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Social Media Strategy

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What do you have to work with?

Building your social media strategy.

Know Your Social Media Goals

How much time do you have? What assets do you have? Do you have staff or volunteers who can dedicate time to social media? Establishing your time constraints is key to your strategy; even the best strategy won’t lead anywhere if you don’t have time to implement it.

Most importantly: Choose a content owner and a back-up moderator. Content owners should dedicate at least ¼ of their work hours to social media management.

Even if you have only a few hours a week, you can still participate in social media. Below, we’ve listed 5 simple activities that make up a social strategy. We’ve also included what percent of your allotted social media time to spend on each.

  • Creating and Posting Content (20%)
  • Sharing (20%)
  • Engaging (30%)
  • Monitoring (20%)
  • Planning (10%)

Keep reading to learn about each step.

Creating and Posting Content

Don't panic about what to post! Remember that promise you made in the Setting Social Media Goals section? That’s all you need to figure out what to post—a mix of what your audience wants and your key priorities.

So for Mavis, our neuroscience enthusiast, we would want to post mainly about neuroscience, with a few requests for donations. We can also round things out with a mix of general content, including:

  • Upcoming events
  • Quotes from inspiring scientists
  • Pictures and stories of people on your team
  • Clinical trials
  • DGSOM news and events
  • DGSOM accomplishments and affiliations

Choose a strategy topic below to see more detailed information.

  • Themed Days
  • Voice & Tone
  • Using Hashtags

Themed Days (designed for Mavis, our neuroscience enthusiast)

To streamline the content creation process and avoid decision “fatigue,” it can be helpful to plan regular themed days.

Your actual posts do not have to include the titles of your themed days, so feel free to get creative and cheesy with your themes.

  • Monday: Neuroscience image of the week
  • Tuesday: Fun neuroscience fact
  • Wednesday: Upcoming events
  • Thursday: Shout-out Thursday (Share an amazing research breakthrough from someone in your field, but outside of your organization.)
  • Friday: Funding Friday (Call for donations)
  • Saturday: Synapse Sunday (Pose a thought-provoking question to your group)
  • Sunday: Neuroscientist Sunday (Post a quote or profile from a notable neuroscientist)
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Voice & Tone: Avoiding Social Media Writer’s Block

For social media, simply write as you would speak aloud to your friends. Stop thinking about “writing to an audience” or “accomplishing a goal,” and simply talk to your friends. Pretend you’re talking to your audience personas if that helps!

We encourage users of DGSOM-branded accounts to cultivate their own unique voices, designed to please a specific audience. We simply ask that users represent the DGSOM community by keeping our core values in mind.

All DGSOM-branded posts should reflect the school’s core values of:

  • Excellence and Integrity
  • Discovery and Innovation
  • Service and Respect
  • Teamwork and Compassion

When considering tone—word choice that indicates your views on a subject—please keep the following points in mind:

  • The DGSOM tone/attitude is optimistic.
  • The DGSOM tone/attitude is informative, never angry.
  • The DGSOM tone/attitude is logical and sympathetic, without being overly emotional.
  • The DGSOM tone/attitude is grateful for the contributions of community members.
  • The DGSOM tone/attitude can be light, but never flippant.
  • The DGSOM tone/attitude is caring.
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Using Hashtags Effectively

When you put a number symbol (#) in front of a topic or keyword, it becomes a social media hashtag, a “flag” that tells channels and audiences what your post is about.

People often search hashtags to find conversations of interest. Hashtags help get your posts in front of the right eyeballs.

Mavis doesn’t feel like reading a million posts about cats, food, or football when she grabs her phone for a quick social media break. She just wants to hear about neuroscience. So she can do a simple search for #neuroscience to find the right feeds.

If you’ve included the hashtag #neuroscience in your post, Mavis will be more likely to find your post, read it, share it, and start following your account.

Here are a few hashtag pointers:

  • Try to include a hashtag with every post. It’s one of the simplest ways to get more reach.
  • Include only one hashtag on Facebook and Twitter.
  • Use up to 9 hashtags on Instagram. (Since Instagram emphasizes photographs, users are more forgiving when captions are packed with hard-to-read hashtags.)
  • Use hashtags relevant to the content of your post. Don’t add a trending hashtag just to get eyeballs.
  • Be as specific as possible. Do not put a hashtag before “beautiful” when you could put a hashtag before “sciencephotography.”
  • Make sure there are no spaces between the # and the keyword.
  • Do not include punctuation in your hashtag (#neuroscience not #neuroscience!).
  • Hashtags can be phrases as well as single words. Sometimes, short phrases help you get even more specific with your post tagging (E.g. #neuroscienceresearch). That said, do not use phrases with more than a few words.
  • Join conversations! It’s okay to use the same hashtags others are using to push your posts into relevant streams.
  • Use free tools to do research. For example, RiteTag helps you find hashtags, and Google Trends helps you explore global interest in topics by search term.
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Sharing

Share and share often—it’s practically the Golden Rule of Social Media. And we’re not only talking about pressing the “Share” button and calling it a day; there are lots of ways to share on social media.

