2/20/14 E-newsletters

At my internship today I got to work on content creation and the layout/compiling of BBBSCM’s February e-Newsletter in Constant Contact that will go out next Friday (last day of the month!). While I’ve worked in Constant Contact before, I mostly used the tool for holding distribution lists and for sending out company holiday cards—not e-newsletters.

However, I was largely in charge of the e-newsletter for the I&E program at Clark; I would create content as well as design the newsletter and customize it’s HTML—it’s part of how I started learning HTML, actually.

Back to BBBSCM! We’re working with a layout where there are 3 consecutive narrow sidebar blocks, and 2 consecutive “main” blocks. Here’s what we brainstormed for content today, all pertaining to February of course:

• Black History Month – tie into the national organization’s programs for African Americans
• Valentine’s Day – get a Little to craft a holiday card that we can photograph
• written content – the blog post I just posted the other day on BBBSCM’s blog
• video content – a video highlighting a notable match
• events – a preview/promo for our annual event in May
• sponsors – two sidebar blocks about sponsors and new community partners

Two other big things from today: I made an OFFICIAL BBBSCM YouTube channel, which also meant creating a Google+ page, and I set up a video interview with a match for Monday! I will link to the YouTube and Google+ accounts once they’re all set-up — I didn’t have time to add cover photos, company information, syncing accounts, etc., so once I do that I will be able to promote them more. And part of why I made this YouTube channel is in preparation for a video, and hopefully series of videos, on Big & Little matches (“Match Spotlights”) as well as other promotional material as part of BBBSCM’s new video content strategy (and our overall social media strategy).

Videography is one of my areas of expertise; when I was a videographer for the Marketing & Communications Department for nearly 4 years I would interview and film students about various subjects and then edit the footage and b-roll down to about 1-2 minute clips that would go on YouTube and into other admissions materials. So naturally, I’m very excited about our video content strategy. I have my own Kodak camcorder and associated software to make high quality videos for BBBSCM, and it gives me more real-world experience in videography as well as interviewing skills with children. I’ve never interviewed children before, but I am good at connecting with people (why do you think I’m a communications major?!) so I’m excited instead of nervous about it.

TGIalmostF!

2/13/14 Social Media, Documented.

Today I worked from home because it is a snowy, winter wonderland out there!

I continued work on the social media strategy for BBBSCM. When I wrote up the strategy yesterday, I liked how thorough it was, but something was off about it. It was too scattered. I had it broken up like this:

Objectives

Audience

Content Strategy

Networks

Timing

Staff

Interaction

Moderation

Measurement

Basically, dividing it up this way meant that under every section I had subsections of every single social media platform. This wasn’t working because it made the document appear scattered, all over the place, hard to read clearly. So today I focused on utilizing all this data I gathered and restructuring it. Here’s what I came up with:

Key Objectives

Microblogging

Social Networking

Blogging

Photo blogging

Video blogging

This system works well for a number of reasons. Firstly, starting with microblogging and ending with video blogging visually and clearly lets the reader know we are starting at the most concise form of media to the least concise. Also, under each heading, all the information is unified about each social media platform, i.e., Microblogging>Twitter>Tools, Schedule, Audience, Content Strategy, Audience Interaction Strategy, and Metrics. “Microblogging” serves as the umbrella under which ALL the relevant information is unified. In the first method, everything the reader wants to know about Twitter usage is disconnected under multiple headings. In this model, each major heading is constructed in the same format: Social Networking>Facebook>Schedule, Audience, Content Strategy, Audience Interaction Strategy, Metrics, etc. This consistency helps the social media strategy to be understood easily.

Lastly, I made a Microsoft Excel sheet for tracking the metrics for all of our social media. I divided the sheet up into blocks of 30 days (months) and set columns for things like: Date, Page Likes, Post Likes, Page Posts by Others, Comments, and Shares (Facebook). This will be used as a template to evaluate whether or not our social media strategy is making a difference in brand awareness (our key objective) and engagement.

