Its a Social media world...so?

• Be careful what you post on social media because once online, always online. You may delete a post you mistakenly posted, or a picture that went viral for being outrageous...The sad bit is that you can never completely delete an article or post already published over media.  
  
• Before you click that post button, how about you confirm and reconfirm that whatever you are saying or uploading is acceptable not only to your conscious, but that of the people likely to consume it. If it is likely to turn controversial, then avoid damaging your image, or that of your affiliate organization. 
• The world will always judge you by your words, don’t give it a reason or loophole to pin you down. Choose wisely what you allow the public to hear from you.
  
• Making a choice to avoid social media because of the fear of the unknown is senseless. 
• Exploiting the power that lies in the use of social media starts by you accepting that social media is here for all. The next step is learning how best to use it. It could be a marketing tool, or an awareness/campaign tool, or a customer service tool, or a funds drive tool, or a news update tool…it all depends on what you choose to use your handle for. 
• You do not have to post every hour of the day to be considered an experienced/good media user. 
•  Neither do you have to pour every event of your life on media: just keep post SMART. What appears public offline may not be public online.
• Use a language understandable to your audience.  Why post in vernacular when targeting a largely multi-dialectal audience? And why use jargons for a largely youthful in-expatriate audience?

Social media, make better use of your handles.

·        The use of tags and labels

    In twitter, you have the option of mentioning a tweep (s) in a conversation even if not necessarily directly tweeting/retweeting them. Most people don’t actually know how best to maximise on this feature to keep a conversation going. 

•  I mentioned branding earlier. Now, depending on which areas one decides to concentrate, it is also necessary that you identify and know who else besides you gets interested in that particular topic. It could be a friend, or organization, or business entity. I for instance gets interested on issues of environment, or girl child education, or youth development or women’s rights. Should I want to tweet an article or emergent issue, or an event on any of these subjects, my tweet would communicate better if I mention a fellow or organization that has interest in a similar issue (in twitter you mention tweeps by @twitterhandleofperson). What this does is that the followers of whoever you mention also get a chance to follow your conversation.

Don’t:  

Twitter mentions should not be misused! Don’t mention @cnn on your post (an example) if at all what you are posting doesn’t concern them, or is not in any way worth their mentioning. Some people do this to reach more followers. This is wrong use of social media!

   

• The use of hashtag (#) is great. What it does is to help people follow a conversation around a specific topic or event. During the world cup, there was a common hashtag of #vivabrazil in Kenya. Globally, we have had tags like #bringbackourgirls. By searching a tag, one can easily know a conversation around it. In my case, I may choose to use tags such as #environment, #women, #youthdevelopment, #education. 

Don’t: 

There has been a tendency of young people to use an overwhelmingly long tag line, this is wrong! A whole line of words for a tag is not appropriate. Tags should be kept short and simple. 

• Labels are used when posting blogposts. A label works almost like a tag, a blogger uses it to pinpoint out important places, or hotspot words in their article. It also enables online search engines to quickly pick your article touching on a specific interest area over millions of other pieces with similar mentions. For example; a blogger writing about an emergent issue like Ebola could have tags such as Ebola, West Africa, WHO, health, CDC. Also note that you should only use labels for words or phrases that you have actually used in your post. 

 

Do not: 

Do not mention Westgate (an example) in your post just because it is a trending topic in the community and you want to drive traffic to your site whenever people search Westgate.

·         Analyse the performance of your handles. 

    The advent of social media handles in turn has led to the birth of analytics tools. Just as we have google analytics commonly used to track the number of people that hit a particular online page (common for websites), so do we have more refined analytics tools dedicated to social media use. I am still new to this, but guess what? These tools are there! And they help you to build a better digital footprint of your social media use. 

    

Social media like any other communication media has been developed to aid in communication. And communication is a 2-way traffic. It is not about a user basically posting and reposting or tweeting and retweeting. It is also about reaching out to a particular audience, and being able to communicate with each other. One way of determining whether you are communicating is by analysing the performance of your work on media.

Several analysis tools are available including 2 common ones:

• For twitter, we have twitonomy.com.  It is an online tool that helps a tweep to know how best his/her tweets are performing, the audience it is reaching, and further which time of day and week this audience is reached. It is not only useful for a market driven organization, but for individuals dedicating their posts to suit a target audience too.

• For facebook pages, there is likealyzer.com. This is also an online tool that helps to monitor the performance of a face book page. It does not work for face book accounts, just pages.

The 2 secrets you must know;

§  At the end of the day, it is not about the number of followers that one has on twitter, nor the number of likes that your facebook page has. It is also not about the number of comments or retweets your post has. It is about having an impact with your posts. And one of the ways you can determine whether the performance of your handles is through the use of analytics tools, and acting based on the results of the analysis.

