Social Media/Meeting Notes for 2017-02-13

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Social Media

Date
Monday, 13 February 2017
Event Announcement
https://www.meetup.com/NetSquared-Kitchener-Waterloo/events/237362708/
Location
Queen Street Commons Cafe, 43 Queen Street South, Kitchener.
Across the street from our previous meeting place. Map

How can a Nonprofit organization make use of Social Media? Should a Nonprofit organization even use Social Media? What Social Media platform do you use? What sorts of things do you put on Social Media? Who puts it there? A team of SMEs? One person? Is this a full-time job? How much time does it take to maintain Social Media accounts for a Nonprofit organization? What will you do when your Social Media platform disappears? Or deletes your content? Or delivers your content to only a small set of viewers?


Meeting Notes

  • Conversation started with employment
    • Headhunters and placement agencies frequently call potential employees or contractors, but rarely result in employment or contracts.
    • Salaries for developers are higher in Waterloo Region, due to competition from other tech firms.
  • Social Media is all about the analytics
    • Using analytics provided by the services, eg. https://analytics.twitter.com
    • Analytics from different sites (Twitter, Facebook) are similar enough that direct comparisons can be made.
    • Use some custom links to identify source of engagement on their own content
      • eg. use one URL for Twitter, another for Facebook to reach the same content
      • Use Google Analytics for generic information
      • How does Google identifiy the source of the visitor if the links are all the same? Or the URLs are all the same?
  • Staffing at one non-profit organization:
    • 1 person for Twitter + Facebook
    • 1 person for Instagram
    • Need more staff (Reddit, other social media forums)
    • Maintaining social media accounts by volunteers
      • Takes lots of time! Split it up between people
      • Automate some tasks (POSSE - Publish Once, Syndicate Self Everywhere)
  • Update frequency
    • Twitter: 8-10 time per day
    • Facebook: Once a day
    • Search for how to optimize facebook feed
    • Have a hashtag strategy (what is a hashtag strategy?)
  • Before starting on social media, ask "What is the organization's goal for social media?"
    • Distribute information (meetings, info about the cause, eg. environmental tips)
    • Grow the organization
  • Automate feeds
    • Facebook -> Twitter
    • Blog -> GNUsocial -> Twitter -> Facebook
  • Your following:
    • Are your followers passive or engaged?
    • Twitter is good for a large number of followers, but low engagement
    • Facebook is the opposite (few followers, strong engagement)
    • Linkedin is good for Business-To-Business
  • "Twitter will be around forever"
    • Some disagreement about that
    • Whatever organization buys out Twitter will want to keep the eyeballs (users generating advertising revenue)
  • Reddit is a great platform
    • But nobody likes it
  • Having a social media presence on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram will reach 90% of people online.
  • The purpose of one non-profit organization is to change consumer behaviour
    • How can that be measured?
  • Are social media sites trustworthy?
    • Social media sites are bad for your personal mental health
      • Some people remove themselves from social media
  • Twitter is a conversation
    • Really? 140 characters seems too short for meaningful conversation
    • Twitter is (only) good for broadcast announcements
    • A Grade 8 reading level is good for Twitter
    • It takes skill to get more information into 140 characters than in long-form prose
      • But too many abbreviations and leetspeek and others can't understand
      • "Dracula" by Bram Stoker was written as diary entries, good for syndication on Twitter
      • Books are being replaced by social media
        • so put novels on social media where people will read them
  • How to be effective:
    • Go where the people are
      • But that leaves out Free Software solutions like Friendica (Facebook substitute) or GNUsocial (Twitter substitute)
  • Wouldn't it be nice
    • if social media didn't affect reading levels or comprehension
    • people learned more evaluation and critical thinking, not rote memorization
  • Filter bubble
    • Facebook only shows those things you've already "liked"
    • reinforces biases
  • Recognize that Social Media is just a tool
    • You can use it well
    • ...or you can use it poorly
  • We (Non-profit organizations) are parasitic
    • We're using social media platforms for our own purposes, fully recognizing they're not doing this for our benefit.

Meeting Closing Discussion

  • Discussed CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority)
    • supports the .ca domain extension for Canada
    • most are aware of the organization
    • result of discussion is to obtain the .ca version of the NPSA domain: kwnpsa.ca

Future topics:

  • Monetization
  • Branding (logos, names)
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