Simple Sharing

If you want to share another user’s post without adding a personal spin, then you can:

  • Press the Share button on Facebook or the Retweet button on Twitter. That’s all!
  • Regram on Instagram:
    1. On your mobile device, pull up the picture you want to share.
    2. Take a screenshot.
    3. Open Instagram, tap the camera button, select the screenshot, and edit.
    4. In the caption, give credit to the original poster (Credit @username)

Share + Comments

This kind of sharing is a little more personal. Follow the same steps listed above, but add some of your own words to the share. You can compliment the original poster, ask a question (use @username so they’re sure to see), explain why you’re sharing the post, and more.

Shout Outs from Scratch

If you’re browsing a colleague’s blog or website and come across an amazing accomplishment or new bit of research, consider giving a shout out on social media.

There’s a bit of etiquette involved in this type of sharing:

  1. Check your colleague’s social media channels to see if they’ve already mentioned the accomplishment. If they have social media channels and haven’t yet posted about the tidbit you found, then move on to step 2.
    • If they’ve already posted about the item, then you can simply share the post or leave a comment.
    • If they don’t have a social media account, skip the shout out.
  2. Follow your colleague’s social handle if you are not already doing so.
  3. Write a thoughtful post about your colleague’s content. Use your own words, be sure to give credit by tagging your colleague, and include a link to the original article. It’s also nice to include their organization’s complete name. Remember: Use the @ symbol to tag users; use the # symbol to tag keywords.
  4. Monitor your feed for a thank you!
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Engaging

Liking Posts

Social channels make it easy to express appreciation for others’ content. Reacting to posts is an amazing option if you’re short on time; with just the touch of a button, you can build a social media presence.

Commenting

Commenting is the perfect way to dive into the social media conversation and start engaging with users you would never meet otherwise.

The world of social media commenting is a wild one, and there are virtually no rules on what you can and cannot say. The best way to learn the ropes is to start posting.

Stay positive, inclusive, and authentic, and comment on posts from users you want to include in your network.

Responding

Responding is just as important as posting.

Here are a few pointers:

  • Try to respond as quickly as possible.
  • Read your response aloud. Does it sound natural?
  • Double-check your response for typos and errors. Responses are not official posts, but they stay on the internet for just as long.

If you’ve received an overly negative or hateful comment, feel free to take some time to consider your response and discuss it with your colleagues. In some cases, it may be better to ignore a post rather than start a social media battle.

UCLA designed this helpful response guide to assist you in tricky situations. Download Social Media Response Guide.

DOWNLOAD RESPONSE GUIDE

Use this helpful response guide to assist you in tricky situations
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Monitoring

Monitoring is a key piece of any social media strategy. In just a few minutes a week, you can gain enough insights from your activities to inform your next steps. And once you have a few weeks of monitoring under your belt, you should notice some patterns. These patterns will help you get into a social-media stride.

You do not need fancy tools or detailed dashboards to get a basic sense of how well your social efforts are being received.

You can monitor your social success daily or weekly, whatever suites your schedule. Here’s what to look at when you sign in to your accounts:

  • Which of your posts were most liked?
  • Which of your posts were most shared or retweeted?
  • Who is liking your posts? (Follow any accounts you’re not already.)
  • Who is sharing your posts? (Follow any accounts you’re not already.)

Now spend a few minutes considering your most liked and shared posts. What are these posts about? Why do you think audiences like these posts more than others? Record your insights for future reference. When you’re done noodling, it’s time to move on to planning!

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Planning

Use the hyper-aware moments after a good monitoring session to figure out what to post next. Simply ask yourself: Did my monitoring reveal anything I should incorporate in my next posts?

Maybe you’ll post about topics similar to the ones in your most-liked posts. Maybe you’ll use the same hashtag. Maybe you’ll post different topics at the same time of day as your most-liked posts.

Figuring out why your audience responds to certain posts is part of the fun and excitement of social media. Treat your social media involvement like a fun experiment, full of trials, tests, and repetitions.

If you’re short on time, simply save your ideas for later. If you have time and want more structure in your social media strategy, consider creating a monthly post calendar. Here’s how:

  • Create a new Outlook or Google Calendar, or download a simple calendar template.
  • Choose specific topics for your themed posts, throw in some posts to test your monitoring insights, and fill in the rest of the slots with a mix of shared posts and evergreen content.
  • Scan for special annual days or holidays to include.
  • Share the calendar with your colleagues and ask for feedback.

When you’re ready, you can even schedule posts ahead of time using a free tool called Hootsuite.

Post Frequency

As you plan your days, weeks, and months, keep the below frequency recommendations in mind. *

Facebook
Up to 3 posts daily

Twitter
Up to 7 tweets daily

Instagram
Up to 5 posts a week

* As a general rule, we strongly encourage fewer, high-quality posts over a specific number. The above numbers are only for beginning ideation purposes.

See Full Quick Start Infographic →

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