posted on February 13, 2009 18:57
By Joe Borgstrom, Director
Specialized Technical Assistance
& Revitalization Strategy Division
Michigan State Housing Development Authority
Last fall, the Michigan Downtown Conference was lucky enough to have social media gurus Marianna Hayes and Andy Chapman from Team HALO as our keynote speakers. Their presentations on the new wave of social media created a lot of excitement among conference goers. As I sat in the back of the room ferociously taking notes, I knew right away we at the Michigan Main Street Center @ MSHDA needed to be at the forefront. Almost overnight (literally), Michigan downtown organizations began to pop up on Facebook. Within a few weeks, the MMSC@MSHDA had a Facebook group (now a fan page), a blog, a LinkedIn group, and even a Twitter account. Trust me, folks, we are ON the social media forefront. We even got props from the folks in the Buckeye State (and you know how much they like us.)
There was only was problem: With all these platforms, how were we going to keep things fresh and new without making it a full-time job? One of the most important things we were told during the aforementioned sessions was the need to keep content current. A Facebook page or blog with old information on it said more negative about your cause then none at all. I personally had already written three posts and was starting to wonder how I was going to keep up. We’ve now been doing this for nearly four whole months (which is like 4 YEARS in Internet time) and I think we have a pretty good system in place. Here are a few tips your downtown organization can use to keep your social media current:
Spread the Work Around- Though you may want to have only one person as the key contact person for your social media platforms, the content can be generated by multiple people. Here at the MMSC@MSHDA, our staff has been taking turns writing blogs (Ok, I’ve taken more then my share, but we do take turns.) A few weeks ago we reached out to one of our Advisory Committee members, Nancy Finegood, and asked her to write one for us. We are just now scratching the surface on having folks from outside our staff write too. This does a couple of things: 1) Spreads the work around. 2) Increases the audience for your blog and 3) gives you a great opportunity to allow a partners (or board members) to have the spotlight. Nancy did a great job and she was honored to be asked. We both won.
Search Engines Are Your Friend- We set up “Google Alerts” around our program and staff names. If anything gets posted on the web, especially from news sites, we know almost immediately. We then post as a new note or link on our social media platforms. Viola! Third party content that gives additional credibility and coverage to our programs while providing minimal effort on our end.
Don’t Assume the Users of One Site Use All of Them- One of the things I’ve been the most surprised about is the number of people who belong to only one of our platforms. Granted, some belong to multiple or all of them, but a surprisingly few. Furthermore, the audience tends to be different, especially between Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook tends to be community volunteers, urban planning students, and downtown enthusiasts, while LinkedIn are more the economic and community development professionals. We make sure that when we post a new blog, article or photos we let everyone on every platform know. We don't feel like we have to create different content for each platform.
Stay on Top of It- It is really easy to put updating this stuff off. When you do, it becomes an hour or two hour job instead of 10 or 15 minutes a day. Be tenacious about doing something little everyday.
While this isn't maintenance related, you should also look to promote your social media in everyday ways. Our staff include links to each platform as a part of our email signatures below our contact information.
I hope this helps. By all means this isn’t an “end-all-be-all.” We’d love to hear your tips and tricks to. Feel free to post below!