How do I use social media to feed my curiosity?

1. How do I use social media to feed my curiosity? Claire Hetherington, Marketing and Communications Officer, Community First Yorkshire

2. Why use Social Media? Today we’re going to look at ways you can use social media for inspiration. Social media can help you to seek new project ideas, new partners, find and build relationships with potential funders, maintain the interest of stakeholders, build wider interest in your brand/offer/services. It can be a fantastic tool, if you know how to use it. Don’t let yourself get too overwhelmed with the volume of information available to you.

3. Why should I use Social Media? With 3.484 billion active social media users, and 45 million social media users in the UK, around 67% of the total population, there is no doubt that your audience is definitely using social media. But they might not be on every platform! If you’re short on time and resource, it’s essential to put your effort in to the platforms that will best suit your needs and where you’ll reach the most people.

4. Love/hate relationship Many people have a love/hate relationship with social media. It’s a complicated thing; it’s free advertising and promotion for businesses and a great way to connect with clients, beneficiaries, funders and other stakeholders. It can also fuel feelings of competition, inadequacy, and can be a drain on time and resources. For the moment though, social media accounts are a firm fixture for organisations. It’s important to use them to your advantage. 

5. Choosing a platform Know your audience Latest Ofcom report (March 2018) shows UK social media reach age 13+ Facebook 90% Twitter 60% Instagram 51%

7. Facebook As of April 2018, Facebook is still the most common site on which to have a profile, 62% of adults have a Facebook account. There are over 2 billion Facebook users, of which 1.2 billion are active each day. There are approximately 42 million UK users. Fairly even split between women (52%) and men (48%).

8. Twitter 13.6 million people in the UK use this platform – 24% of the population. Used mainly by businesses and organisations, rather than individuals. Gender split is 60% male and 40% female – however many Twitter accounts are organisations, not individuals, and will be classed as neutral. It’s much smaller than Facebook, but it’s easier to reach your audience – on Facebook you can’t interact with supporters unless they come to your page, but on Twitter you can have a conversation with anyone!

9. Instagram There are an estimated 24 million Instagram users in the UK – 42% of the population. The gender split is women 54% and men 46%. 80% of users follow an organisation or business – they’re looking for inspiration! This platform is more popular with younger people, 25 and under. Search for a topic to see what’s popular on that day e.g. volunteering or Harrogate.

10. YouTube YouTube is the UKs second most popular social media channel, with almost as many users as Facebook. 37.1 million adults are using the platform in the UK. A great place to host longer form content, on this channel users are actively searching for videos to watch, rather than on other channels where they’re just scrolling passively through their newsfeeds.

11. LinkedIn There are 27 million UK profiles split men 60% and women 40%. Almost a quarter of users are 18-29 and 61% are 30-64. This is very much a networking, professional platform, and is used by organisations and individuals to expand their contacts. It’s great for reaching future employees, volunteers and trustees as well as other corporates/organisations. It’s the perfect place to showcase your amazing staff, show your organisation culture, the impact you make and why you’d be a good fit with a potential partner.

12. LinkedIn – grow your network Don’t only network with senior people in an organisation, try and build relationships with your peers and with people in your field. This network will then grow in seniority with you, and can connect you to opportunities down the line. People earlier in their careers are more likely to reply to an initial message from somebody they don’t know. If you’re starting a new project, or moving in to a new direction, use it as an opportunity to reach out to new people and ask for advice and some pearls of wisdom.

13. It’s Social Media! Remember though – it’s Social media, it works both ways! If you’ve received help and advice, pay it forward and offer your connections and help to others, especially those just starting out in their career. You can help this by posting your contact information online and responding quickly to requests for help or information. If you’ve worked with someone, post a review on LinkedIn or Facebook review. You can dip in and out of Social networking, but do remember to keep dipping back in.

14. Inspiration Look at organisations/charities whose social media work you admire and as well as following them, follow their social media guru for their insights and tips. E.g. I follow @SebBaird from Time To Change. Opening Minds might want to follow Janine Tregelles – Chief Exec at Mencap @JanTregelles, or @StuartCarlton. I try to learn from the people I admire online, but still try to remain true to myself, and to the Community First Yorkshire brand. I love social media posts from the likes of Innocent and Yorkshire Tea, but I always try to remember that they may have a different budget, bigger team, different goals and a different tone to their social media. Have take-aways, but keep on brand.

15. Finding Inspiration Going back through someone else’s feed shifts from being a time-waster to being a great source of inspiration if you then take the posts you’re drawn to and use it to feed in to a new project. I’m always inspired by other people’s content. I spend some time each week looking at other organisations feeds, to see what’s happening for the sector right now. This also influences what we re-post, the tone of our posts and, if I see something I think might be useful to one of our projects, I forward this on to the Project Officer. e.g. a Village Hall might want to look at Thorner Village Hall for inspiration on their photos and videos they share.

