Social Media 4 Good http://sm4good.com Exploring the use of Social Media for NGOs, non-profit organizations and to support humanitarian relief. Thu, 18 Jan 2018 07:20:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.2 37420698 Links I Liked: A Free Communications Training, Snapchat’s Future and a Really Bad Idea http://sm4good.com/2018/01/18/links-i-liked-a-free-communications-training-snapchats-future-and-a-really-bad-idea/ http://sm4good.com/2018/01/18/links-i-liked-a-free-communications-training-snapchats-future-and-a-really-bad-idea/#respond Thu, 18 Jan 2018 07:20:22 +0000 http://sm4good.com/?p=6309 WHO - Risk communication essentialsI hope you were able to enjoy a bit of a break at the end of the year. Here is a list of articles and links that I have read while chilling with mulled wine on the sofa.

The WHO has just launched a free online training on risk communication in health emergencies, which also contains elements of communicating with communities. I took a quick look at the first module of the course and while I find the delivery a bit stiff, the course also includes tools and exercises. Besides, it’s good to see that more and more organisations realise that successful communication in emergencies depends on dialogue, rather than just blasting out information.

Interesting article that argues that Facebook/Instagram have stolen all the good ideas from Snapchat but have more resources to implement them better. Can Snapchat survive? The author doesn’t think so.

Implementing a new technology often results in unforeseen consequences, but that doesn’t mean you can completely skip the risk-analysis! Wayan Vota from ICTWorks asks: “How could linking a highly persecuted people’s biometric information, such as fingerprints, iris scans, and photographs, to a public, universal, and immutable distributed ledger be a good thing?” How, indeed?

Have you found interesting links or resources? Please share them below!

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How You Can Turn Facebook’s Latest Changes into an Opportunity for Your Organization http://sm4good.com/2018/01/16/how-you-can-turn-facebooks-latest-changes-into-an-opportunity-for-your-organization/ http://sm4good.com/2018/01/16/how-you-can-turn-facebooks-latest-changes-into-an-opportunity-for-your-organization/#respond Tue, 16 Jan 2018 10:57:53 +0000 http://sm4good.com/?p=6296 Photo: aleemzahidkhan .yahoo .com / Depositphotos

Photo: aleemzahidkhan .yahoo .com / Depositphotos

It‘s that time of the year again: Facebook has announced changes to the newsfeed algorithm and the sky is falling. Sounds familiar? It should because this has happened approximately every six months for the last three years.

But something is different this time: Facebook’s stock value took a hit on Wallstreet, and the announcement was covered in the mainstream media, as opposed to niche marketing and social media blogs. But what do those changes actually mean for social media managers and particularly for those working for NGOs, the UN, the Red Cross or other humanitarian organizations?

What is changing?

Facebook announced that they will emphasize content from friends over content from pages. Here are the relevant parts of the press statement:

“Because space in News Feed is limited, showing more posts from friends and family and updates that spark conversation means we’ll show less public content, including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.

As we make these updates, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease. The impact will vary from Page to Page, driven by factors including the type of content they produce and how people interact with it. Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution. Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect.”

As you can see, Facebook does not mention promoted posts. These will of course continue to be shown in the newsfeed – because you pay for them.

This is consistent with what Facebook has been saying for years: they want relevant content on their platform that people are actually interested in – and nobody joined Facebook to look at photos of your latest workshop. If you disagree, then you have to pay for those posts to be seen.

Why this is a good thing

The last 10 years have seen some spectacular – and unique – successes on social media: from the first Obama campaign over Invisible Children to the Ice Bucket Challenge. While these successes were unique, they nevertheless raised expectations that they could be easily replicated.

Facebook’s latest announcement makes it very clear that organisations should not expect significant returns on their investments unless they are willing to pay. This is refreshingly honest and I think it is a real chance for social media managers.

