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Charrosé King-Mathews: Social Media Outlook For 2022
Charrosé King-Mathews reveals what to look for in the New Year around platform evolution and content trends in the social networks. She’s an instructor in communications at Howard University.
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Transcript for 572_tony_martignetti_nonprofit_radio_20220103.mp3
Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio [00:00:13.14] spk_1:
big nonprofit [00:00:14.26] spk_3:
ideas for the [00:01:42.34] spk_1:
Other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast Happy new Year. I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Lauren Jill papilloma ketosis if I had to say that you missed this week’s show Social Media Outlook for 2022 Sharos King Mathews reveals what to look for in the new year around platform evolution and content trends in the social networks. She’s an instructor in communications at Howard University. tony steak too. Lots of Good 2022 Wishes. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Here is social media outlook for 2022. It’s my pleasure to welcome for her first time Sharos King Matthews, she is a strategic communications instructor at Howard University where she’s also pursuing her PhD in communication culture and media studies. She researches and writes about rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. Share Jose just left the faculty of N 10 after five years. She’s at Sharos CK Sure Jose. Welcome to nonprofit radio [00:01:48.94] spk_0:
Hi, it’s great to be here. [00:02:02.94] spk_1:
Pleasure. I’m glad you are. I’m glad you are. But tell me tell us a little more about your your research and your writing on rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. What what what what does that work look like? What is that? [00:02:05.89] spk_0:
So I am you know, starting out so I’m going to be discovering what that work looks like. But I’ve I’ve always been um very interesting. [00:02:16.94] spk_1:
I’m sorry, what do you think it’s gonna look like? What do you hope [00:02:35.04] spk_0:
it’s gonna look well where where I’m starting from is like um I’ve always been interested in in creativity and art and being able to express oneself through artistic mediums and helping other people to do that as well. Um and I think creativity is like a a huge social driver for for change. If we look at like music and art and fashion in the way that people are drawn into movements by the ways that we can use creativity in order to, you know, engage people and get them to think about different things. Um but also on the other side of that that you know, rest is so important to creativity. And looking at the ways that, you know, systems of oppression have stifled communities, abilities to produce creative work by with you know, low wages that require them to work, you know, constantly just to be able to afford a living and you know, um well in my case as a black woman having ancestors who are brought here specifically to work and how that has, you know, our relationships with work and and you know, as opposed to living in more creative and and pleasurable life and how we can, you know, move towards everyone being able to have those more um creative opportunities and how that can change our world for the better for everyone. [00:04:14.14] spk_1:
Cool, All right. They’re they’re interesting tensions because you’re writing about rest and creativity. To me those are in opposite. I mean, you’re you’re you’re not you’re not at your most creative when you’re resting, creativity is, you know, is activity, stimulation and then and then rest. But then as methods of healing and resistance to me, those are in opposite to, you know, you I don’t they’re they’re, you know, they’re both they’re both critical, but I don’t see them as consistent. Like you when you’re healing yourself, you’re not in a resistance, you’re not in a resistance state state. Resistance to me is, you know, agitation [00:04:23.78] spk_0:
and [00:04:30.44] spk_1:
and and advocacy, you know, But that’s not that’s that’s in opposite to healing, right? [00:04:31.15] spk_0:
Yeah. So it’s like I’m thinking like the balance of the two and how you you you know, need one to have the other and and that kind of thing and seeing how they are synchronous and you know, um I just I want people to everyone to have, you know, be able to live healthier, more fulfilling lives and, you know, all of that stuff [00:05:12.24] spk_1:
healthy but also productive and resistant when needed. Absolutely, yeah. It’s interesting. Yeah. Like there’s it’s two different spectrums to me rest and creativity, healing and resistance interesting. Alright. This Yeah, I’ll be, look, I’ll look forward to your dissertation in how many years? How many years does this program take you, do you think? [00:05:17.44] spk_0:
So. Typically about four. I will be finishing up my classes this year and then I’ll be focusing just on my um dissertation proposal and then my dissertation. [00:05:44.34] spk_1:
Yeah. And research. All right, very good. Welcome. Alright. It’s glad to have you. So you’ve got some savvy ideas coming, coming out, coming off the n 10 faculty as well. So howard faculty and 10 faculty. Uh I’m not sure which is more prestigious. Well, you know, Well one is, one is prestigious in lots of respects and the other has its niche in nonprofit tech. So they’re both, [00:05:50.89] spk_0:
they’re both prestigious. They’re both quite prestigious in [00:06:08.04] spk_1:
their own. Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Um Not zero sum by any means. They can both be highly prestigious. So you’ve got some ideas around social media trends. What you see coming for 2022. What do you see happening with our social media platforms? [00:06:11.84] spk_0:
Some things that I’m seeing are more audio only features um like on twitter on facebook, which would be great for people who listen to podcasts. Maybe that’s that fits in well. Um and even like um [00:06:35.54] spk_1:
facebook is facebook is coming to audio only a little slow. I mean I’ve been I’ve been podcasting since 2000 10 where they’ve been, where they’ve been, where has facebook been [00:06:40.13] spk_0:
has been around for a very long time has been around. Yeah. [00:06:43.52] spk_1:
But where, where they they they’re coming late to the format. [00:07:09.34] spk_0:
Yeah. And I think so. I think that happens like with technology sometimes we, we like jump ahead and it’s like sometimes we might lose things that were good before and we have to kind of rediscover them and they, they show up in a different way in in some ways, like we see here on, on like twitter and, and facebook also, Tiktok will be um, is working on streaming. Well, it’s released in, in some countries internationally, but it’s another example of, of a platform focusing more on audio only content. Um, [00:07:24.84] spk_1:
wait, so, so Tiktok moving away from video, [00:07:26.74] spk_0:
Not away by audio only also [00:07:51.74] spk_1:
in addition. Okay, okay, Alright. So, alright, so let’s talk about this. This audio only trend. Then you’re saying facebook twitter, Tiktok uh, promoting audio only formats. What do you see? Non profits are able to do? I mean, how do you see leveraging that? [00:07:53.64] spk_0:
Well, [00:07:54.79] spk_1:
Like are they all short form like this, Tiktok, you know, like Tiktok audio format limited to 15 seconds. [00:09:58.14] spk_0:
