Restatring your social media program

Some readers have asked me about how to restart posting to their FACEBOOK PAGE when the page is dormant or just sporadically used. The concern seemed to be that a lot of effort had gone into creating material when the page was being kept up and could they use any of that material again.

Well, it would have been better just to keep posting to the page regularly but it is never too late to reinvigorate a FACEBOOK PAGE. Now to answer your questions-

1. Yes, you can reuse non-time sensitive material. I have been working with an organization that used to be very active on Facebook and always posted on “Throw Back Thursdays.” They also used to do what they called “Mystery Monday. “ TBT material is pretty evergreen, and you can use it numerous times. Just make sure you are spreading it out throughout the year and adding some new material for variety.

The “Mystery Monday” idea used interesting archival photos that the organization had little or no information concerning. Simply, ask your followers to post any information they may know about the photos back to the social media platform. It is a clever engagement strategy for your followers.

The trick in either of these cases is to be sure you devote some staff time to replying to comments and letting your followers know about any successes you have in identifying the pictures or people in them.

2. To keep your page current, plan on posting something every day. Staying up to date is not as hard as it might seem if you do two things:

a. Create at least two weeks of evergreen text.

By this, I mean things like the Throw Back Thursday and Mystery Monday. Also, create posts that directly promote aspects of your organization. If you have an official “Fact Sheet” about the organization, each of those facts can be a starting point for a post. Something like “Did you know that XXX AGENCY has programs in 5 counties throughout the state?” or “XXX students got their first taste of Shakespeare at our student matinees last year. Because of support from XXXXXX.” The last one gives you the chance to promote your organization and one of your corporate supporters. It is a win-win.

b. Work with your program areas to create the new posts.

This job may sound daunting but in reality everyone wants to tell people about the good things they are doing. I’d bet that some of your program staff are already posting about their work but to their own personal pages.

To make it easy, create a calendar and assign a week or month to each program. That will be the period that your Facebook post will spotlight that particular program. It doesn’t mean that is the only time that the program can submit post material to you. Try and encourage programs to send you anything that they feel might be of interest any time.

I know what you are thinking - how will you ever keep track of all this material? Social media is not my only job. I have a few suggestions first just open a word processing document and start writing your post. You could also create them in a spreadsheet where column one is for the date the post will go out and the next column for the post text. The best way to do it is to use an aggregator program like Hootsuite.

Hootsuite is an excellent program that allows you to build out days, weeks or months of posts in a single session. The program is relatively easy to use. You add your social media feeds – did I mention it can help you with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube and about a dozen other social media platforms. It is easy to use, and the best part - it is free depending on the number of feeds you want to set up.

Using a program like Hootsuite would allow you to spend 30 minutes a week keeping your Facebook Page up to date. The important thing is just to get started. Don’t let the idea of keeping your page up to date stop you from starting. You could create a schedule where you start off posting twice a week and then build on up to daily posting. Allocate 30 minutes when you first come to work to work on your social media presence.

I am confident with a little allocated time and preplanning you can keep your Facebook page up to date.