Thanks for reading and Happy Valentine’s Day!

2/12/14 Strategy, Strategy, Strategy

Today I worked on two things, the blog post I’ve been editing and preparing, and best of all, I’ve begun working on BBBSCM’s social media strategy—which I’ve been really, really excited about.

I’ve never crafted a social media strategy before, but when I worked for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Department at Clark University for four years, we developed routines on-the-spot for posting on Facebook, Twitter, and other Clark channels, and I’ve always thought how satisfying it would be to have a concrete, written plan for how, when, where, why, and what posts should be posted. I knew we weren’t getting as much mileage out of social media as we could, so I’ve been really excited about this project for BBBSCM since I got the assignment my first day.

I jumped into the project by pretty much researching everything under the sun, my google searches included the following: “social media strategy”, “best times to post social media”, “different posts on each social network”, “how to use social media”, “social media for business”, “social media template”, “social media scheduled”, and so much more. I took a ton of notes and figured out what kinds of things were pertinent to BBBSCM.

Some of my considerations:

• Our main goal is creating brand awareness. Promotion, storytelling, getting volunteers, and getting donations all came secondary or were a means to an end.
• Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are our most important networks. We’ll use YouTube and our blog for content creation. Instagram and Vine will be used as necessary.
• We’ll post and track engagement daily.

I also found that each network had it’s own “peak” time for postings. Thus, I thought it would be best if we posted at three different times of the day, once per network, to get the best engagement and visibility possible. I began to write up rules around what kinds of posts are best for which network (Facebook and Google+= “long content”, Twitter= “short content, quick announcements, quick responses, sharability as key, etc.). I began to think about how we would handle positive and negative feedback, how we would vary our posts, and where we would get our content from. While it’s important for the majority of content to be original, it’s good too to post industry news, community news, worldwide news, or post things from other regional BBBS programs.

I am still in the process of my making my Social Media Strategy document clear, easy to understand, and comprehensive. I want to have examples for every kind of post (or near every) we can make, and I want there to be a solution for/reasoning behind every social media decision we make. My biggest goal for this Social Media Strategy project is that BBBSCM will have a template that can be longstanding, and of course developed and changed over time, but over all will be the framework for their social media for years to come. And also, I hope that I can truly create an increase in brand awareness and engagement. This would be a great feat for me because as a entrepreneur, creating buzz is essential for success, and social media is paramount for creating buzz. If I were to have a real impact on BBBSCM’s buzz, I feel like I would be able to apply this strategy to the business I’m launching, or some other business I’ll be working on years down the line.

Tomorrow I’ll be working more on this strategy document. I really could not be any more thrilled to do it. Here’s to my second true love: social media.

2/10/14 First Site Visits!

Today I got acquainted with BBBSCM’s social media accounts, such as; their WordPress blog. I learned about the kinds of things they blog about, what every blog post gets checked for before it’s posted, and I even prepared a blog post for posting.

Obviously, blogging is a passion of mine, so this was a breeze.

Then, I went with Match Support Specialist Junior to two meeting sites: Great Brook Valley and Plumley Village. I shadowed Junior at these sites, meeting the site-specific coordinators and getting a feel for what exactly the relationship is like between Bigs and Littles. It was amazing to see how enthusiastic the Littles are to see their Bigs, to see Junior, and to get matched with a Big if they haven’t already. I saw so many smiling faces today, it was awesome. Junior also introduced me to one or two matches that had been together for a number of years. These matches will make for great interviewees for a match profile on our blog or a video on our YouTube page (a strategy I am developing as well).

I have a better understanding now of why BBBSCM has the impact that it does. When you see how excited and happy these Littles are, you know right then and there BBBSCM is making a difference, even if all it does is bring them a bit more happiness (fortunately, the benefits of BBBSCM far exceed just happiness!). I cannot wait to start my first story on a match. I think I will bring strong skills in videography and writing to BBBSCM and tell these stories in a powerful, persuasive way.