So on. I know, so each of them is, is a little different. Um, I know on, on twitter for example, you can have like, um, instead of like a live video that’s going on, you can have an audio room where people are chatting, anyone can listen in, but you know, only certain people can chat. So you might, that might be good for like, um, if you’re having a panel discussion or something like that and, and maybe video is not as important to it. Um and you can, you can do it that way, especially if you are uh you know, working, working virtually in people in different locations. Um video is not as important. That can be helpful and um also like when now they have a lot of different ways that they will appear on these different platforms. Um but I think as always, and I want to say this for for like all the transfer that we’ll talk about, you know, you want to think about how it works for your organization in particular because there’s they’re popping up with different features all the time. So you have to think about how, how do we best communicate with our audience. Um so I think, you know, in short form places you might, you might share like specific snippets of your podcast. If you have, if your, if your organization has a podcast, maybe you would share specific snippets or maybe particular quotes or updates that you could share like with the photo and then um like a message that goes along with that photo, which is also, I think the benefit of that is it’s a bit of a lower um you don’t need as much equipment or export technical, know how like you would need to do in order to create a video, you know, with the video, you need to to, you might need to do some editing or you might need to create some graphics, but if you have photos, you can use those in lots of different places and incorporate audio with them, you know, um, on certain posts to enhance the, the content. [00:10:18.54] spk_1:
Okay, okay, very interesting. Audio, audio only. Do you, Do you envision that, that, that Tiktok audio only feature will still be limited to the, to the 15 seconds. [00:11:16.34] spk_0:
Um I’m not, I didn’t, I don’t remember reading how long it would be um but okay, so, so Tiktok is also moving into like, because they use a lot of music and stuff on their platform. They’re also looking into Tiktok streaming, like having a streaming service that is a competitor to Spotify. Um and then you also have Spotify incorporating more social media into. There’s so you see a lot of, a lot of um, hybrid things happening um between between some of these like audio and social media in particular right now and I would say we did see this a lot with with video. I mean we had vine was huge and, and you know youtube, of course we still have Youtube. Um but a lot of these things are the things that we, we already used to communicate and they pop up in different ways depending on, you know, what features are available on how the different audiences communicate with one another. Um, on those different platforms. [00:11:40.04] spk_1:
That’s interesting, you bring up vine, how come vine went away but tick tock. It is, it is, it’s flourishing. [00:12:39.04] spk_0:
How come, what is that? Yeah, I know, I’m fine, it was right, so vine went away and instagram at that time started having short videos too. So it was like instagram kind of picked up that short video format and then vine, you know, wasn’t needed as much because you have, you have your photos and your video on instagram then, so then we lose vine, but we have olive vines, features on a different platform. Um and I think that’s something that we really want to think critically about when we’re looking at these trends and the different platforms that come up because there are a lot of politics behind it, you know, it’s something it’s, you know, which ones have the most money, like instagram is owned by facebook, so they have a lot more money and resources and facebook is everywhere all over the globe um you know, in, in nearly every country, whereas you know something um for as a, as a um you know, contrast, we have Tiktok which what has been threatened to be, you know, shut down in the US unless they, unless they, you know, sold part of their company to an american owner. So we have things like that that are going on in the background that, you know, we have to make um certain apps, you know, have more ability to reach more people. So it’s also, it’s about how we use them and whether they are service serving people’s needs and you know, that it’s fun to use and all of that, but also we need to think about, it’s not always just, um, the audience that determine which one is a successful platform. [00:14:29.84] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, Your Communications Plan for 2022. Does it include social posts, blog posts, newsletters, your annual report, website updates, board reports, fundraising appeals. Acknowledgment messages, staff, communications, process documentation, training, documents onboarding or maybe those last couple don’t fit into your communications plan. They still have to be written. Do you need help with your writing in 2022 Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Now back to social media outlook for 2022, does that mean that we should not be pioneers or even maybe early adopters when a, when a platform emerges, you know, that, that we not invest time in it when it may not, It may not survive? I mean like should we wait 18 months before we jump into a new platform? [00:15:02.24] spk_0:
I that’s a really good question because I mean that’s what we’re talking about here, trends. We wanna know trend because we want to know how do we react to these new things. Um, and two that I, I would say like for if you’re a smaller nonprofit and I’ve worked at many, you know, you don’t have a lot of resources you want to, I would like to think of think of the social media, um, managing that as a, um, capsule wardrobe. So I don’t know if anyone familiar with the capsule wardrobe defined that we have, we have [00:15:09.48] spk_1:
on non profit capsule wardrobe will definitely land you in jargon jail. [00:17:48.74] spk_0:
So, right. So, and so a capsule wardrobe if you think of, so you can think, I think a great example is Fran fine on the nanny. She has a very, you know, dramatic wardrobe. However, if you pay attention, she’s pretty much always wearing a black turtleneck, black tights and black shoes and then she’ll put like a fun jacket or a fun skirt on top of those things. And, and so that’s um, you know, a way to extend a wardrobe on fewer, there are fewer pieces and just choosing like a statement piece. So the way I look at that is like, um, in with your social media, you want to have good bones, good structure. You wanna have, you wanna have some image templates that you can use. And then when there’s a, you know, I just talked about images before and putting audio with them. So if you already have great images that you’ve worked on and put a lot of care into curating, you can then add these other things on top of them as these trends change. Um, I would also say as far as new platforms coming up, I think it’s always worth your time to at least create an account so that if that platform becomes more popular in the future, you’ve already claimed your organization’s name on there. Um, so that it’s easy to find you and you, and it’ll be, you know, more cohesive part of your brand. So I think that’s always worth it because that doesn’t take a lot of time. Exactly. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. And that’s fine too. That’s fine too. Because you’re, you’re putting your time where, you know that your audience is and, and you know, what’s going to pay off because, you know, without a lot of time and resources, we have to be very smart about, um, where we’re putting our focus and social media because it’s so vast when you send stuff out, it can just go out into the ether and no one, you know, it might not get traction. So you need to be very smart about how you’re using your time. So I would say like, yeah, you’re right. So you have your, your core images and the kinds of messages that you know, that you can use. Um, also this might be referred to as evergreen content content that you can use all the time. Um, you know, no matter the time of year, but it’s always relevant to, to your organization. Um, I think that’s a very important thing to have in, in kind of your capsule wardrobe, um, of, of social media fashion, you know, your, [00:18:30.84] spk_1:
