Taking a closer look at social media

We’ve talked a lot about social media so far and now is the time to take a closer look at it.  First, a warning.  If you’re here for tutorials on how to use social media then you’re in the wrong place.  I’m not going to give you tutorials on how to use each platform because I’ve made that mistake before!  Back in 2013 I wrote the official Facebook guidelines for the Ramblers Association, which gave the volunteers who ran the local Ramblers groups a step-by-step guide to setting up Facebook pages and all the benefits of communicating with their members on this quickly growing platform.  It was a really good document, but was distributed two months before Facebook made one of the most significant design overhauls of its user interface to date!  Trust me, people soon get frustrated when a guide tells them to click a button and that button has been moved to a completely different screen.  I’ve even written social media how-to tutorials and guidebooks that were obsolete before we even got them back from the printers.

So I’m going to focus on the why over the how.  But don’t fear – the internet is overflowing with brave individuals who stay on the treadmill of keeping their social tutorials up to date.  So if there’s something I mention that you want to try, simply Google it or head over YouTube to watch someone show you where the right buttons are at this moment in time.

Saying that though, the best way to learn any social media platform is to just jump in and start using it yourself.  You might have heard great things about Instagram but don’t know where to start.  Just download the app onto your phone, follow the almost idiot-proof instructions and within three clicks you will be seeing some familiar faces and brands.  Find a friend or family member who uses it and get them to walk you through the basics, then commit to spending some time on it every day to see how companies use the platform.  You might not have the first clue about YouTube, so go and find brands that have a similar voice to your company and see what they are uploading.  If you have children, ask them who they are following and learn how different brands and influencers develop their own unique voices, and how they keep people going from one bit of content to another.

Find the people or vegan brands that you want to be like and spend time observing what they do on social.  Go to their website and follow the links to their social media pages and see how the content ties into their wider campaigns.