Leveraging Social Media in Community Engagement
We live in a digital age. Some view this as a negative, however, the digital age has its benefits. With social media playing a prominent role in most people’s lives, it is crucial for firms like ours to learn ways it can be leveraged in the community engagement space.
Social media can be a great resource to share information, promote events, and receive feedback. Of course, to achieve great results, there are some guidelines and best practices to follow. At Civility Localized, we find it is important to be authentic, consistent, and patient with our content. Using social media this way in a community engagement capacity can cultivate online involvement that drives positive change within communities.
Direct Communication
One of the benefits social media offers is the ease of direct communication. As community engagement organizers, social media allows us to speak directly to community members. Responding to users' questions and comments creates an atmosphere of engagement. When users see active conversations unfolding, they feel welcome to join in.
Likewise, soliciting feedback in the form of polls and surveys has never been easier. Posting Instagram polls and sharing survey links garners far more engagement in seconds on social media than the paper versions ever have. Users feel involved in decision-making processes and can truly feel like they are making a difference in their community.
Multiple Formats and Features
There are multiple formats and features to use across social media platforms. This includes photos, videos, blog posts, hashtags, live streams, and group chats. Diversifying content is an excellent strategy. Some posts may require pictures or videos to grab the reader’s attention, while others may require longer form text to share nuanced information. Applying hashtags to a post creates opportunities for both new and existing community members to discover and interact with your content. You could even live stream a community event to encourage others to attend. These are just some of the strategies that can be used to leverage social media in the community engagement sector.
Check out our YouTube Channel. There you can watch videos like this one: Working with Civility Localized, a nationally ranked and certified MBE Community Engagement Consulting Firm
Cater to Intended Audiences
Not every social media platform is the same. Targeting different demographics requires a dynamic social media strategy. For instance, say the goal is to get Gen-Z students involved in their community. One of the best ways to reach that demographic would be through outlets like TikTok or Instagram. However, if the goal is to reach community members from Gen-X, the Meta platform, including Facebook may better serve that goal. Additionally, if you wanted to reach Millenials, the best bet might be Twitter.
Of course, there’s some overlap in demographics and social media platforms. TikToks, Threads, and Tweets are constantly reshared to other platforms like Facebook and Instagram. So, something originally posted on TikTok could still spread to intended audiences through other social media platforms.
Another way to use social media is as a tool to gain insight into how an audience engages with your content. For instance, you can use insight options to view analytics on Instagram posts promoting an upcoming event. View the number of accounts reached, how many of those were not previously followers, how many people followed after seeing the post, how many people saved the post, and how many found the post (i.e. hashtags, your profile, their feed, etc.). Analyzing these impressions helps strategize future content and improve engagement over time.
Another aspect of using social media is to encourage other members to create their own content related to their communities. This creates a snowball effect. When members see fellow members creating content about various causes, they may be influenced to do the same. Seeing peers and fellow community members actively engaging sometimes makes others want to do the same. This allows some to feel directly involved with current issues facing the community, and can lead to real ways to aid in change. This is builds a sense of community and can have real-world impact.
Caption: Civility Localized creates proprietary content and shares it across social media platforms. Recently we decided to try our hand at creating content on Tik Tok. Here you can see a sampling of posts & content shared on our platforms. Sometimes we focus on creating shareable content for civic engagement. Other times we focus on sharing client content to improve engagement and accessibility. Events, surveys, and links are all part of our social content. Our strategy changes depending on the season and we have enjoyed quite a bit of growth in the past 15 months. Does your professional organization make use of social media? Does the social strategy make sense for your industry? We love hearing from our readers and welcome your feedback on any social platform.
Leveraging social media is a smart step in community engagement.
It can create ease of communication within the community, target communication with specific communities, and creates opportunities to learn from real-time analytics and engagement.
But the best part about leveraging social media is creating a genuine sense of community through content made and shared by community members. Achieving this is just one of the reasons why embracing social media and all of its features is another component of better community engagement.