your, your capsule wardrobe, your capsule wardrobe. Yes, I scolded your core capsule. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Um, well, I’m a guy, I want to be, you know, I want to be up. I want to be, I want to be timely. My, my time has long passed. Um, so, alright, Yes, absolutely, of course, evergreen content repurposing, you know, you want to be smart. You know, if something goes on your blog, maybe you can maybe you can pull a 12th, clip, an audio and quoted somewhere, you know, on twitter [00:18:31.17] spk_0:
or facebook or, or, [00:18:50.34] spk_1:
or, or Tiktok when, when the audio only features are, are, are available. Um, and then, you know, and then it could be part of, maybe it could be part of an email. Uh, maybe maybe it lives somewhere else on your website. You know, maybe it could be a social media post in print instead of audio. Um, right, so you want to be smart about [00:19:01.84] spk_0:
right? And one um, uh, an acronym that I use for that, that I’ve heard is cope create once, publish everywhere. Okay, so like your blog post, you created it once. But then you’re using all those pieces of the blog posts in different places on your social media or your website and your blog and your emails and all of that. [00:19:58.74] spk_1:
I love it create once, publish everywhere. So we got our capsule wardrobe. We have our, we have our cope. Okay, what? Um, all right, So this is interesting. This audio form. I mean obviously as a podcaster and I’ve been a longtime listener of radio and I think radio is just such a intimate format. It feels close. I mean, I got my inspiration for this show from radio shows. Um really interesting, you know, in one respect, it’s a, it’s a step back from, from the video because now you’re only getting really getting half the, not half the content really, but half the half the stimulation. I mean there’s the but but I don’t consider a step backwards, but but [00:20:01.72] spk_0:
somebody, somebody could [00:20:02.69] spk_1:
say, well, no picture anymore, what you know, but the video is the trending, but now, now now audio is trending. [00:20:09.94] spk_0:
That’s why [00:20:11.54] spk_1:
that’s why we need you on to make sense of this for [00:20:14.27] spk_0:
us. For [00:20:15.89] spk_1:
me, I’m not gonna maybe other people maybe more sad, but make sense of it for me please. [00:21:19.44] spk_0:
So as you were talking, I was thinking, you know how you said like, radio can feel much more intimate than watching the video. And I it kind of reminds me of like reading a book versus watching a movie, the way you described it kind of like, and sometimes, you know, using our own imagination. And and with with the content that were there were there were reading or listening, using our own imagination. I think also helps us build a bond in some way. Whereas when you have a video, it’s like you don’t have to use your imagination, you can see what this person looks like and where they’re sitting and how they’re speaking and all of that kind of thing which I think takes away some of I think that’s part of like our creativity that makes us, you know, interested in having, you know, not knowing everything right away, you know? And and I um especially think like with audio, you know, you’re you’re very you’re not thinking about how you look, you’re just you’re just you’re just really um participating with the content, [00:22:13.44] spk_1:
interesting. That reminds me of of a host I used to listen to on National Public Radio terry Gross. She she never wanted to be in the same studio as her guests, they always remote and and there was no camera feed. It would she she didn’t want the visual stimulation, she wanted to focus on the conversation and that’s it. She didn’t want the person in the room, she didn’t want to see them wherever they were, whatever studio they were in, she didn’t want to see them from there. It was just the conversation. Mhm interesting. Alright, of course I’m blowing, I’m blowing it here because I I can see you right now and we may put this on Youtube. Uh [00:22:15.11] spk_0:
well you’re stuck with the lack of choice that people have the choice so to watch or or just listen, [00:22:21.02] spk_1:
that’s true, you can turn your screen, you can turn off your screen absolutely, you could, you could go for the go for the creativity and, uh, and just listen, [00:22:29.84] spk_0:
I guess it’s [00:22:42.94] spk_1:
not so good to just watch though. That’s not gonna be good. Like don’t turn the sound down and try to read the lips that you’re, you’re missing, you’re missing too much content there, that I wouldn’t suggest doing it that way. All right. Um you think Tiktok is growing too, you have a, you have a prediction about Tiktok and instagram. [00:24:08.44] spk_0:
Um, yeah, so I was reading this and I think, um, hoot suite that Tiktok is growing will surpass instagram um, in the number of active users. Um, and you know, that’s, I mean, we do see a lot of, a lot of the, you know, younger audiences on their like gen Z and stuff like that. Um, and, and I, and I was also reading about, um, okay, well, let me say so, I always want to be like, it’s great when companies can grow and it shows how popular they are. But I do also want to go back to, you know, what we just said about why certain platforms grow faster than others or might succeed where others don’t even though they have the same the same features, But, um, and so, and I start with Tiktok, um, and instagram and, you know, which one is popular is important for our organism, which one’s most popular is important. But we also want to look at where are our audience is in particular. So if you know that your audience is, you know, um this demographic, which is, you know, it’s um boomers who live in Arizona or, or whatever demographic it is, and it doesn’t, it’s not, you don’t see your audience on Tiktok, then it it doesn’t make um too much sense to go on there. But as we said, go and claim your account, make your space. So if you if it ever as the demographics change because that’s important to remember to demographics change over time. Um if we just look at facebook, for example, facebook was only open to university students. Um, so that was a very small demographic, but then it grew and grew. So, so we can see like these are where, where the numbers are for a moment. But that changes. And we can use that information to try to help make our decisions. But we should always remember that none of these are hard and fast rules. And we have to think about ourselves as the expert of our audiences and think about how social media is a tool to help us reach those people that that we know best [00:25:17.84] spk_1:
and you’re good point, you know, knowing where they are and and knowing that that may shift as well, grandparents were not on facebook 15 years ago, but now it’s common. Well even before the pandemic for grandparents to stay in touch with grandkids through facebook. So, [00:25:23.17] spk_0:
right. And, and a lot of my students do not use facebook anymore. [00:25:28.01] spk_1:
Right, well their their grandparents around [00:25:29.76] spk_0:
it, they don’t want exactly that’s going to look at pictures of your family and stuff, but not talk to your friends. [00:25:36.74] spk_1:
