Tag Archives: social media review

PAGE REVIEW: What do you do with your social media if your organisation merges with another? 

When there’s a change of borders for an organisation there needs to be a change of borders for the socials too. So here’s some questions to ask.

Changes in the NHS and changes in parts of local government. We’re seeing some of the biggest changes for 50 years.

But what should a comms team do?

Well, there’s a long list of tasks to do. Not least explain the changes to residents who generally don’t care so long as there’s a GP appointment or have their bins collected.

To merge pages or not to merge?

Here’s a scenario for you.

The county of Oxdown had five councils. There was a county council and four towns each with their own District Council.

Under changes, there’s going to be just two councils. From now on, East Oxdownshire and West Oxdownshire will take shape. 

First things first, do you even want to have a single page for this new organisation?

The attraction is a single digital footprint which can be your new font of all knowledge. But the downside is that your Facebook page may now be unbalanced. They will have more people from one area than the other. 

So, do you keep the existing pages? That could get messy. 

Here’s some practical tips for each of the main platforms.

Realistically, the key to making this work is to keep the page admins on board. If someone leaves with the keys to the account then this can throw a spanner into the works. There’s a risk that a disgruntled member of staff can not just fail to pass on the admin rights but to leave with a send off.

On LinkedIn

I’m starting with the business-focused platform as that seems the easiest to tackle.

Good news. If two organisations merge there’s a way to merge pages.

Both pages need to be of the same name and have the same super admin. That’s an admin with the maximum levels of admin rights.

You can merge a secondary page into the main page. The second page’s followers will be added to the first but the content won’t go with it. 

There’s some useful notes on what to do on merging LinkedIn pages here.

On Facebook

Good news. This can be done but there are hoops for you to jump through.

On X (formerly Twitter)

Bad news. You can’t merge accounts. 

Overcoming the Facebook imbalance

One NHS Trust I worked with hafd merged with another. They kept their Facebook page and renamed it. The only problem they were now lopsided. They had 95 per cent of their page followers coming from one half of the new area.

The way to tackle that was simple. Firstly, it’s the Facebook group approach I keep banging on about. Post to the page and then share to the Facebook groups in the area where they have no followers. 

Secondly, its Facebook ads. Yes, I know you’d rather not but if you need to get a message out and the benefit to the organisation is more than the ad budget you are in the black.

Creativity is the key. 

On Instagram

Bad news. You can’t merge accounts. This is to stop follower manipulation. So, you’ll have to pick one and mothball the other.

Pick an account, any account 

If two councils merge and there’s two library services you need to be thinking about what route to take. There’s the route of merging pages. But the practicalities may make this impossible. So which one will you pick as the flag bearer?

Mothballing and redirecting accounts

The internet is littered with ghost social media profiles that have run out of steam. There is a list of reasons for this. Sometimes it’s because the admin has moved on. Maybe they’ve  metaphorically threw the keys to the page into the canal on the way out. Or maybe the organisation has become defunct and nobody bothered.

When an organisation stops operating there’s absolutely a need to review what pages there are and bring to a close their usefulness.

Mothball 

For me, mothballing is better than deletion. There may be a need to refer back to previous comments and coverage. Besides, deleting an account may allow someone else to take that handle for themselves.

This example of London Midland Railway shows how to do it. Sign off then signpost to the next account. 

Perfect.

For more, I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape. 

ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS

ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER

ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONSESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.

SOCIAL REVIEW: Why this ONS tool is really useful

I’ve blogged before as to why social media reviews are a really good idea but I’ve not gone into the tools I use often.

So, here’s a webtool that’s just been published that I’m really taking a shine to.

It’s ONS’s interactive portal for the 2021 England & Wales which you can find here.

This tool will give you astonishingly rich data not just by country but by local authority area, ward and also sub-areas of each ward.

You can use the tool to find age demographics, which of 22 languages is their first language, if they were born in the UK, their national identity, housing, work, education and a pile of other fields, too.

Here’s two key things to look at…

Age demographics

For a social media review, age demographics can be especially useful in building up a picture of how old people are. Use this in conjunction with Ofcom social media data which links age with preferred social media channels. This will give you pointers into which channels people are using. From there, you can tell if you are focusing in the right places.

