Susan Thares

03/13/2013

Social Media Policies & Effective Strategies

Things To Consider Before You Begin

• What are you solving for?• Who is the audience you want to reach?• What does your customer want/need from you?• Engagement or one-way communication?• Where does your audience engage on social media?• What constitutes success?• What resources ($$ and people) are available?• Identifying key stakeholders in your organization• Leverage other government resources

Policy Components• Purpose• Scope

• Who does it apply to

• Background & Definition• Defining social media/digital engagement & benefits of using it for your agency• How is relates to and advances your agency mission

• Roles & Responsibilities• Who is authorized to speak in an official capacity• Approval processes

• Policy Specifics• Access• Account Management• Acceptable Use• Legal Requirements• How it’ll be managed/Governance

Creating Policy

Internal Use Guidelines• Follow all applicable government & agency policies• Disclose only publicly available information• Don’t use your status to discuss overly personal info• Show respect & professionalism• Respect other’s privacy• Correct misinformation or mistakes• Avoid political statements

Creating Policy

External Use Guidelines• Comment Policy• Linking Policy• External link evaluation criteria• Disclaimer of endorsement• If you receive PII

Creating Policy• Obtain Terms of

Service for all Third-Party Apps you plan to use

• Get approval from OGC

• Familiarize yourself with the latest records management, privacy and security guidelines

• Leverage all the great resources on HowTo.gov

Making them available…

First Steps to an Effective Strategy

Starting your Strategy• Listen online for questions, comments, information gaps

around your products and services• Wade through the noise, look for good nuggets and don’t take it

personally

• Creating content is key• Write in plain language, inject some humor and go beyond text

based content• Link back to resources on your websites• Build an inventory of content before you start and determine how

often you are going post

• Metrics• What to measure and how to report it• Adjusting as you go

Leverage

Listen

Learn

Online customer listening is essential to a successful social media strategy

Create Relevant Content

Monitor Trends

Identify Key Customer Issues

Listen

Leverage Resources

• Include a variety of links to your websites, resources and blogs

• Create visual collateral (video, photos, infographics)

• Create a content calendar• Repurpose content when you can• Retweet relevant info from the White House, other

agencies and other parts of your agency

• Establish some basic metrics• Review metrics regularly and adjust accordingly

(e.g. # posts/tweets, time of day, days of the week, etc.)

• What content resonated most with your audience• Test different ways to communicate a message

(e.g. use different tweet headlines that link to the same blog)

• Create FAQ spreadsheet with corresponding answers in Facebook and Twitter formats

Learn

Sample FAQ document

Have Fun with It

StudentAid.gov Homepage

16

Facebookwww.facebook.com/FederalStudentAid

17

Facebook Post Examples

18

Twitterwww.twitter.com/FAFSA

19

Twitter Post Example

20

Shortened link to info on StudentAid.gov

The more the merrier…

21

YouTube

22

www.youtube.com/FederalStudentAid

Some of our YouTube Playlists

23