since sharing is at the heart of social networks, it’s easy for your followers to give a personal endorsement to your work directly to their network.
Here, we’ll focus on the most widely used social media: Facebook and Twitter, but many of these tips are also relevant to other applications, like Google+, Reddit, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
A few rules of thumb for all social media: Keep it short and sweet, don’t self-promote too much, and become a part of the community by listening and engaging.
Facebook is one of the most traf?cked sites on the web, and most users are highly engaged. With public comments and discussions, there’s a real chance to build a stronger sense of community around your organization and issues.
Know your audience
Write for a broad audience. Your Facebook audience is two-pronged: your fans—people who’ve “liked” your page—and your fans’ networks—the friends, colleagues, and family who may see your posts when your fans share them. Because your work might get passed along to others, take the time to make sure it makes sense to a broad set of readers.
Engage your fans. Facebook—and social media more generally—isn’t a broadcast channel where
you only post press releases and your own blog posts. You build authenticity when you respond to
comments, post the work of others that your fans would ?nd interesting, and engage your audience. Ask questions, solicit photos, and invite feedback to make your audience feel personally connected to your work.
Sweat the small stuff
Be personal and informal. You won’t ?t in very well if you sound automated. A few quick edits to status updates from other channels (e.g. your blog or press release) can strike a more conversational tone. Remember that you can edit the headline, thumbnail image, and summary—as well as adding additional introductory commentary. All these tweaks give a personal touch, put the content in a social context, and are worth the time.
Make it “likeable.” Phrase your posts so people can “like” it—there is no “dislike” option, after all. And write for a broad enough audience that your fans wouldn’t mind sharing it with their friends.
Looks matter
Keep it short. One to two lines is best. Facebook will cut off any messages that are too long—and few readers will click through to “read more.” Use visuals. People love photos, graphics, and videos—they are the bread and butter of Facebook. Expect thumbnails and images to play an increasingly important role (the new Timeline format is a perfect example).
Don’t spam. One to three posts per day is ample. You don’t want to overwhelm your fans’ newsfeeds.
Review your posts. When posting from your blog or website, make sure your headline, summary, and thumbnail image ?t Facebook’s condensed format. You can delete clutter from a headline or rewrite a summary to make it sound more personal.
Third Party Social Media Services
Many third party services offer to save you time or make things easier when posting to social media. With one click, you can post to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Myspace…whatever you want. And if you can’t say what you need to in 140 characters, services will publish the rest on a website and link to it from Twitter.
Most of the time, it’s not worth using these services. As we’ve explained here, good social media posts are tailored to the platform. A post with hashtags doesn’t make sense on Facebook, and a 300 character post on Facebook just doesn’t work on Twitter.
You can ?nd some services that save time but don’t cut corners. HootSuite or Tweetdeck, for example, make it easy to post to and monitor different accounts, while still allowing you to tailor a message to each.
Next: Twitter
