Strengthening the Social Media Strategist

Going beyond the community management

         Do you ever wonder how social media data contribute to brand campaigns in your organization? If you do so, you probably question yourself about how data is supposed to be read, about what is worth around the tons of data a social media channel can produce, and how these data can sit alongside the community management of your company. The fact is that data analytics is not like rummaging your wardrobe to get dressed -in a hurry- to go to work; it is like spotting a tiny, wily insect in the brushwood if you are not equipped with the right tools.

         What produces data in a social media community channel? Based on Joe Cothrel from Lithium (The University of Sydney, 2020), “really any feature that you allow a user to use in an online community creates data.” That is, data’s lair in the community media outlet contains information produced by any feature that can be scattered and just accumulated somewhere. As the eagle, it is necessary that the social media strategists pounce down upon the pieces of input to start making sense of them. But going beyond the conceit of a creator of a successful online community, favorable outcomes are only attained when data is correctly read and interpreted; it is not just a lucky strike.

         What type of data can be dug up from an online community profile? For Cothrel there are two types of data that can obtained (The University of Sydney, 2020): Qualitative and quantitative data. Walking into the qualitative side of data is like entering a vestry for the first time; you barely know what you can expect to find in a place like this. You can be appalled at the sight of data and communities’ qualitative insights. This qualitative data stored as part of the history of an online community is connected to what happens in it around people’s reactions towards content that is being posted, e.g., by a community manager. And all this input appears “in the form of words or opinions or topics that people are talking about” says Cothrel (The University of Sydney, 2020). Finding the commonalities among these words, opinions, or topics is the challenge of the data analyst and the social media strategist.

         But finding commonalities is not all; statistical analysis of data can also provide useful insights, too. Part of data digging is making sense of the things people are doing online when visiting an online community. What is it that your viewers are looking? What is it that your visitors are posting on your community wall or reposting from your community? How are your followers or first-time visitors rating your brand campaigns? All these generates statistical data that can be pulled out of the system, read, and interpreted and see how all this input can be used to continue to serve your community and make it grow as a healthy environment free of trolling vassals and shorn head trolls looking for trouble.

         Before a shudder passes through your system and you start to feel you are just wearing a loincloth, consider the following questions regarding your quantitative and qualitative data. By asking yourself similar questions like the ones bellow, suggested by Joe Cothrel, media strategists can get ready before a brand campaign is launched.

Now, using an art gallery as an example for a social media strategist, let us review the same questions and think of how they could be answered.

And one more example to examine; let us now pay attention to a language school’s campaign regarding the creation of learning infographics for its learners. How can these questions be answered?

And the examples of sets of questions for all varieties of brand campaign could go on and on.

         The cradle of data lies in the operational metrics and in the content metrics. The forefathers of social media communities probably were not aware of how these online communal spaces were meant to be used when compared to the way they are being used today. This is not about failing and simply saying that if the worst come to the worst, you still have a second chance around. This is about being sure on what data is being produced by the social media platform that has been chosen (operational metrics) and what content is going to be published for the community of users (content metrics). And when these metrics are understood, where do you want to direct your community for its own benefit and for the organization’s? How do you plan to move on to the next level of proficiency and arrive at the pinnacle of your brand campaign’s success?

Reference

The University of Sydney. (2020). How do we incorporate data analytics into user engagement strategies? Retrieved October 23, 2020, from FutureLearn.Com: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-social-media/1/steps/824166

Strengthening the Social Media Strategist by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

Improving Efforts to Reach a Wider Audience

Suggestions and Questions

         All types of cultural institutions do look for ways to improve their efforts to rich a wider audience with their brands or campaigns. Many just send out messages expecting that someone out there will react to them. What company directors sometime forget is what it is that they plan to forfeit to gain meaningful presence in social media. Prof. Jonathon Hutchinson (The University of Sydney, 2020), discussing this type of improvement in organizations’ efforts, mentions that “certain messages will work more efficiently with different types of audiences at particular times in the day.” However, before we can generate meaning from social media data analytics to determine the impact of a social media campaign, how can brand awareness be produced? Based on what is explained by Prof. Hutchinson, a series of questions need to be asked and put out to ensure success.

