Hi
Everyone! I have been undertaking my internship at The Blue Room Theatre and
thought I would provide an update about the work I have done on their
social media, particularly their Facebook page.
Like most uni students in their early twenties, I
would consider myself pretty social media savvy. Most of us use it everyday
(sometimes it feels like I am literally on Facebook all day!). So naturally, I
thought managing the social media of The Blue Room Theatre would be a breeze.
What I discovered though, is that social media in the PR and business world is
not as simple as what I thought. Rather, it takes a lot of thought and planning
to turn a Facebook page into a strategic business tool where you can engage
with stakeholders, your target audience and potential business partners.
It’s all
about what you post….
Firstly, you must have content to have a strong
Facebook page and social media presence. One of my weekly tasks was to surf the
web and social media for any potential developments or news within the arts world
that we could use. Sometimes this would be challenging, as it would feel like
there was not a lot meaningful content out there! So at times it required some creativity,
as you would have to search beyond the standard news websites to find
content.
when you
post….
Having approximately 6-7 posts a week was the ideal
amount of content at The Blue Room. It was also important to schedule these
posts so they would appear at optimum times when our audience was online.
and how you
post!
It’s not as easy as you would think to craft the
perfect Facebook post or Tweet! What I learnt is that it is best to make it
short and sweet, use a lot of tags/hashtags and have an eye-catching image to
support your post.
Social
Media can also help build relationships
The content we did use however allowed us to build
relationships with other theatres and arts organisations around Perth. For
example, if we posted about an event or performance that was being run by a
different organisation, it was likely that in the future they would post
something about us on their Facebook page. There were also occasions when I
emailed other organisations and asked them to promote some of The Blue Room
Shows, and in return, we promoted their work. This showed me that social media
can help foster relationships with mutual benefits between organisations in the
same industry.
Engagement
Is Important
Encouraging your audience to like, comment and share
your posts is also crucial. Competitions and incentives is an effective way to
achieve this. The Blue Room would regularly have giveaways on their Facebook
page in order to promote engagement amongst their audience.
Post on
other organisation’s Facebook Page
At one point during my internship, The Blue Room was
seeking applications for their Summer Nights Program, which is run during the
Perth Fringe World Festival. With the goal of seeking international applicants,
I posted on the Facebook walls of Fringe World Festival’s from around the world
(particularly those in Europe and USA) and promoted our program. This
surprisingly worked quite well, and we received a number of replies and direct
messages from international applicants and the Fringe World Festivals
themselves! Therefore, this is definitely a tactic I would use in the
future.
Overall, it has been very interesting to see first hand just how
valuable Social Media is to organisations today and the many ways which we can
use it in Public Relations. I have learnt a lot monitoring and generating
content for The Blue Room Theatre’s Facebook, which I am excited to put into
practice in my future career!
3 comments:
Thanks for sharing Kaitlyn! I am currently monitoring and generating content for a client's social media pages. I've found sometimes creating original content can be difficult for a business, have you experienced this same problem? Have you found that since you have been working on the social media pages your social media pages have increased in popularity? I've found that by linking both Facebook and Instagram accounts together our popularity has further increased instead of just using Facebook as the predominate tool. Is the Blue Room's Facebook page more popular than Instagram?
This was a really interesting read Kaitlyn! I'm currently generating posts for my client's social media accounts with an emphasis on their employees to show how much they pride themselves on cultivating a supportive yet efficient environment. How did you and The Blue Room decide that posting 6-7 posts was the optimal amount? I know it would be different for each organisation but I would be interested to see how you got this amount as social media is probably the one medium that it still up and coming for my client. Georgia, I am completely with you in your struggle to generate original posts. It is a hard thing to keep things fresh and attractive to an online audience. How did you combat these creative blocks?
Hi Georgia and Amelia,
Thank you both for your comments!
It looks like we all are facing the same challenges in the sense that it is difficult to find engaging content. If I'm stuck and needing some inspiration, I usually turn to Internet and media scans to find some content. However, sometimes it appears that there isn't anything that is simply 'newsworthy' or interesting. If this occurs, I usually become more thorough in my scans, and I will look at both local and national publications. I'll also turn to social media, and will look at the page profiles of everyone we follow to see what they are posting. I'll have a look at all of the pages they follow also and do the same. You'll be surprised how much you will actually stumble upon and before you know it, you've drafter 3 or 4 posts!
What about you guys? How do you overcome this challenge?
And yes Georgia I have definitely seen more engagement with our social media sites, I'm glad to hear you are finding the same thing!
Good luck to both of you in your future career in PR!
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