Nationality and language

Having an idea of nationality and language can help you see if you are talking in the right language to reach people. For example, there’s a big Yemeni community in Dudley who came over in the 1960s. There’s 0.29 per cent who have Arabic as a first language. In Brent, this figure is 3.2 per cent. If you know people’s preferred languages you can better understand if your comms is reaching the right place.

Of course, a conversation with the councils equalities team to understand the best way to reach people would be a next step. But the ONS tool gives you a starting place.

The tool covers England & Wales. It’ll be interesting to see how Scotland and Northern Ireland present their data.

SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEW: Using radio station data in your review

I blogged a short while ago about the importance of running a social media review. One thing to do while doing this is to look at radio data, too.

Ofton radio stations are not juist a radio station but they’ve also got a social media footprint, too.

A key tool in assessing the importance of a radio station are RAJAR figures. You can find 2022’s 4th quarter figures here for example.

Local to me is BBC Radio WM, for example. In an area where 2.3 million live they reach 239,000 or 10 per cent of the population.

That’s great for listeners but they also have a Facebook page here with 49,000 likes. Scroll through and tyou’ll see the kind of content that they’ll post. Here, there’s 23 Facebook updates in seven days. That’s roughly three a day. Way behind something like the Birmingham Post & Mail – or Birmingham Live online – who post up to 60 times a day. Much of WM’s content cross promotes what is on BBC Sounds, rather than fresh news. As a comms person, I’d place them on the map online but I’d be keener to influence the radio schedule.

But who is the audience? For BBC Local Radio 58 per cent are aged over 55. That can really help you pin down not just the radio station’s audience but the potential audience you can tap into.

Always, look at things afresh rather than do things because you’ve always done it.

For more information about SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEWS head here.

ASK CONTENT: Questions you need to ask during the social media review you’ve been putting off

Look after social media accounts? There are a series of questions you need to ask and depending on the answers you may need to delete the account.

Over the past few year we’ve run a series of comms reviews on organisations. Social media has formed part of that. We’ll look at how well they are performing and give advice. Often people know they need to but don’t always have the time or the expertise.

Just recently we ran a survey over on comms2point0 with Musterpoint about the number of accounts operated by different organisations. If you missed the study you can find it here.

What stuck out was the number of social media accounts operated by different sectors. You can see the findings here:

The optimum number of social media accounts for an organisation

It got me to thinking about what the optimum number of accounts for an organisation was. Really that depends on the organisation. It depends on its staff and it depends upon who is the audience.

In the comms2point0 survey, the stats for fire, police and ambulance really stuck out. On average each service has almost 50 social media accounts. Very often they are frontline staff, teams or stations. A local face for the service can work well.

That’s fine.

But once a year at least I think every organisation needs to take a long hard look at itself just to check if they are on the right path. If you are responsible for an organisation’s social media footprint that means asking some tough questions and yes, it’ll mean going through the accounts forensically.

Some questions to ask during a social media review

What are the channels? Make a list of all the accounts attributed to an organisation.

Who has access? It sounds straight forward but so many organisations don’t keep a list of those with access or their email address. Let alone store that in one place where it can be easily accessed.

When was the last time they were updated? Look to see how active they’ve been. An account gathering dust probably isn’t much use.

How many times did they post content in the last seven days? It’s a simpole metric but it gives a snapshot.

How many replies did they get? Again, a simple metric but the more activity there is shows how engaged poeople feel with it. Engagement is good.

How many replies did they respond with? But once people engage with it you need to take a look at how they are responding. An account that blanks all people’s questions isn’t a good one.

What’s the balance of content? I’ve argued for a long time that an 80 – 20 split is desirable. The 80 is the human content that’s the bright picture or the meme. The 20 is the call to action. Mess this up at your peril.

Are they embeded on the right webpage? It’s fine having an account that speaks on behalf of a team. Or even an individual from that team. But is that account embeded in the relevant page on the organisation’s website?

Do they help tackle the organisation’s aims? In other words, do they make a difference and help important people sleep at night? Can this be quantified?

When you carry out your social media review, you’ll find some surprises. Very often, you’ll find a third of the accounts in an organisation are prospering, a third need a helping hand and a third probably need closing down. Don’t shirk at closing down accounts if they need to be closed.

So, don’t go for big numbers. Go for the right numbers.

Shout if I can help. I’m dan@comms2point0.co.uk or @danslee.

Picture credit: Johnny Silvercloud / Flickr.

 

 

.

 

 

 

 

 

Exit mobile version