Social Media Resources
Considerations for Using Social Media
When your committee is thinking about using social media, you should consider several factors, including what platform is best for your committee’s targeted audience, if your committee has the capacity to maintain the account, and if creating a social media account helps further your committee’s goals. Below, you can find information about different social media platforms and their uses and benefits, as well as tips for maximizing their use.
Social Media Platforms Your Committee Should Consider Using
Facebook (Click here for a full guide to using Facebook)
Social media leader
Most suited for community engagement
Events function
Great for videos and curated content
High-resolution photos
Stories feature
Good for short-form video content
Youtube
Video sharing—short & long-form
Link to other social platforms
What Makes an Effective Post?
Has a Clear Goal
Makes Clear Who the Post Is For
Pro Tip: Share your posts to relevant groups/pages if available. These groups may have more followers and can get you more views and likes.
Asks for Engagement or Call to Action Don’t leave it to chance that your followers will know how you want them to engage with your content. Include an action ask in the descriptive text.
Includes a High-Quality Photo and a Link Photos, graphics, and videos get more engagement.
Pro Tip: Post a photo, and in the descriptive text, link to your blog or website, or a link to more information.
Is Brief, but Uses Compelling Language Shorter posts receive more “likes”, comments, and shares than longer posts. You can always link to your website to direct followers to more information.
Pro Tip: Make your descriptive text short and punchy. If possible, keep it to around 250 characters.
And don’t forget to post often! Posting at least a few times a week is ideal—the more active your page, the more likely users will see your posts. If your committee doesn’t have the capacity to post frequently, you may want to reconsider whether or not your committee should create a social media account.
Pro Tip: Many hands make light work. You can add multiple page administrators. You can also schedule posts in advance to go out at a certain time/date.
Post Ideas
Events including your monthly committee meetings, workshops, etc. (You can even Livestream them on Facebook!)
News articles about your campaigns or other stories related to climate and energy
Programs, funding opportunities, or events from other organizations
Campaign/project updates
Photos from events
Questions, polls, or surveys
Energy, transportation, efficiency tips (e.g. Energy Tip Tuesday, Transportation Tip Thursday)
Paid Posts
Paid posts can be a great way to grow viewership on a post. Most platforms have a way that you can pay to put your post in front of more people, this can be a very cost-effective way to grow your audience. Make sure that you are paying to promote posts that will have a broad appeal. Paid posts can be essential for starting a group and getting enough followers.
How to Improve Engagement
Cross-post your content to increase exposure. You can do this by:
A) Adapting the same content to post on multiple platforms
B) Finding other "pages" or "groups" that are active locally where you can share your posts.
C) Encouraging partner groups to share your content on their pages.
Post questions and ask people to answer the questions in the comments.
“Like” it when someone shares one of your posts or mentions you in a post.
Reply to all comments on your posts.
Use what’s worked in the past. Look at past posts that have received high engagement. If that’s what is resonating with your audience, post more of it.
Figure out when to post. Test different posting times to see when you get the highest engagement (you can analyze performance via your Facebook Page Insights).
If you have a website, include a link to your social media pages (and vice versa).