There’s been more change in the last six months than the last decade but when was the last time you took stock?
The Holy Trinity of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have been the three default social channels with the public sector since 2010.
But video is more than YouTube, Facebook has evolved and Twitter is now renamed as X with hate on the platform rising.
It’s high time to take a hard re-evaluation of what you are doing.
‘What should I be doing?’
‘What about TikTok? Or Threads?’
‘What do the algorithms say?’
If you feel slightly overwhelmed by this you would be entirely forgiven. It’s a big world out there and the pace of change is rapid.
I’ve run many social media reviews and it’s my job to look at trends and spot which are relevant for you and which are not.
I’m running a Zoom session for the Public Sector Comms Headspace group where I’ll talk about how to carry out your own and what to look for.
DIARY NOTE: The session for Public Sector Comms Headspace members will be on 15.8.23 at 12pm. You can sign-up here.
Four phases of a social media review
Each review is different because each organisation is different with different resources and audiences.
- Your audiences
First up is working out who your partners are, your traditional media, the business audience you may have, your minorities. This is the basics around who you’d like to talk to.
- Your demographic audiences
Second is looking at your audiences. The age of your audience will dictate what channels they are likely to be using.
If you’re in the UK, you need to look at UK data rather than homogenised global data which is often available. Ofcom is your friend for this and sits on a pile of useful insight you need to dig out.
Your audience is going to be pretty unique to you. If you take one thing from the Ofcom data is that the landscape is very fractured. This part may give you the data to highlight channels you are not using but need to. Equally, there may be channels to dial back from.
A review of your Facebook groups is useful at this point. The data I’ve collected would show that there are between six and 12 Facebook community group memberships per head of population. Facebook groups can be community noticeboards that serve a town, village, housing estate or postcode can often be a vital way to reach people in that community.
- Your channel performance
How your existing channels are performing is also useful. There may be things you are doing well and things you are doing badly. Engagement rates using the Adobe metrics is a good way to see how effective your content is performing.
- Your report
This pulls it all together with a series of recommendations around the channels you are using, the channels you may need to use, the channels you need to step back from and advice on how to use the channels.
It’s all based on data rather than powered by fear and what someone has read that morning. It puts you back in charge again, basically. So you can look good in front of your boss and their boss.
Drop me a line if you’d like to chat – I’m dan@danslee.co.uk – and I’ll see you at the session.