§  Even for social media, it is important to listen to what the audience around you is saying. It should never always be about you pumping them with information. Try to engage your audience and professionally reply to their issues if handling a professional handle. 

·         The use of visuals to enhance the performance of your posts. 

      Social media has changed a lot. How different is face book today compared to its features at the time of introduction?. It is obvious that a lot has changed. And these applies to all social media platforms. People have moved from the good old days where posts were a long prose or narrative to the new digital age where “less and less words are used, but more and more pictures or video used reach the same audience.”

              

 So please, if you do not want to bore your audience, or has ever wondered why your posts on face-book or twitter or blogs never spark attention. The answer may be here today; it is because you are writing too much when you might as well summarize all that information in a single picture. Fact is, as the world changes, and so do people! There is not enough time to sit down and read a 2-page document when you have the option of getting all that information in a 5 minutes picture slide-show or video clip.

1. Good pictures are attracting to the eyes, and so they are to the memory. Because even in a rush, you are more likely to remember what you saw than what you read in a rush.
2. Learn how to take well-proportioned photo-shots.
3. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use blurry images! If you do not manage to capture a clear and quality shot, then too bad for you. You missed it. You will have to do without it.
4. NEVER use images or any other media content without owner’s permission. You may get yourself sued for violation of rights. It is important to credit the source of any content that is not author’s own creation.

  

Ideally, social media for an organizational handle is a full time job to be done by a trained communication’s (social media) person. And you must have a social media strategy and policy in use. 

Improving your social media footprint; The Dos’ and Donts’.

     Not too long ago, I attended a social media training which targeted non- governmental organizations.  The take-away knowledge did not only apply to an organizational set up, but individuals’ too.

For most people, social media  gets us thinking of face book, or twitter, or Pinterest, flicker, linked-in, YouTube, google share, or blog sites or email chat windows such as google chat, or yahoo messenger, or windows live messenger and so on. Today, we also have smartphone applications dedicated to chat. These include whatsapp, viber, skype (also for PC). There are probably a million plus social media handles or sites each designed to serve different users. Social widely used and fed by young people who may account to at least 60 % of the users. For some regions, adults aged over 45 years may not even use social media with the assumption that “it is a tool for the youth who like idling”. Now that’s a bad mentality and understanding of social media.  

For starters, social media is not only important to you as an individual. It is a necessity! We are in a digital era, there are things that we have little to no choice on embracing. Because by default, we happen to have been born or raised in a generation where communication media have radically transformed. However, just how many of the billion plus users of social media do actually know how to use each of these handles appropriately?

I will mention just a few areas or issues which I feel are a must know for every social media user. Especially for bloggers and users of twitter and face book. Maybe because, they are my most favourite handle.

Branding of one’s handles is very important!

How do you want people to identify with you on your twitter handle, or face book account or page? It is very important that you maintain consistency in the manner that you post through your account. This also applies to the topics you choose to dedicate your blog to.

           The Dos':

•  Have a profile picture that identifies with the person you are. Avoid vulgar shots for your profile, because that is what people will associate you with.
•  For timeline photo (face book) or header photo (twitter), use a picture that tells a great story about you, or your work. For example, if you have attended a major international event to represent youths, you could a good shot of all participants. Or for an environmentalist, a speaking nature clip could be used. Or if in fashion/art, you may use one of your works. 
•  Use your real/actual / official names (for personal handles and the actual name of your organization if an organization handle).
•   A disclaimer should be written under your personal info on twitter to inform the world that the views you express therein are your own. This would be very relevant for professions such as journalism or law. 

·         Posting on your handles: how frequently do you post? How timely is the post? How relevant is the post? Who is the target audience?

• Social media is not for posting updates for the sake of posting. Unless you are not targeting any audience (which is not the case since social media, just as any communication tool is there to be used for purposes of communication). Before you post, one needs to think critically over what he/she is posting. Much as we use twitter and face book to share updates, the update should be sensible, and communicating.
• If your posts never get anyone talking about it, then there is a problem! You are not communicating! You are simply taking advantage of media to pour yourself out to no one in particular. That almost sounds like self-monologue at a public forum!
• Some people dedicate their handles to share events as they happen or trends in the society. Based on what you like posting or sharing links about, learn how to ensure you share the information at a good timing! If your audience is highly school going students for example. Know when best to tap onto these people when sharing information meant for them.

Do not post content in the wee hours of the morning, or late in the night if your audience is never active then.

• For bloggers, learn to be regular in your posts. I have the challenge of posting once in 3 months or so. That is wrong, especially if I call myself a blogger. Especially for organizations (I say this because many young people have organizational blogs), try to ensure you keep your blog active. Because away from your website, which is a non-rapidly changing site, your blog is the only tool that you keep your clientele or the stakeholders informed of the impacts that you are having. Use it to share success stories of beneficiaries as they happen. Keep it dynamic.