Facebook is a perfect study in shifting demographics. [00:25:39.69] spk_0:
That’s an excellent. Yeah, very interesting. [00:26:26.34] spk_1:
The pioneers were driven off by the by, I think by their grandparents, they were alright, so if Tiktok Tiktok surpasses instagram, alright, so that it’s just, it’s just something I like to be aware of that Tiktok is growing in in audience size that way. And so it might be, might be a place for you to look. Um but maybe not, and we’re gonna get to the maybe not, you know, every right, every platform is not for everybody. Um but again, I love your advice about, you know, claim your claim your spot, get an account in your name, so nobody, nobody beats you to it and then you have to be creative or You know, be Tony-Martignetti two or something, you know, [00:26:29.19] spk_0:
because [00:26:38.74] spk_1:
they were the real tony-martignetti you know, All right, so let’s talk about creating, creating content this emerging short form audio [00:30:11.64] spk_0:
with creating content and especially with short form, I think that’s definitely, you know, a challenge for a lot of social media accounts for a lot of our organizations, especially those that do very complex, you know, work and we want to communicate about it, but you know, this very brief, um, these very brief formats make it very difficult and I always try to emphasize with my colleagues and and reminding myself that social media is a place to direct people to more information. So like, yes, those clips are very short. But you want to make sure you’re using that to direct people where they can get more information. Words, you know, whether it’s, you know, signing up volunteers or donations or or what do you want them to do after? Well, and always have some kind of idea of what you of um, what each of your posts are doing for you. So you don’t wanna, you know, just put any kind of content out there. You have 15 seconds or, or however short the clip is and you want to make sure that you’re, you’re, you know, getting the most out of your time. So, um, when you are like, again, we will go back to the capsule wardrobe, making sure you have those solid foundations, creating some, some graphics that you can reuse. Um, but also, you know, look at what your, your peers um, uh, similar organizations are doing also what your audience is sharing, even if it’s not, you know, specific to your organization, you can see what your audience is interested in and how they are spending their time. Um, I often, you know, in my, in the course that I was doing with the intent, I would often talk about thinking about walking through the day in your audience in any of your audience members shoes and thinking about how are they spending their morning? You know, is that a good time to reach them and, you know, what kind, what are they doing in the morning and how might, you know, your work relate to that in some way. Like if somebody, you know, spends their morning, you know, watering their garden and you are, um, you know, an environmental organization and how you can um kind of show that you have common interests there and relating to what they’re interested in. So looking at looking at what what they are already interested in, but also looking at what some of your competitors and, and similar organizations to yours are doing, and, you know, identifying not just looking at what they’re doing and copying them, but looking at what they’re doing, identifying what works and what doesn’t, and also how you can put a spin on things for, for your brand, um, you know, there’s, there’s a quote, like good artists copy great artists steal that. So, so we want to, so it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, perfectly legitimate to look at what other companies are doing and and try them um, in your own way. Another thing is there’s nothing new under the sun, So all of these ideas are we’re regenerating and, and recreating and which is creativity, you know, thinking of these things from all these different places and they come together to make new things. Um, so when you’re thinking about about your content and how to make it, you know, engaging. You want to go back to the things, think less about the technology and think more about, you know, the very essence of good storytelling and, and you know what makes a good photo making sure that they’re good quality and all of those things can will take you a lot farther than thinking about um friends and and styles because they change so quickly. [00:31:48.34] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Yes. You have my good wishes for 2022 for the new year. I’m I’m always optimistic at the beginning of the new year. Even when all evidence maybe to the contrary. I still, I don’t know. Uh Pollyanna naivete, blissful ignorance. I I don’t know. But every year I’m optimistic. So I’m optimistic about the new year. And you have my good wishes For your 2022 for you, your family, your work, your nonprofit, all those, all those things that are important. I hope 2022 is very good to you for all of those things in all those different ways. That’s it. My good wishes for the new year. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo. But loads more time for social media outlook for 2022. Alright, that was a lot of excellent. So let’s start with calls to action. You want, you want, you want every piece of content to have some call to action, learn, learn more volunteer, donate, sign the petition. [00:31:53.34] spk_0:
Even if it’s not a direct call to action, like, you know, sign up. Even if it’s, but even if you know the purpose like, okay, we are interacting with this audience member in order to, you know, build a better um relationship with our audience. Always make sure that that you know why you’re posting and you’re not just spending time sending things out because that’s that’s where you start to, you know, sink all your time into something that might not be paying off [00:32:51.44] spk_1:
and in in short form audio. I mean if you want folks to go somewhere, maybe two learn more or you know, if there is an explicit call to action, learn more at a landing page, maybe you’re testing the, the, the outcomes so you have a landing page or whatever it is. Short form audio that you have to devote part of your 15 seconds to reading a web address. [00:33:47.34] spk_0:
So with the, the short form audio, it’s always going to be um in a place they’re gonna have to be looking at something to click on it or have some kind of text with it in order to like it’ll come up in their feet or something like that. So whatever description um or you know, sometimes you, I mean in most places you can comment even beneath yourself. So wherever you see any opportunity to put in that information um is important um to do that. But as far as you know with audio as well, I think it’s also sometimes I see um and that’s actually not, this is audio and text but sometimes I’ll see like very long you RL’s um and I think it’s important to remember to use a U. R. L shorter I think um definitely. And when you’re doing audio, whether you know short for more or a little longer and you want to include a U. R. L. Make sure that you use like um Bentley dot com or something where you can customize it to be something easy to remember and you don’t have to say http excuse, you know, all of [00:35:08.84] spk_1:
that. Uh I like to go even further. I have, I bought the the vanity domain, you know, tony dot M. A. So I could do tony through M. A. I think is Morocco. I’m pretty sure I bought that. I think I’m every two years I paid the country of Morocco I think I’m pretty sure that’s M. A. Um it’s not Mauritania, I think it’s more, I’m pretty sure it’s Morocco. So yeah, so tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant I can say, you know, non profit radio uh email sign up, you know whatever whatever. Alright so that may be worth investing in a little vanity vanity shorter too but but bitterly of course we like. Yeah, I like free resources. Absolutely. Um and then you mentioned peers, you know, evaluating what your peers are doing, what others see what other nonprofits are doing. So you mean literally looking at there at their feeds and and, and different platforms and see what they’re talking about and how they, how [00:35:35.64] spk_0:
they talk, yep. And so you should definitely be following your pure organizations. Um, there are also a great resource for creating content. Not just, you know, if you, um, work together sometimes on on a shared project, um, you can help boost each other’s visibility on social media. But you do want to be following following your peer organizations also, you know, as a social media manager. Um, you tend to befriend the other social media managers because you know, you said, you know what other each other are going through. And so that’s actually a great community and um, following each other because then you can reach out to each other. Help. Help because you’re you’re in it for the, for the same cause. So it’s like you’re boosting the same content and and you know, helping achieve your mission overall that both of you want to achieve. [00:36:27.33] spk_1:
That could even lead to some deeper collaboration. Maybe, you know, I’ve, I’ve had guests talk about the possibility of uh, like doing giving Tuesday, you know, combined campaigns. Mm hmm I don’t remember other examples, but but you know, just shared promotion. Pre shared projects, your promotion [00:36:38.43] spk_0:
and one of the ones that I’ve had the most success with as far as partnership and shared promotion is um well I don’t see them as much anymore, but for a time there were twitter chats were pretty popular. Um I don’t see them as much as I used to, but whenever I’ve done them, I we would always get like tons more engagement um with our content. That was one of our I will put that on twitter chats and and tweeting at conventions. That is when we would get the most followers, the most retweets the most engagements generally. Um and now I’m thinking, you know, with the twitter um audio rooms and stuff like that. That could be instead of having a twitter chat where you’re typing it out, maybe you have people come in and listen to your panel discussion of experts talking about whatever the theme is and um introducing people to, to your brand that way. [00:37:32.13] spk_1:
Cool. Excellent ideas. All right. You recommended paying attention to what your audience shares. Mm hmm. So you know what you want to you want to do more of what’s popular and less of what people think? Sucks. Right. [00:38:48.32] spk_0:
So, um yeah, so, well, before I was a lecturer at Howard, I worked in the office of the Vice President for student Affairs and I was managing the social media there. Um and the school environment especially important to watch what your audience is saying because we didn’t need to watch for any problems that are coming up and stuff like that. Um but that’s the kind of thing I think you you want to look for generally and not just you know, problems um not doesn’t have to be something dire, but you know, what is, what is your audience concerned about that your organization can help answer and um you know, what are the problems that they encounter or the ways that see that they that they feel the issue that you cover, how that impacts their lives. So sometimes it might be looking at, you know exactly what they’re posting, exactly what they’re saying and sometimes it means more about like you know looking at overall and kind of observing, you know what you um you might even notice like challenges and things that come up that that your audience does not. Um but you can perhaps you know show how your work can help with these things that they may not even notice our issues um relating to your organization. [00:39:06.62] spk_1:
What about the use of analytics to uh to evaluate what what your what your folks are sharing is that can that be valuable there? [00:41:00.61] spk_0:
Absolutely. You should definitely be um keeping track of your analytics if you so if you don’t have a dedicated person who can look at the analytics every month, you at least want to be downloading them. So you have them um whenever I have started a new position as a social media manager. one of the first things that I do is to go to, um, all of those social media accounts and download as much of their um, analytical history as I possibly can. So if you’re already keeping and, and the thing is some platforms that you can’t go back any farther than a couple of years or a couple of months. So it’s very important to get that right away. Um, even if you can’t look at it consistently, because one day if you, if you do have someone who’s able to dedicate time to that, they have tons of content to go on where they can look at, you know, oh, we had a huge jump in in subscribers um, at this time and then they can go and look at, well, you know, what was going on at that time, What did we post? What was drawing in so much engagement? And so that’s why you really, um that’s why your your analytics are so important and it’s thus about like looking through them every day. Or I’m sorry, every month or so, um, because you know, if you don’t have a dedicated person for that, that takes a lot of time. But being familiar with, you know, around how many followers you have or being able to see the trend of, you know, what is normal engagement for us. So that then you can see when you do have a huge spike, you’ll be easily able to identify like oh here’s where that came from and here’s how we can duplicate that success also because that’s another thing you want to think about. How can we do this again? Um how can we use it for a different campaign or or in what other ways can we can we benefit from you know this content that we that did so well [00:41:05.01] spk_1:
which are the platforms that you think have the better analytics. [00:42:49.90] spk_0:
I definitely have opinions about that. Twitter, Twitter has great analytics um you will find so in um in a lot of communications scholarship like peer review journals and stuff when they’re when they’re talking about social media they will often use twitter twitter analytics because they’re the easiest to access. So twitter makes it very easy to to download all of your analytics from your account and put it in an Excel spreadsheet and then from there you can do whatever you want to do with it. Um there are on the on the other end I would say like for example instagram you cannot you have to go to like each individual post and see how many how many had right? So you have to type them in and yeah so and and that that allows um face meta now meta to have you know um more control over that content. Um The facebook analytics I are pretty good but again they are there, you kind of have to keep them within facebook Um So it’s harder to you know take them out and analyze them in different ways. So any platform that’s going to allow you to download them in an Excel spreadsheet is ideal. Um But you know sometimes I have had to go through and I’m writing typing them in individually from instagram. So and and that could that could also you know be a factor in deciding which platforms that you spend most of your time on because you know if you if you are focusing on if you make if you want to focus a lot on your analytics you wanna and and you want to have a platform where you can easily download them and it doesn’t take a lot of extra work. Um So you know these are all things to think about when you’re when you’re deciding you know what works best for for how you present on social media. [00:43:15.50] spk_1:
