I been writing a contribution towards a briefing paper for the Advisory Board of CommunityNet Aotearoa about Social Media and its potential use to the CNA. I did this by contrasting how two different organisations have used their web presence. One organisation is Mensline Christchurch. I will leave the Other organisation anonymous. Writing this post has shown some ways that I can to help them improve their use of social media and I don’t want to embarass them by linking to their site.
I came up with three key requirements for effective use of Social Media.
- Fresh, interesting material that is readily available.
- Engagement with the reader by developing a writing style and tone appropriate to your subject material.
- Find a way to create a dialogue by encouraging your readers to respond
Fresh Material
I recently assisted Mensline Christchurch to put up a WordPress website. They have since contracted a designer and made the generic WP site design more their own. A few years ago I helped set up another site. The major difference between the sites is that the landing page for Mensline is the blog and for Other Site is a static page, ‘About’ the organisation. The WordPress default is the blog so you have change this for people to come to a static page.
From a Social Media point of view its much better for visitors to straight away arrive at the most recent and freshest material on the website – the blog, not the same old page that they may have seen before, the ‘About’ page. The blog is about the organsiation communicating with their readers in a dialogue. The ‘About’ page is only about the organisation. There is a blog on the second site but its not the first thing you see. The blog on the Mensline site lets the visitor know what is happening now.
Facebook does new and fresh really well. The first thing you see is the most recent and you have to scroll to see older stuff. If the most recent post is old then no-one is going to be very interested. On the Other site the most recent item is in 2010. This facebook site is effectively dead in the water and a liability to Other organisation. By contrast when I visited the the Mensline’s FB page there was a new post 10 hours old.
Engagement with the Reader
The second thing to develop is an engaging voice for the organisation’s message. If I experience a website thats talking directly to me about what I am interested in then I become more engaged. Remember that Social Media enables people from all over the place to get together with others with similar values and interests. These values and interests have be able to be seen through the information being communicated. In addition If I can imagine the person behind the words I’m more likely to become involved with them and their organisation.
The Other organisation’s FB site gives you the facts but it is hard to detect the person behind words. They haven’t developed a ‘voice’ and there is no attempt to let you know who they are and what they stand for. This communication is reserved for their excellent newsletter, a one way communication. By contrast Mensline’s FB page is personal. You can tell there is person behind the words. The voice is friendly as well as informative as gives information that you may be interested in.
Encouragement to Respond
Really engaging your readers is much easier when they have the opportunity to get involved. Readers become more interested when they are participating in some way and not only reading a webpage. This participation may be by comments and feedback, taking part in a poll or a forum, or by listening to a podcast or watching a video.
Commenting on comments is a good way of building dialogue. It is no surprise that are no comments on the Other organisation’s Facebook page. It (possibly) shows that no one is interested, certainly not interested enough to respond. Mensline’s FB page has plenty of comments. The site is quite new so almost all of the comments are from Mensline themselves! At least this shows that Mensline are engaged with their own material and thats a good start. If they aren’t going to invest time and energy why would anyone else.
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