         The following infographic identifies the four different areas pointed out by Prof. Hutchinson (The University of Sydney, 2020). Some of his questions have been slightly modified to make them more generic and that can be applied to any brand that needs to be promoted in social media. This kind of inquiry included in the infographic can help organizations to discover the wondrous hoard hidden behind data that can be retrieved from social media channels.

         Right here what is presented is not a pesky questionnaire for community managers but a sample contextualization of these generic questions on a cultural institution’s new brand product to promote English language learning beyond the classroom and through social media. However, none of the questions have been answered and are just a nice collection of ideas to explore to guarantee success in institutional efforts to reach a wider audience of learners. Not paying attention to these areas specified by Prof. Hutchinson will make organizations stay stuck in their comfort cocoon and their improvement efforts will fade away in the directors’ eyes in sore dismay.

Informed Sense of Beginning

Monitoring a Campaign

Analysis and Visualization

Organic Conversations

         Organizations should not cease plying their social media channels. Companies have to hover around these four areas of media analytics to create healthier and truthful conversations with learners. Neither the institution’s directors nor their marketing staff have a belt of prowess to identify the success of a brand campaign; all efforts for improvement can be swept down by the lack of student interest. To dispel the darkness around brand failures is not linked to be insusceptible to criticism; it is connected to identify the “quernstone” that can help the organization grind the different individual who are part of its audience comprehend these people to take them into its conversations.

References

The University of Sydney. (2020). How do we generate meaning from social media data analystics? Retrieved Octubre 14, 2020, from FutureLearn.Com: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-social-media/1/steps/824164

Improving Efforts to Reach a Wider Audience by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

Suggestions to Follow for an Art Gallery

Before it is decided to use data analytics

         In social media, brands do not refer to copyrighted trademarks that companies advertise in all sorts of media; they refer to any cause, person, or event that needs to be made present and visible to a given audience. As mentioned by Chilliland (2020), “social platforms offer brands an unmissable opportunity to reach and engage consumers today.” A culture company and a cultural department in an organization have to use their social media outlets to promote their events, artists they sponsor or work with, or joint causes with other enterprises. But in order to know how effective their campaigns can be, any cultural institution should answer a series of questions before data analytics is used to set KPIs (key performance indicators) that align with the brand.

         Before jumping into data analytics coming from social media to analyze a cultural company’s brand, as suggested by Prof. Jonathon Hutchinson (University of Sydney, 2020), “it’s important to define what you want social media to achieve.” Consider the following areas to explore suggested by Hutchinson (University of Sydney, 2020) to build a brand campaign and to evaluate its results. The sample questionnaire is based on Hutschinson’s recommendations but stated bearing in mind an Art Gallery.

         The infographic above is just a sample questionnaire that can guide cultural companies such as art galleries to get ready for data analytics. Once the gallery, e.g., is ready to put out its brand, administrators can start collecting data that will tell them about their social media conversation with subscribers and followers. As explained by Prof. Hutchinson, this is “a way to quantify content, conversations, and human interaction across social media” (University of Sydney, 2020), across the social media outlets that are being administrated by the gallery. All these data will help administrators to gain insight into their cultural content customers and to find new and innovative ways to service followers and subscribers with new content. Through social media channels, data are “collected, analyzed, summarized, and geographically visualized in order to generate insights into the behavior of users” (University of Sydney, 2020).

References

Chilliland, N. (2020, June 25). 30 brands with excellent social media strategies. Retrieved October 5, 2020, from Econsultancy: https://econsultancy.com/30-brands-with-excellent-social-media-strategies/

University of Sydney. (2020). What are data analytics? Retrieved October 4, 2020, from FutureLearn.Com: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-social-media/1/steps/824163

Suggestions to Follow for a Cultural Company by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd

How do Politicians Use Social Media?

Just a collection of ethical thoughts

         A quite common practice in the lives of politicians is the use of social media to have a sort of online persona that can be easily spotted online by the assemblage of party followers. This does not mean that there is or will be some kind of open communication between this public figure, whose profile is probably managed by someone like a community manager, and people who are interested in listening to them or their detractors. From a mere ethical standpoint, it looks like their social media persona is vote-hunting or proselytizing for their opinions’ acceptance.