16. Finding Inspiration There are certain social media accounts, across all platforms, which I continue to go back to. For accounts which I like, I try to think about what it is I like about them so much, to help me update the tone and flow of the social media posts we put out as Community First Yorkshire. For example on Twitter, I really appreciate when someone is re-tweeting another post that they put a comment adding their thoughts and a different slant on the topic, or try to relate it to their work. Don’t just let the content come to you—take some time to actively seek out accounts that connect with your values and your interests. 

17. Making Connections Using social media can be a valuable way to build not only your organisation, but connection with your followers. It’s helped us to shape our projects and make organisation decisions, from how we design our new Volunteering in North Yorkshire website to how we write our Twitter posts. Social media can be a great networking tool, and is now often used to make contact with and learn about someone or an organisation before meeting with them in person to build on that relationship at events like conferences and meetings.

18. Loneliness For our new Loneliness project, due to time resources, we needed to use a consultant to work on the strategy, so we turned to Twitter to help us find one. Posts about planning your pension for retirement, book clubs, chatting to strangers in a shop and Yorkshire puddings have all been the starting point for a spin off new idea within our new project. Looking at something from a different angle and putting your own spin on it can create the most wonderful aspects of a new project.

19. Ask questions Asking your followers for their opinions and their own stories is a sure fire way to build real connection with them. Asking the same question on all your platforms means that you’ll get more answers from more of your followers. It also gives people a chance to chime in, in their own words. This helps you find out what people want, and gives you a chance to create whatever that isfor them. This type of learning out loud with our network helps us to seek new opportunities and opinions and share our own with a much wider audience. It allows us to take a half formed idea and test them out with a relatively low risk.

20. Followers Social media gives you access to people who think and act differently. Follow people you don’t agree with, follow other people in the same industry as you, follow people in your position in different industries to the one you work in. Follow micro influencers in your sector. Opening Minds might want to follow @TaniaLT. It’s OK to purposely post divisive material, as long as it’s done in the right way - https://twitter.com/innocent/status/1118774915254165504 Encourage your colleagues to use social media for work too. They can share your posts so that you reach a wider audience, and increase networking. Your organisation will become less prone to think like a herd, and you will increase your organisation’s capacity and capability for innovation and partnership working.

21. Algorithms Another powerful factor here is the algorithms. When you’re more deliberate about the kind of content you follow and engage with, a platform’s algorithm is likely to catch on to what you want to be seeing. This means you’ll be shown the kind of stuff you’re actually interested in more often. Essentially, what you click on, like, share, and comment on influences what you end up seeing when you log in.

22. Take-aways • Follow people you don’t agree with! • Crowd source opinions – set up a poll on FB, or ask the same question of your followers across all of your platforms • Test out a random half formed idea • Make new contacts – follow people and make lists – private and public • Encourage your colleagues to use social media as part of their personal development, and also to re-post your organisations content too • Embrace the chaos and mass of information

23. Functions and tools to use Who to follow/related pages/pages liked by this page Use this for inspiration on relevant people and organisations to follow

24. Functions and tools to use Twitter # search You can reach and find people through hashtags and join in conversations – or start them!

25. Search an organisation to find employees/other orgs

26. See who they follow and who follows them

27. Follow organisations similar to you who you can learn from and where you can get new ideas for new projects

28. Use Tweetdeck to follow # and organisations/topics relevant to your organisation/project

29. Follow organisations similar to you who you can learn from and where you can get new ideas for new projects • Burton Salmon Village Hall on Facebook may want to follow: • Community First Yorkshire! • Their local council • The parish council • Local schools • Village church • Local play group • Village library • Local villages Village Halls to get inspiration, give added value to your residents and to help advertise each others events e.g. village plays or festivals. • Village Halls week in January • Acre Action with communities in Rural England • Thorner Victory Hall – lots of engaging photos and videosLocality • Plunkett Foundation • Could consider turning the page in to a local village information board to include everything e.g. This is Dunnington.

30. Share content relevant to your audience Share content from others, project partners, similar organisations, people or organisations you’d like to work with in the future. Build a relationship. A village hall might want to look at @SnaintonVillageHalland Gristhorpe Village Hall @glvh1937 – advertising the people who book out their halls e.g. pet first aid course, or a weekly toddler dance class. This not only helps your audience by giving them relevant information, but would also encourage more people to book if you show you’ll also help them out with free advertising to their target market.

31. What’s trending?

32. Group task In your groups (tables), think about how you can use these sources for inspiration. You can do this individually, or pick one organisation and focus on inspiration for them. Take away task - get your colleagues/employees/committee to make 20 new social media connections and ask them to submit an idea based on what they learned.

33. Please: Like us on Facebook, and leave us a review Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn Follow each other too – get networking!

34. Q & A

35. Claire Hetherington, Marketing and Communications Officer 01904 704177 claire.hetherington@communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk @CommFirstYorks @Comm1stYorks Unit A | Tower House | Askham Fields Lane | Askham Bryan | York | YO23 3FS 01904 704177 | info@communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk| www.communityfirstyorkshire.org.uk Registered Charity No: 515538 | Company No: 1839458 | VAT No: 500834776