Being part of the generation Y, the
use of social media was regarded as "easy" for me. Since the beginning
of Public Relations studies, we have learned the theories and importance of using
social media in PR and it was (for me personally) way simple as “keep it short,
simple and precise”. Yet in the real world of work, behind the scene of keeping
content “short, simple and precise” lots of hard work resides.
I thought that managing social media contents were not so
complicated. After all, posting news, entertaining and grabbing the attention of
audiences did not sound that difficult, I was wrong. My internship at Flymates revealed that I was actually completely off track about it.
Regular contents formation demands lots of time and daily researches.
And while having audiences’ attention was quite easy sometimes, keeping their attention
was way more difficult as Flymates uses social media to not only promote their
image and keep in touch with stakeholders but also to drive traffic to their
website. Therefore, I learned that applying PR in social media is paramount for
any businesses as I observed that it acts subliminally. However the quality of
the posts must be up to the level.
I realized that strategic
planning and timeline applies for everything, even for scheduling of content
when it comes to social media. And having “likes” and “comments” on a post
after much work is way satisfying.
What I learned so far:
- · The world of social media is constantly upgrading itself and to be able to grab audiences’ interests, businesses should evolve together with the social media features.
- · Apart from researches, a post should hold consistent content and be as far as possible creatively presented.
- · Strategies and goals should be set up prior to posts and constant monitoring is important.
- · Published posts should not only be newsworthy but should also be introduced in a social media friendly way.
Finally, keeping contents “short, simple and precise” stays fundamental. I will never ever again qualify social media as "easy" again after the insights gained at Flymates.
I hope my posts helps and till then thank you for reading.
Doralie.
Charles Telfair Institute.
Doralie.
Charles Telfair Institute.
5 comments:
I absolutely love this post Doralie!
We are from the same generation and reading it made me think you were talking about myself.
I can totally relate.
Awaiting your next post .. Until then keep up the good work !
Hey!
Yes totally understand and agree, I'm going through the same thing at my placement. It's not just the obvious things you post about like products, services by the company and the events happening to engage stakeholders. I discovered that each week there is a theme at my placement, this involves research into everything. A few hours at least is spent to get that perfect quote, picture, fact or statistic and if you can't find it, you create it from scratch.
ThenYou need to run everything by your supervisors and co-workers to be approved. This approval is a long process sometimes with every word, picture and resource checked to ensure it's true, reflects the organisation's values, works with their theme and is engaging enough. If one of these elements is not satisfactory, you start all over again.
I agree social media is not that straightforward. That content is out forever so you as a team member need to but a lot of work into every post. Although I find that if you ask the questions and stop wondering or guessing then, the process will be much quicker.
Great job so far!
Dear Doralie,
I so like the mentioning of us being part of the generation ‘Y’. Indeed, many are those (Including me) who believe that the work of social media managers and online community managers are effortless and demand nothing extraordinary, as long as they are keeping their firms’ SN pages alive.
Working with the community manager of Move For Art Ltd proved me wrong. There is a lot more behind those entertaining posts which only demand attention from the audience. For instance, our Social Media posts target people of different generations, lifestyles and cultures. For that reason, at Move For Art Ltd, we always strive to incorporate different language-styles in our posts. Moreover, taking into account that the Creole is our mother-tongue language, we never fail in slotting in some famous slangs. However, I have to admit that coming up with impactful posts in Creole is very complicated since all Mauritians have their own Creole writing style. Going through the Creole dictionary not a fun task at all. Also, proof-read, proof-read, and proof-read! Because you are not allowed to leave behind grammatical mistakes that will lessen the credibility of your organisation and eventually tarnish its reputation.
Furthermore, I absolutely love the team work behind! Photographer, Interviewer, Content-producer, Writer, Designer, Proof-reader, all work together to give rise to the participatory culture (In other words: Attract likes, comments and shares).
And, I forgot to mention the importance of a SN Posts schedule so as to keep a consistency. This helps in building loyalty: with time the audience knows when you would be posting.
Hello Doralie,
Reflecting back on what I've done at Elite Voyage reminds me how deplorable I was when drafting texts on its website. You are right! We form part of the generation Y; but how many of us can say they can maintain and draw the attention of viewers even if we pretend to use social networking sites everyday? This goes far beyond anything I could ever imagine. Personally, I see things simple like that; "contents should be clear and simple, skillfully drafted which will presumably be sold if potential buyers would pay for."
Managing websites is not only to publish numerous contents online which at the end can result in confusion. There is a panoply of things which come behind. For instance, before publishing I need to ensure articles are proof-read since the promulgation of information can harm the corporate image of the company. Articles should not be copied from fact sheets which are against the norms of Elite and vigorous research on Seychelles.
Though it is a mundane task, I agree with you that the increased level of interaction each day is pretty encouraging as you feel that people love what you do.
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