         Dr. Kajsa Falasca (n.d.) considers that “individual politicians may be active but [her] belief is that social media will be used like an ordinary advertising channel.” And it can be certain that if Twitter profiles, like the ones belonging to a country’s president, are there to pump out their message “and then let their followers do the work” (Falasca, n.d.), which in this case is to drop the bomb and see how followers and detractors “fight over” their points of view. For Dr. Mitchell Hobbs, these political public fugures should “use social media as direct communication with citizens” and for him “that’s its greatest strength and asset” (University of Sydney, 2020). However, seeing what happens with President Trump’s Twitter account, e.g., lots of bombs are dropped to stir up the media and cause a tactically prepared reaction, some would say. One expects to see dire repercussions arising when these bombs reach news networks that tend to tell people of shadows and forebodings of a obscure future coming ahead, but followers and detractors seem to enjoy the debate, each one definding their trench position.

         For Dr. Hobbs, “Tweets coming from politicians are open dialogues, especially if people answer to them” (University of Sydney, 2020). Nevertheless, though it is very desireable that people answer to them, what is expected is to see is an honest dialogue between the politician and people. But as put out before, oftentimes political parties “use the media as a channel for advertising” (Falasca, n.d.), and not as a channel to listen to the electorate and analyze what they expect from them even if there is a group of individuals managing a Twitter account that is not theirs. But on the other hand, what is commongly seen around here in Costa Rica with our political figures and opinion shapers, e.g., is what Dr. Falasca (n.d) has already pointed out for Sweden, “if a post has a great impact, it can be used and emphasised again and thus give the senders great publicity without actually doing a great deal themselves.” The job is done by the electorate debating over what wants to be re-shared and re-emphasized by politicians and their political parties. No such a thing as an open dialogue exists; what can be seen in the background are cunning and covetous social media strategists holding their blazing tourches to guide followers and detractors to “fight” their battles, to do their job.

         In the ideal world, messages coming from politicians in social media are open dialogues. For Dr. Hobbs (University of Sydney, 2020), tweets should be a great opportunity to a) communicate with the electorate, b) address vote casters’ issues and concerns, and c) hopefully win the electors’ votes. It looks like this is not exactly happening with every single politician in many nations across the glove when one gets to watch international news. At the international level, for instance, Trump’s Twitter account’s social media communication specialists follow Dr. Hobbs’ ideas, but not in terms of an open dialogue. As someone who follows President Trump in Twitter, never have I seen this dialogue taking place but a the fagots of firewood burning in CNN. And as pointed out before, in the case of Costa Rican politicians, the absence of dialogue and the honest and open exchange of ideas is not happening either. Whether this is done on purpose or not, what is being read between the lines here, following Rolland Barthes’ ideas, is not an open conversation but lots of secrecy.

         To sum up and trying to be ethically well-balanced, the guiding principle behind social media communication with citizens should be “to try to be authentic, to be charismatic, and to be likeable” (University of Sydney, 2020). What worries here is that as part of those indepent thinkers who do not follow political dogmas is that politicians are not genuine to their followers, lack charisma to guide the electorate, and engage with the wrong influencers. One gest to discover that a politicians authenticity is nebulously hazy; their so-called charisma is just a fuzzy, blurred façade that does not inspire any reliability on them. And in the case of influencers, knowing how these online personas work at times, they simply bias and sways people’s opinions to win votes for an employer, for an individual they hardly know as a political figure.

References

Falasca, K. (n.d.). How does the political parties use social media? Who is actually working for whom? Retrieved September 24, 2020, from Mid Sweden University: https://www.miun.se/en/Research/archive/how-do-the-parties-use-social-media-who-is-actually-working-for-whom/

University of Sydney. (2020). Politics and social media. Interview with Dr Mitchell Hobbs, University of Sydney. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from FutureLearn.Com: https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/ethical-social-media/1/steps/824157

How Do Politicians Use Social Media by Jonathan Acuña on Scribd