  • Fight for a budget: Facebook has finally made it clear that the times of free engagement are over. If you are a business, a publisher or an organization, then you will need to pay to reach your audience. Instead of looking at Facebook as earned media, it is now clearly paid This gives social media managers better arguments when negotiating a budget.
  • An opportunity for a strategic shift: This is a chance to move internal discussions from “How can we be successful on Facebook” to “How can digital media help our organisation reach its goals”. Social media managers should emphasize the need for an overall digital strategy for fundraising, advocacy and public communication in which Facebook continues to play a part, but is no longer central.
  • Rethink what you want to get out of Facebook: Does that mean that Facebook is dead? No, of course not! But this is an opportunity to think about what you want to get out of Facebook. Is it platform through which you want to have a dialogue with your supporters? Is it a personal fundraising tool? Depending on the use case you will need different strategies.
  • Take a close look at your other digital platforms: Facebook is not saying that content from your website will be deprioritized. It is just saying that content that is shared by you gets a lower priority than content shared by someone’s Facebook friends. In other words: to be successful on Facebook you need to make it as easy as possible to share your content. Take a look at all your channels: do they facilitate sharing? Is your website optimized for mobile? Does the mobile website have all necessary sharing option? Are those options visible on both phones and tablets? What about your newsletter(s)?
  • Invest in better content: Most communications staff believe strongly in the mission of their organization and want to why the work matters. But instead of investing in good content, communications staff are often reduced to posting a link to the latest press releases. Now, more than ever, posting relevant, interesting and well-produced content is essential on social media. However, producing this type of content costs time, money or both. The changes to Facebook’s algorithm show that investing in content is necessary and social media managers now have even stronger arguments at their disposal, to ask their managers for additional resources.
  • Be more approachable: Facebook emphasizes that they are particularly interested in content that directly engages the audience, which is another way of saying content that facilitates a dialogue between organizations and their audience. Live videos are a great and cheap way to do that. So instead of posting a link to a press release, host an interview with someone who works on the topic and encourage people to ask questions. That kind of event is also worth promoting through Facebook ads. If you are looking for examples: UNHCR is one of the organisations who do Facebook live events well.

Whom this will hurt

The changes will primarily hurt organizations who:

  • Paid money for page followers, since these followers are often not engaged
  • Post to Facebook without a strategy or without thinking
  • Have a website that does not facilitate sharing
  • Are not able to produce interesting content

In summary, I think Facebook’s latest changes are an opportunity for organisations who take social media seriously and who are willing to think about what their audience wants and expects. It can help social media managers have strategic discussions about how they can contribute to the business goals of their organizations.

What other people wrote about the changes:

What are your thoughts? Please share them below!

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You can now publish multiple connected tweets at once http://sm4good.com/2017/12/13/you-can-now-publish-multiple-connected-tweets-at-once/ http://sm4good.com/2017/12/13/you-can-now-publish-multiple-connected-tweets-at-once/#respond Wed, 13 Dec 2017 14:34:56 +0000 http://sm4good.com/?p=6279 Considering that Twitter’s defining characteristic is brevity, the company is lately doing a lot to encourage users to keep on writing. After increasing the character limit for tweets from 140 to 280, Twitter has now launched a feature that allows users to publish multiple tweets at once through Twitter’s native desktop interface. The difference compared to doing this via a scheduling service like Buffer is that all tweets appear linked as a thread.

This animation from Twitter shows how it works:

Tweetstom Source: Twitter

 

Unfortunately, creating threads does not appear to work on iOS mobile devices yet, but I’m sure that is just a question of days.

More disappointingly, embedding Twitter threads does not work properly, either as can be seen in my attempts to re-publish parts of Little Red Riding Hood:

Since threads don’t get their own unique URL, you only ever see one or two elements of the thread when you embed it. So if you are looking for a replacement to Storify on Twitter, then Moments is still your best bet.

These technical problems aside, is there a point to this?

Spontaneously, I have to say that I fail to see many genuinely useful applications for Twitter threads, unless you are NPR and you want to tweet your country’s constitution.

For NGOs and other non-profits it could be useful for sharing Q&A sessions – by linking questions and answers in a thread – but I never felt that this was a truly burning issue that had to be solved.

Having said that, I would not use threads for something like rumour control or #mythbusting, because then people might only see the false information you are trying to correct and not the second tweet with the correction. In these cases, I’d still stick to one long tweet or I would use a text image.

In summary:  Twitter has given us another feature to play with. It’s good to know that it’s there, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.

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Links I Liked: Twiplomacy, Rohingya Left in the Dark, Facebook Shares More Crisis Data http://sm4good.com/2017/11/30/links-i-liked-twiplomacy-rohingya-left-in-the-dark-facebook-shares-more-crisis-data/ http://sm4good.com/2017/11/30/links-i-liked-twiplomacy-rohingya-left-in-the-dark-facebook-shares-more-crisis-data/#respond Thu, 30 Nov 2017 15:42:53 +0000 http://sm4good.com/?p=6264 How international organisations use social media, why the Rohingya don’t receive enough information and how Facebook wants to help with needs assessments.

