Social Media Efforts

Musée du Bardo, Tunis, Tunisia

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña (2019)

Social Media Efforts

The case of cultural and education firms

         Cultural organizations and education institutions are globally interested in having a presence over social media, but how is this undertaking being achieved? Depending on the type of business firm a social media strategist is in charge of, the role of non-profit organizations looks interesting and culturally and educationally profitable with a great, positive, and potential impact on social media users (followers), who are interested in what these sort of corporations are doing for the communities where they are established.

         Based on Rod McGuinness, Social Media Coordinator, Radio Division, ABC, “relying on the affordances of a third party provider enables you to interact with potentially large audience base” (University of Sydney, 2020). The use of social media platforms carried out by education and cultural enterprises should not be regarded as a quixotic endeavor. A social media strategist, not a community manager, needs to find the proper social media presence depending on the platform or platforms chosen to communicate with users. Additionally, the possibility to extend that presence to TV, radio, and online environments need to be valued as well. It is also crucial to search for the right audience interested in the company’s content and stories. The strategist has to be behind communal events where followers can actively engage in participative experiences. And all these actions can trigger leverage for the organization’s brand, content, and stories; the social media presence is now anchored.

         Based on McGuinness’s points of view (University of Sydney, 2020), social media efforts must be directed threefold. Here cultural and education corporations are at the brink of a hideous chasm if these recommendations are not followed. First, a company must target who their audience is to start having conversations with them, which is a way to start setting the virtual ground for their interest in the organization’s stories and content. Second, once the audience has been identified, it is essential to spot what social media these individuals use to play in the same ground as they do. Third, learning how these people communicate in their social media platform is also important to devise mechanisms to find the right way to hook their interest and potential engagement. At this point, “it’s very much the role of the social media strategist to align the affordances and inhibitions of third party platform providers” (University of Sydney, 2020) to communicate with the right audience and consolidate the institution’s social media presence and leverage of brand and content.

         A cultural or education company’s first real twinge of remorse is when there has been no alignment between the communication strategy, what is and what is not doable within a social media platform, and the potential users. It is for this reason that any enterprise with a presence in social media has to be consistent on what it is doing, its core business, and how it is communicated to the public. Once this is clear, the identification of ways to convey messages over social media is a must. Each platform is unique in its design, and what can be done in one is not replicable in another, so another strategy has to be devised in its place to reach out to the desired audience. Based on McGuinness (University of Sydney, 2020), it is imperative that an institution overcommunicates with updates and any other extra detail about its content, stories, and the like. If a group of company’s social media experts want to stop listening to the unabating rain pouring negative comments over different platforms, the organization’s media department has to work on fully comprehending social media outlets because of their differences and capacities to be socially present.

         To sum up, if cultural organizations and education institutions are interested in having a solid presence over social media, these three suggestions need to be analyzed. A social media presence has to be created around each social platform that is used because of its different affordances and differences. The set of pieces of advice provided above are necessary for the consolidation of an institution’s social media presence; otherwise, strange sounds and writing characters will assail the community manager’s ears and eyes when users get disengaged and uninterested in what the company has to share. And what about alignment? If the communication strategy does not match the platform and its users, whatever gets to be posted will go unnoticed.

References

University of Sydney. (2020). Participatory culture and media organisations. Interview with Rod McGuinness, Social Media Coordinator, Radio Division, ABC. Retrieved September 11, 2020, from ETHICAL SOCIAL MEDIA UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY at FutureLearn.Com: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-social-media/1/steps/824154

 

 [7] Social Media Efforts by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd