Using social media to get your message across
The increasing usage of social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like) present a new opportunity for campaigning groups to use these sites as tools.
How can supporters' trusts use them to their advantage? Have they replaced more traditional forms of communicating and campaigning, or are they complementary? We'll be exploring some of these questions, and taking a look at some of the ways you can use these fast-developing tools to your advantage in your campaigns, to communicate with the wider fanbase - and the challenges they can present to organisations like supporters' trusts.
Before we start I thought I’d remind your of the #Hashtag for the Supporter’s Direct Annual Conference is #Sdvision.Hopefully, this presentation will give you a few points on social media including Twitter.
Basically, there are two questions: where and how do I get involved in social media?You need to understand where is the best place to communicate with like minded and then how. How do I make this a reality.For instance, what type of social media platform do supporters congregate at? Is it forums, websites, blogs, Facebook? You guys will have a better understanding of the most appropriate platforms to engage on.How do I create a community/hub for people to gather at?
Is social media the shining light?There has been an awful lot written about social media in the last decade. However, in reality the internet has enabled supporters to do the things supporters have always done...argue, chat, agree and argue.But social media allows supporters to do this wherever, instantly, cheaply and to a greater audience
Social media can be used to great effect by people at the grassroots level, the supporters. By this I mean it can be used as a meeting point for people passionate about a cause. It has been described as having a democratizing affect.
Here are a couple of UK stats why you might want to consider using social media. The stats are for those people who have access to the web.
Social media can provide you with a place to congregate, communicate and mobilise quickly, easily and cheaply around a cause.Hopefully, these tools can help you to achieve your goals as an organisation, campaign for greater influence at your clubs, and hold club directors & owners to account
Essentially, what I’m talking about is the genuine stakeholders, the supporters creating a presence that holds people to account, the owners. Or how those with stakes in their clubs can use social media to be open and communicate quickly and transparently with the group.Here is probably one of the best examples I can think of. It’s not football related, but TheyWorkForYou was built mostly by volunteers and is a tool for political campaigners that aggregates content from the Hansard records of the House of Commons, House of Lords, Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly, along with other publicly available data such as the MPs Register of Members' Interests, election results, Wikipediaentries, and voting records, providing a "digital dossier on your local MP".
Social media before social media!Even if you don’t have your own, why not have a presence on existing ones?Speak to the moderators, get them onside, work with them and collaborate.Mutually beneficial relationship.Low barrier to entry, part of a community, Difficult in becoming an essential part. The advantage of a forum is they have a large following.You won’t get everyone in a forum on your side, may get some trolling. Weaknesses of argument may be exposed, but allows to refine. Forums can be a good sounding board.Migrate people over to your community, contact a large number, sounding board, garner support.
Applying the same principles as forums but to a different platform.Same characteristics, passionate person/group of people rallying around a cause.It gives you more space to share, a lot more visual.Forums are often associated, but not the main topic.
wordpresscheap,great way to have conversation, not a community, good tool to report newsgood SEOIt’s just like a fanzine, but it’s cheaper and easier to reach a wider audience, can interact with the contentIt’s sharableRange of content typesKnow your objectivesIt’s upto you how you use it! You don’t HAVE to use it, but it’s another optionGreat for broadcasting news and opinion and generating conversation around an issue. It’s great for facilitating the development of a community, but it isn’t the community.
Different options for Facebook:Pages – great for establishing a presenceGroups – Perfect for cause related activityCommunity not publicity reasons, one is a result of the otherLarge amount of people can be easily contactedCost – cheap to setupExpertise – don’t need an understanding of codeBreaks down barrier to sign up – it’s intrinsically an opt-in processfreeease of entrycontact large number of peoplecommiunity for people to meetYou don't need sign up forms
Recording your club’s history as it happensPractical, good for cArchive, searchable, heritage, cheap, Supporters are the club’s heritatgeFamily ties
At the very least it can be used to share information and news Shortened URLs to allow easy sharingHashtags to allow easy trackingCan act as a signpostbe used to create conversationengage with othersfree, embedQuick mention of Twitter clients, can update instantly, immediate communication via mobile
More barriers to entry and time consuming, but a great place to upload contentUse their technological know how to make your life easier!Easy to embed on other websites and blogs, tag to make it findable and build a community around commentsThere are of course alternatives, why not check out Vimeo?
Scribd is a great way to upload and share documents, such as club zines, in PDF form (there’s also Issuu)It’s also a great place to store documents in a social wayYou can comment and embed documents into websites and blogs
The aim of Newcastle United Supporters Trust (The Trust) and its partners proposal is to acquire 100 per cent of the ownership in Newcastle United Football Club.The Trust believes in the democratic representation at NUFC by its fans and the model of ownership will reflect this.Twitter, Facebook, website, private network
Listening to what’s being said is just as important as talking….Create an alert to hear verytime a phrase about your club is mentioned online, tools such as Google RSS reader allow you to do this easilyIt’ll give you an understanding of what is being said about your organisation, your club and who is doing the talkingCreate an alert to hear everytime a phrase is mentioned onlinegives you an understanding of what is being said about your organisation
Remember to make your content easy to find in search enginesTag appropirately, get the appropriate website, image hosting and blogs namesMake sure titles and first sentences mention the topic you’re talking aboutMake content sharable and engaging by allowingretweets and commentsRemember to make your content searchabletagvanity URLensure the title and first sentence mention the topicmake content sharable
Google Docs and Huddle gives you a secure online space to connect, share and work with other people. Huddle is hosted, there’s no software to download and it’s free to get started. With Huddle you can
Find out what talents and skills your community has.You never know you may have a budding camerman, web designer or sound technician willing to help.