What’s another one that’s good besides twitter Analytics one judging the analytics. [00:43:20.00] spk_0:
I mean I do I like facebook uh the analytics that they that the way that they’re analytics [00:43:27.47] spk_1:
are in the [00:44:20.59] spk_0:
classroom right? You can’t export them. So um I’m thinking I mean for the most they tried there so you can I would also recommend. So I don’t know of twitter is the best ones, I don’t know of any other other ones don’t really compare to that but yeah but twitter is also starting to lock down um some of that like it’s not quite as much um data as you could get it before so um but there’s also you know platforms where like Hoot suite for example where you can have multiple social media platforms and see your analytics aggregated there. I do caution though that when you use um you use one of those platforms um the numbers might be a little bit different like there might be like some lag time between you know twitter and twitter on Hoot suite you know so um and also like the labels and the way that data is is labeled so you know on one platform a certain action might be called interactions whereas on another platform they’re called engagements and how they measure each of those things and what they’re called could could be different. So it’s just you know making sure we’re watching for those. [00:44:52.69] spk_1:
Why would like a twitter start restricting the the robustness of the of the analytics the way you just said they’re they’re they’re tightening that up. Why would they why would they offer less? [00:45:01.29] spk_0:
You want to charge for it? You want to start [00:45:03.45] spk_1:
charging a fee to get it or [00:45:29.19] spk_0:
you know what that’s and you know we we don’t know until they until it’s public. So that is 11 thing that could, I’m I haven’t um I’m not sure why it’s more difficult to get information but you know it’s beneficial to companies you know that information is money to them. So it is beneficial to them when they, you know, have proprietary um keeping content that that is valuable to them. I would um but twitter, [00:45:43.49] spk_1:
they could have it too and share it with us too. I mean they’re they’re only sharing it with users. Users can only get there there little bit. The company is welcome to aggregate the hundreds of millions of users. They can do whatever you want with your proprietary data. But let me have my little share what are you taking in the era of transparency? What are you taking my little share away for? [00:45:57.29] spk_0:
You would think, But I don’t know. All [00:46:36.38] spk_1:
Right. You don’t have all the answers. Nobody does know these black boxes that we’ve all signed onto 2020 years. Sometimes they’re more annoyance than than than than additive but sometimes not not, I’m not, not saying I’m I’m opposed to social media obviously, but they can be very annoying, very annoying. We don’t even, we could spend a whole hour talking about facebook or a day about the annoyances behind facebook and in the shift from organic to paid, it’s just to me it’s just corporate green. All right. [00:46:39.48] spk_0:
But I think a lot of that is, you know power from the users and putting it back in the hands of the company because users do have so much power and we have a lot of their ideas come from the users that are using the platforms. So I think it’s, you know, wanting to control how, how people use that platform and the information that you can get from it. [00:46:59.28] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean, [00:47:03.77] spk_0:
it’s [00:47:28.88] spk_1:
exploitation. I mean, I’ll use, I’ll use facebook the most egregious example as, as the example, but you think goaded us all in, you know, they have 2.5 billion users now, a third of the planet is they, they brought us in and then they, and then they shepherd uh, you know, much less organic reach now. You want the same organic, you want the same reach, add pay for it, pay for it, pay us pay Goldman Sachs and uh, and you can have that, we have your reach back that we gave you originally and you know, it’s, it’s egregious. It’s uh, just exploitation. [00:47:43.38] spk_0:
And I, I feel like social media has so much power for bringing people together and, and so that’s why I caution about like with trends and stuff we do need to be critical about, you know, is this trend, was this trend created because it’s something users wanted or because the company needs to innovate and grow. You know, so that’s another reason why you can wait and give yourself some time to see which trends are taking on and what makes sense for you because you don’t want to just be throwing your your time into this machine that is just there to make money for them. You want to make sure that you’re getting the best value out of that, [00:48:37.77] spk_1:
what a beautiful segue to, to a closing section, let’s talk about, you know, every every platform is not for every non profit you know, you’ve you’ve made the point already, you know, you can uh squat on your account, you create your account and just and just squat it, hold it, but but every, you know, even the bigger platforms, we don’t have to be everywhere. [00:48:42.07] spk_0:
Exactly, so, [00:48:43.29] spk_1:
you know, [00:50:17.66] spk_0:
you definitely right, so there are like you and this is something I say in my class to like in learning about social media and there’s constantly new stuff, you do not have to know everything about it, you do not have to be on every platform, your audience is not on every platform, no single person can manage all of the social media accounts that their social media platforms that there are. So I think the most important thing, you know, is to get back to that good structure and knowing who your audience is and um how to communicate with them and then, you know, using the different quirks of those social media accounts and different features to, to tweak that, but um as far as, you know, you might also want to think of as we’re talking about, you know, these big companies and what data they’re keeping and control and stuff like that, that might also be an a factor in deciding which platforms you’re on like um, back to N 10. Um, and 10 is no longer on Facebook because you know, the, some of the business practices that Facebook has used do um, do not, you know, does not work well with end transmission and the ways that they operate and you know, those are things you have to weigh that. Um, you know, if a lot of your, your audiences on facebook and that’s the only way to reach them, then maybe, you know, you do stay, but you know, you have this understanding of like um, that there are issues and were working around them and trying to make the best of these environments, but you know, they are businesses and so we need to be smart about where we’re spending our time. [00:51:22.46] spk_1:
Excellent advice, very savvy. Thank you. All right. Sharos King Matthews, you’ll find her at narrows A C K. I’m gonna spell her name so you can find her C H A R R O S C King, Thank you very much. Great, great advice. Thank you my pleasure Next week, the log for j software vulnerability with Joshua pesky, eh, if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o. It may be a new year, but some things never change. Our creative producer is [00:51:23.54] spk_3:
claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is [00:51:28.24] spk_1:
our web guy [00:51:41.66] spk_3:
and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out [00:51:43.14] spk_1:
and be [00:51:53.36] spk_3:
great.
