Best practices: Social media campaigns

Organic social media

Regardless if you are active on social media for your brand, social sharing is one of the easiest and most effective website engagement strategies. If website visitors like your content, they will want to share it with their friends and associates. And the simple act of sharing on their social profiles counts as website engagement. Every Commonplace website includes social sharing functionality; make sure you encourage visitors to use them!

We recommend you to post regular updates of your consultation - at least twice per week. Here you can find some tips to maximise your engagement using Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. By building the network and conversation, this will produce more attraction to the project.

Twitter:

Use media-rich content - Tweets containing images average a 35% boost in retweets, whilst videos get a 28% boost. Build up a media library - for example, photos of the local area, consultation events, or people using the Commonplace app.
Use hashtags - while an obvious option is the area’s name, you could also create a hashtag specifically for your Commonplace consultation or use a more general themed tag such as ‘#haveyoursay’.
Enable your location when you tweet - this will allow people to see your Tweets when searching for Tweets from your area.
Don’t be afraid to engage with people - retweet interesting opinions about the area, ask questions, respond to people with problems or complaints in a constructive way. People will value the fact that you are switched on and listening to them.
There’s nothing wrong with tweeting often, so long as the content is good - most people use Twitter in short bursts, so only a fraction of your followers will see each tweet. That being said, don’t feel like you have to be constantly posting - a handful of interesting tweets are worth more than lots of low-effort tweets.
To maximise the number of people seeing your tweets, post when people are most active on Twitter - this is usually during commutes, at lunch, and times when people often take breaks at work - roughly 9am and 5pm. If these times don’t suit you, use a tool such as Hootsuite to schedule your tweets to go out around these times.
Short and engaging - with Twitter specifically there is a word limit. Be specific with what you want to say, this also includes what hashtags you use. As well as imagery, and links.

Content ideas:

Time milestones - e.g. the first day of the project, a week into the project, a week before the project’s close, etc.
Comment milestones - e.g. 25 comments, 100 comments, 250 comments, etc.
Interesting comments can be shared directly from inside the Commonplace app, using the share buttons below a previewed comment.
A word cloud of common themes - if you have access to the Commonplace dashboard, download the comment data, open it in a spreadsheet and extract the answers to ‘voting button’ questions. Then insert the text into a site such as Wordle, and it will display them as a word cloud, with the most commonly selected themes expressed largest.
Data updates: how many comments, visitors, respondents have engaged with your Commonplace website - you can screenshot some graphs on your dashboard and share them too!
Case study: Relating back to the different demographics you want to bring into the conversation and how it is relevant to them.

Facebook

Search for community pages in your local area and approach them about publicising your Commonplace - many will be happy to let local people know about a way to get involved in the future of their area.
Enable location sharing on your posts - as with location sharing on Twitter; this makes it easier for people to find things going on in their local area.
Ensure your content is varied - people will get bored of being repeatedly told to visit the site instead of providing engaging content that will make them want to see the website independently.

Content ideas

Facebook’s capacity for longer posts makes it an excellent middle ground between Twitter and Newsletters - content from both these sections will work.
Interesting comments can be shared directly from inside the Commonplace app, using the share buttons below a previewed comment.
Time milestones - e.g. the first day of the project, a week into the project, a week before the project’s close, etc.

Instagram:

Use media-rich content - Build up a media library - for example, photos of the local area, consultation events, or people using the Commonplace app.
Use hashtags - while an obvious option is the area’s name, you could also create a hashtag specifically for your Commonplace consultation or use a more general themed tag such as ‘#haveyoursay’.
Enable your location when you share a post - this will allow people to see your instagram when searching for posts from your area.
Don’t be afraid to engage with people - resharing opinions about the area, ask questions, respond to people with problems or complaints in a constructive way within the comment section (like or reply). People will value the fact that you are switched on and listening to them.
Post often, so long as the content is good - most people use instagram in short bursts, so only a fraction of your followers will see a post, unless it pops up again on their feed. That being said, don’t feel like you have to be constantly posting - a handful of interesting posts are worth more than lots of low-effort instagram media.
Scheduling posts - Be aware of the time which is optimisation of interaction to instagram posts
Engaging content - with instagram images there is only a certain amount of space for wording on an engagement picture. The same applies for captions, this means you have to be specific with what you want to say, this also includes what hashtags you use.