8 Easy Social Media Tips for 2018

We are so excited to welcome Dina Zawaski, Director of Digital Strategy, MSPCA-Angell this week, to give us some advice on 8 Easy Social Media Tips for 2018!

This advice assumes you are a lone wolf – you’re running the digital show for your group or organization all by yourself, and social media is not your full time job or area of expertise. If you have about 30 minutes a day to move your mission forward using social media, keep reading.

1. Find Your Audience

Find your audience, and focus all of your efforts there. If you aren’t brand new to your group or org, you can likely identify the age range and social media habits of your stereotypical supporter, and match that up with an appropriate social network. If you’re like most of the world, and you aren’t specifically recruiting youth and teens, I’m willing to bet you should be focusing all your efforts on Facebook (at least for now), so that’s where I’ll focus here.

2. Learn The Difference Between Possible Facebook Areas

Learn the difference between Facebook Pages, Groups, and Events. It’s very important to know which to use and when. Pages are your home base, your organization’s “profile.” Get as much information about your org as you can on your Page – contact info, website, mission, etc. For all your one-off participatory events (even virtual ones), create an event page, but know that event pages are basically an entirely new page you’ll have to manage and monitor.  For ongoing participatory needs and ongoing discussions about a particular topic, create a Facebook group.

3. Sign up for Facebook’s Fundraising Tools

If you’re a 501(c)3, sign up for Facebook’s fundraising tools immediately. They are free to use and they just recently announced that all donations are fee-free.

4. Familiarize Yourself with Facebook’s Algorithm

Familiarize yourself with Facebook’s algorithm, which is a tech term to describe how Facebook decides which posts to show to people in their newsfeed and when. Stay connected to the news about it (Google it on a regular basis). One key thing to know about Facebook’s current algorithm is that if you continually post content that falls flat (doesn’t get many likes, shares, comments, or clicks), the next time you post it’s possible that fewer eyeballs will see it – including your regular followers. Advice about this in #5, but now that this is a constant changing item within Facebook.

5. Post!

Record your good work and post it, it’s really that simple! Don’t post just because you’ve been silent for a couple of days. Wait until you have something substantial to report. And if it’s been too long without any action, try posting something informational and useful to your audience. Try to add either a photo or video to every post, and always be as authentic as possible in your post text (don’t try to adopt someone else’s voice).

6. Picture Tips

When taking photos and videos to post with your smartphone, hold your phone horizontally rather than vertically.  This makes it easier for you to use your photo in more places on Facebook (think potential Cover photos). There is also less of a chance that part of your photo will be automatically cropped off when you post it. For videos, horizontal alignment is better because your video uses more of the available space allowed in Facebook’s video player (we’ve all seen those blurry side areas in vertically shot video posts).

7. Know Your Limits

Don’t be tempted to take on more than you can handle. I know, I know, you’ve read about Snapchat and Instagram. You’re afraid you’re missing the boat. Consider this: For each social media network you join, you’ll need entirely different post content because the audience and platform is different. If you really don’t want to miss a social media boat, recruit enough extra “deckhands” to help sail the thing before you’re on board.

8. Change is Constant

Change is constant. This has never been truer of anything on the internet more than social media. I actually had to revise this very article within a week of writing it because Facebook announced a major algorithm change. Keep up with the news as best you can.

Remember, if you ever get stuck and have a question, Google is your best friend. You can type your entire question into a Google search as if you’re asking the person next to you – there are billions (yes, plural) of people using Facebook, and it’s likely that someone else had your same problem before. Best of luck in 2018!