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Hello and welcome to tony-martignetti non profit radio [00:00:13.14] spk_1:
big nonprofit [00:00:14.26] spk_3:
ideas for the [00:01:42.34] spk_1:
Other 95%. I’m your aptly named host of your favorite abdominal podcast Happy new Year. I’m glad you’re with me. I’d be stricken with Lauren Jill papilloma ketosis if I had to say that you missed this week’s show Social Media Outlook for 2022 Sharos King Mathews reveals what to look for in the new year around platform evolution and content trends in the social networks. She’s an instructor in communications at Howard University. tony steak too. Lots of Good 2022 Wishes. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C. O. Here is social media outlook for 2022. It’s my pleasure to welcome for her first time Sharos King Matthews, she is a strategic communications instructor at Howard University where she’s also pursuing her PhD in communication culture and media studies. She researches and writes about rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. Share Jose just left the faculty of N 10 after five years. She’s at Sharos CK Sure Jose. Welcome to nonprofit radio [00:01:48.94] spk_0:
Hi, it’s great to be here. [00:02:02.94] spk_1:
Pleasure. I’m glad you are. I’m glad you are. But tell me tell us a little more about your your research and your writing on rest and creativity as methods of resistance and healing. What what what what does that work look like? What is that? [00:02:05.89] spk_0:
So I am you know, starting out so I’m going to be discovering what that work looks like. But I’ve I’ve always been um very interesting. [00:02:16.94] spk_1:
I’m sorry, what do you think it’s gonna look like? What do you hope [00:02:35.04] spk_0:
it’s gonna look well where where I’m starting from is like um I’ve always been interested in in creativity and art and being able to express oneself through artistic mediums and helping other people to do that as well. Um and I think creativity is like a a huge social driver for for change. If we look at like music and art and fashion in the way that people are drawn into movements by the ways that we can use creativity in order to, you know, engage people and get them to think about different things. Um but also on the other side of that that you know, rest is so important to creativity. And looking at the ways that, you know, systems of oppression have stifled communities, abilities to produce creative work by with you know, low wages that require them to work, you know, constantly just to be able to afford a living and you know, um well in my case as a black woman having ancestors who are brought here specifically to work and how that has, you know, our relationships with work and and you know, as opposed to living in more creative and and pleasurable life and how we can, you know, move towards everyone being able to have those more um creative opportunities and how that can change our world for the better for everyone. [00:04:14.14] spk_1:
Cool, All right. They’re they’re interesting tensions because you’re writing about rest and creativity. To me those are in opposite. I mean, you’re you’re you’re not you’re not at your most creative when you’re resting, creativity is, you know, is activity, stimulation and then and then rest. But then as methods of healing and resistance to me, those are in opposite to, you know, you I don’t they’re they’re, you know, they’re both they’re both critical, but I don’t see them as consistent. Like you when you’re healing yourself, you’re not in a resistance, you’re not in a resistance state state. Resistance to me is, you know, agitation [00:04:23.78] spk_0:
and [00:04:30.44] spk_1:
and and advocacy, you know, But that’s not that’s that’s in opposite to healing, right? [00:04:31.15] spk_0:
Yeah. So it’s like I’m thinking like the balance of the two and how you you you know, need one to have the other and and that kind of thing and seeing how they are synchronous and you know, um I just I want people to everyone to have, you know, be able to live healthier, more fulfilling lives and, you know, all of that stuff [00:05:12.24] spk_1:
healthy but also productive and resistant when needed. Absolutely, yeah. It’s interesting. Yeah. Like there’s it’s two different spectrums to me rest and creativity, healing and resistance interesting. Alright. This Yeah, I’ll be, look, I’ll look forward to your dissertation in how many years? How many years does this program take you, do you think? [00:05:17.44] spk_0:
So. Typically about four. I will be finishing up my classes this year and then I’ll be focusing just on my um dissertation proposal and then my dissertation. [00:05:44.34] spk_1:
Yeah. And research. All right, very good. Welcome. Alright. It’s glad to have you. So you’ve got some savvy ideas coming, coming out, coming off the n 10 faculty as well. So howard faculty and 10 faculty. Uh I’m not sure which is more prestigious. Well, you know, Well one is, one is prestigious in lots of respects and the other has its niche in nonprofit tech. So they’re both, [00:05:50.89] spk_0:
they’re both prestigious. They’re both quite prestigious in [00:06:08.04] spk_1:
their own. Yes, that’s right. That’s right. Um Not zero sum by any means. They can both be highly prestigious. So you’ve got some ideas around social media trends. What you see coming for 2022. What do you see happening with our social media platforms? [00:06:11.84] spk_0:
Some things that I’m seeing are more audio only features um like on twitter on facebook, which would be great for people who listen to podcasts. Maybe that’s that fits in well. Um and even like um [00:06:35.54] spk_1:
facebook is facebook is coming to audio only a little slow. I mean I’ve been I’ve been podcasting since 2000 10 where they’ve been, where they’ve been, where has facebook been [00:06:40.13] spk_0:
has been around for a very long time has been around. Yeah. [00:06:43.52] spk_1:
But where, where they they they’re coming late to the format. [00:07:09.34] spk_0:
Yeah. And I think so. I think that happens like with technology sometimes we, we like jump ahead and it’s like sometimes we might lose things that were good before and we have to kind of rediscover them and they, they show up in a different way in in some ways, like we see here on, on like twitter and, and facebook also, Tiktok will be um, is working on streaming. Well, it’s released in, in some countries internationally, but it’s another example of, of a platform focusing more on audio only content. Um, [00:07:24.84] spk_1:
wait, so, so Tiktok moving away from video, [00:07:26.74] spk_0:
Not away by audio only also [00:07:51.74] spk_1:
in addition. Okay, okay, Alright. So, alright, so let’s talk about this. This audio only trend. Then you’re saying facebook twitter, Tiktok uh, promoting audio only formats. What do you see? Non profits are able to do? I mean, how do you see leveraging that? [00:07:53.64] spk_0:
Well, [00:07:54.79] spk_1:
Like are they all short form like this, Tiktok, you know, like Tiktok audio format limited to 15 seconds. [00:09:58.14] spk_0:
So on. I know, so each of them is, is a little different. Um, I know on, on twitter for example, you can have like, um, instead of like a live video that’s going on, you can have an audio room where people are chatting, anyone can listen in, but you know, only certain people can chat. So you might, that might be good for like, um, if you’re having a panel discussion or something like that and, and maybe video is not as important to it. Um and you can, you can do it that way, especially if you are uh you know, working, working virtually in people in different locations. Um video is not as important. That can be helpful and um also like when now they have a lot of different ways that they will appear on these different platforms. Um but I think as always, and I want to say this for for like all the transfer that we’ll talk about, you know, you want to think about how it works for your organization in particular because there’s they’re popping up with different features all the time. So you have to think about how, how do we best communicate with our audience. Um so I think, you know, in short form places you might, you might share like specific snippets of your podcast. If you have, if your, if your organization has a podcast, maybe you would share specific snippets or maybe particular quotes or updates that you could share like with the photo and then um like a message that goes along with that photo, which is also, I think the benefit of that is it’s a bit of a lower um you don’t need as much equipment or export technical, know how like you would need to do in order to create a video, you know, with the video, you need to to, you might need to do some editing or you might need to create some graphics, but if you have photos, you can use those in lots of different places and incorporate audio with them, you know, um, on certain posts to enhance the, the content. [00:10:18.54] spk_1:
