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Presented by Sam Loewner

06 Sept 2012

Plain Talk in Complex Times

PlainTalk 2012 Social Media Workshop

Using Social Media to Improve

Outreach and Engagement

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Introduction and Goals

Sam Loewner

• Online communications

• Web strategy

• New media

Principle:

• Web brings equity to health

service delivery

Workshop goals

• Define new and social media

• Help you determine how much

you know about new media

• Provide key tips for

communicating online

• Discuss common questions and

concerns that organizations

have about new media

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1-4

4-7

7-10

Leading Questions

How many of you use Facebook or Twitter for personal

things?

How many of you use social networks as a part of your job?

How many of you use a smartphone with applications?

How do you rank your social media skills between 1 and 10?

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Common Definitions

New media

Media channels and tools that have emerged in the last

several years. This includes social networks (like

Facebook) and mobile applications. New media is the

opposite of traditional media (like radio ads or posters).

Social media

A subset of new media that includes social networks

(Facebook, LinkedIn) and social sharing tools (Twitter,

YouTube, Google+).

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Key Tips to Remember

1. Learn about your online audience

2. Present yourself as a certain kind of speaker

3. Make content that works on social media

4. Balance preparedness with spontaneity

5. Create conversations, not lectures

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Key Tip: Know the Audience – Who are they?

Demographics

* Indicates statistically significant difference between rows.

Extra asterisks mean differences with all rows with lower figures.

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Key Tip: Know the Audience

What are they comfortable doing online?

How and when are they listening?

What do they currently watch and read?

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Key Tip: Know the Audience – What do they do online?

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Key Tip: Be a Good Speaker

You can have a range of content types, but they should all fit with your mission.

A public health account doesn’t have to be all about sharing flu advice. Above, @HealthyBoston is seeking healthy recipes – it fits with their mission and provides some variety and fun.

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Key Tip: Make Good Online Content

Four keys of good content:

– Make it personal

– Make it interesting

– Make it urgent

– Make it shareable

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Key Tip: Good Content – Make it personal

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Key Tip: Good Content – Make it interesting

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Key Tip: Good Content – Make it urgent

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Key Tip: Good Content – Make it shareable

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Key Tip: Plan Effectively

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday

Application

update

Contest

announcement

Privacy

update

Recommend

other accounts/

pages to read

Share a

behavior tip

Reminder of

application

deadline

Contest update Find and post

a news article

Recommend

other accounts/

pages to read

Share a

behavior tip

Highlight a

success story

Announce end

of contest

Privacy

update

Announce

contest winner

Purple = write and schedule ahead

Green = more immediate and time-sensitive

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Key Tip: Be Conversational

Imagine that only one person is

reading the material

Picture yourself sitting

face-to-face with your audience

Review everything

before it’s published

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Key Tip: Be Conversational

Things to include:

Audio/visual content

Calls-to-action

Useful links

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Additional Introspection

How many of you think you could use social media for your

work?

How many of you want to use social media for your

organization but have some concerns about it?

How many of you are using social media now but feel like

there are some barriers that are preventing you from

accomplishing some of your goals?

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Case Studies: Audience Generated

Does anyone have a real life question or concern about using

new media for outreach that they could share with us so we

can work through it as a group?

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Case Study

A small-medium sized government health agency knows that

people in the area it serves are talking about it online in both

good and bad ways. Right now it has no online presence

beyond a static website.

It wants to monitor and be involved in the conversations as

much as possible, but it doesn’t have the ability to dedicate

staff time to planning and implementing a new online strategy.

What steps should it take?

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Case Study

1. Effective planning and goal setting

2. Thorough review by staff with programmatic/operations

knowledge

3. Develop policies: privacy policy, comments policy, and

engagement policies

4. Conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment

5. Plan plenty of content in advance

6. Branding plan – how will people know about it?

7. Build content calendars for the future