International Organisations

Source: Twiplomacy

Matthias Lüfkens just published the latest Twiplomacy study, an annual analysis showing how world leaders and international organisations are using social media. While a large part of the report focuses on whose audience is the biggest, there are also a number of really interest nuggets. For example, I would never have thought that both the Dutch and the Nepalese government spend 95% of their tweets responding to questions and comments from other Twitter users! I also liked this piece of analysis, which made me feel strangely vindicated: “Tweets with native videos perform best (…) and plain text updates perform worst (…). However, there is no right or wrong way to tweet. Among the five tweets with the biggest interactions we found a native video, a video link, a text link, a photo and a plain text tweet.” As with so many things, there are no absolute rules when it comes to social media.

back to Resources Information Needs Assessment: Cox's Bazar - Bangladesh. Photo: Internews

Source: Internews

The first step to addressing an issue is acknowledging that you have a problem. At least in this respect, the humanitarian sector is making progress when it comes to providing disaster-affected communities with essential information. A new Internews study conducted in Bangladesh found that “more than three quarters (77%) of the affected population feel that they do not have enough information to make good decisions, and almost two-thirds (62%) report that they are unable to communicate with aid providers. This, despite some notable efforts made by humanitarian agencies to create Information Hubs and feedback mechanisms to serve this purpose.” Now we have to do better.

After starting to share users’ location data with aid organizations in humanitarian crises earlier this year, Facebook has just announced to also share data about humanitarian needs. To do this, Facebook will make data from its community help feature available through an API (I’d be curious to hear whether that data is aggregated/anonymised). Together with geographical information, this can show aid organisations where people ask for which type of assistance. Disaster responders can use this data to increase their awareness of the situation. For example, a lot of requests for water or water purifying equipment in one location could indicate problems with the water supply, an unusually high number of requests for diesel might signal problems with electricity, etc. The American Red Cross and Nethope are the first partners for this new initiative.

Did you read something interesting this week? Please share your links below!

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New Social Media Guide for Volunteers and Travellers http://sm4good.com/2017/11/10/new-social-media-guide-for-volunteers-and-travellers/ http://sm4good.com/2017/11/10/new-social-media-guide-for-volunteers-and-travellers/#comments Fri, 10 Nov 2017 08:48:00 +0000 http://sm4good.com/?p=6242 How To Communicate The WorldThe Norwegian Students‘ and Academics‘ International Assistance Fund (SAIH) is best known for their tongue in cheek videos like “Africa for Norway” and for calling out aid organisations that perpetuate stereotypes.

While SAIH focuses on organisations, the social media accounts of individuals who work or travel in developing countries can be just as bad when it comes to keeping stereotypes alive (Humanitarians of Tinder and Louise Linton, I’m looking at you). SAIH has now published a very short guide that aims to make people pause – and maybe even ask for consent – before posting the next selfie with a group of poor, brown children.

Ideally, I think this guide should not only be used by volunteering organisations, but by socially aware travel agencies as well. SAIH even offers others to co-brand the document with their own logo.

 You can download the 4-page guide here!

What do you think about this guide? Please leave a comment below!

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7 Simple Tips to Improve Your Tweets with 280 Characters http://sm4good.com/2017/11/08/7-simple-tips-to-improve-your-tweets-with-280-characters/ http://sm4good.com/2017/11/08/7-simple-tips-to-improve-your-tweets-with-280-characters/#comments Wed, 08 Nov 2017 10:24:26 +0000 http://sm4good.com/?p=6237 Welcome to TwitterTwitter has just doubled the length of tweets from 140 to 280 characters. Here are seven suggestions showing how you can improve your use of Twitter now:

  • Use fewer abbrev: Obv at 280 chars u can write compl. words; makes reading easier, IYKWIM.
  • Write complete sentences: No excuse not to.
  • Update your apps: Most mobile apps don’t support 280 characters yet. Expect updates to arrive within the next few days and make sure to install them.
  • Check your scheduled or pre-written tweets: If you use a service like CoSchedule or Buffer that schedules your tweets weeks or months in advance, take a look and check whether some of your scheduled tweets could be improved, now that you have more space. The same goes for any prepared tweets you might have in your message library, for example, to answer frequently asked questions.
  • Be more polite: “Do X” is shorter than “Could you please do X?”, “You’re wrong” is shorter than “I’m sorry, but I disagree”. In my experience, many of these simple forms of politesse have fallen by the wayside on Twitter. Remind yourself to use phrases that can soften a harsh Twitter exchange.
  • Say who is tweeting: Some organisations sign their tweets so that it is clear who is speaking. The most common format is the ^-sign followed by initials. For example, ^tl for Timo Lüge. Some organisations were reluctant to do that because every character was soooo precious. Now you have no more excuse to not be transparent! See the Berlin Police department for an example.
  • Spend more time on hashtags, but don’t go crazy: Sometimes, 140 characters meant that you didn’t have enough space for a hashtag you really wanted to include. Now you can! And while you should still stick to no more than three or four hashtags per tweet, you should start to be more consistent about which hashtags you use.

What are your thoughts on the increased character limit? Please leave a comment below!

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