Okay, okay, very interesting. Audio, audio only. Do you, Do you envision that, that, that Tiktok audio only feature will still be limited to the, to the 15 seconds. [00:11:16.34] spk_0:
Um I’m not, I didn’t, I don’t remember reading how long it would be um but okay, so, so Tiktok is also moving into like, because they use a lot of music and stuff on their platform. They’re also looking into Tiktok streaming, like having a streaming service that is a competitor to Spotify. Um and then you also have Spotify incorporating more social media into. There’s so you see a lot of, a lot of um, hybrid things happening um between between some of these like audio and social media in particular right now and I would say we did see this a lot with with video. I mean we had vine was huge and, and you know youtube, of course we still have Youtube. Um but a lot of these things are the things that we, we already used to communicate and they pop up in different ways depending on, you know, what features are available on how the different audiences communicate with one another. Um, on those different platforms. [00:11:40.04] spk_1:
That’s interesting, you bring up vine, how come vine went away but tick tock. It is, it is, it’s flourishing. [00:12:39.04] spk_0:
How come, what is that? Yeah, I know, I’m fine, it was right, so vine went away and instagram at that time started having short videos too. So it was like instagram kind of picked up that short video format and then vine, you know, wasn’t needed as much because you have, you have your photos and your video on instagram then, so then we lose vine, but we have olive vines, features on a different platform. Um and I think that’s something that we really want to think critically about when we’re looking at these trends and the different platforms that come up because there are a lot of politics behind it, you know, it’s something it’s, you know, which ones have the most money, like instagram is owned by facebook, so they have a lot more money and resources and facebook is everywhere all over the globe um you know, in, in nearly every country, whereas you know something um for as a, as a um you know, contrast, we have Tiktok which what has been threatened to be, you know, shut down in the US unless they, unless they, you know, sold part of their company to an american owner. So we have things like that that are going on in the background that, you know, we have to make um certain apps, you know, have more ability to reach more people. So it’s also, it’s about how we use them and whether they are service serving people’s needs and you know, that it’s fun to use and all of that, but also we need to think about, it’s not always just, um, the audience that determine which one is a successful platform. [00:14:29.84] spk_1:
It’s time for a break. Turn to communications, Your Communications Plan for 2022. Does it include social posts, blog posts, newsletters, your annual report, website updates, board reports, fundraising appeals. Acknowledgment messages, staff, communications, process documentation, training, documents onboarding or maybe those last couple don’t fit into your communications plan. They still have to be written. Do you need help with your writing in 2022 Turn to communications, your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot c o Now back to social media outlook for 2022, does that mean that we should not be pioneers or even maybe early adopters when a, when a platform emerges, you know, that, that we not invest time in it when it may not, It may not survive? I mean like should we wait 18 months before we jump into a new platform? [00:15:02.24] spk_0:
I that’s a really good question because I mean that’s what we’re talking about here, trends. We wanna know trend because we want to know how do we react to these new things. Um, and two that I, I would say like for if you’re a smaller nonprofit and I’ve worked at many, you know, you don’t have a lot of resources you want to, I would like to think of think of the social media, um, managing that as a, um, capsule wardrobe. So I don’t know if anyone familiar with the capsule wardrobe defined that we have, we have [00:15:09.48] spk_1:
on non profit capsule wardrobe will definitely land you in jargon jail. [00:17:48.74] spk_0:
So, right. So, and so a capsule wardrobe if you think of, so you can think, I think a great example is Fran fine on the nanny. She has a very, you know, dramatic wardrobe. However, if you pay attention, she’s pretty much always wearing a black turtleneck, black tights and black shoes and then she’ll put like a fun jacket or a fun skirt on top of those things. And, and so that’s um, you know, a way to extend a wardrobe on fewer, there are fewer pieces and just choosing like a statement piece. So the way I look at that is like, um, in with your social media, you want to have good bones, good structure. You wanna have, you wanna have some image templates that you can use. And then when there’s a, you know, I just talked about images before and putting audio with them. So if you already have great images that you’ve worked on and put a lot of care into curating, you can then add these other things on top of them as these trends change. Um, I would also say as far as new platforms coming up, I think it’s always worth your time to at least create an account so that if that platform becomes more popular in the future, you’ve already claimed your organization’s name on there. Um, so that it’s easy to find you and you, and it’ll be, you know, more cohesive part of your brand. So I think that’s always worth it because that doesn’t take a lot of time. Exactly. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. And that’s fine too. That’s fine too. Because you’re, you’re putting your time where, you know that your audience is and, and you know, what’s going to pay off because, you know, without a lot of time and resources, we have to be very smart about, um, where we’re putting our focus and social media because it’s so vast when you send stuff out, it can just go out into the ether and no one, you know, it might not get traction. So you need to be very smart about how you’re using your time. So I would say like, yeah, you’re right. So you have your, your core images and the kinds of messages that you know, that you can use. Um, also this might be referred to as evergreen content content that you can use all the time. Um, you know, no matter the time of year, but it’s always relevant to, to your organization. Um, I think that’s a very important thing to have in, in kind of your capsule wardrobe, um, of, of social media fashion, you know, your, [00:18:30.84] spk_1:
your, your capsule wardrobe, your capsule wardrobe. Yes, I scolded your core capsule. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. Um, well, I’m a guy, I want to be, you know, I want to be up. I want to be, I want to be timely. My, my time has long passed. Um, so, alright, Yes, absolutely, of course, evergreen content repurposing, you know, you want to be smart. You know, if something goes on your blog, maybe you can maybe you can pull a 12th, clip, an audio and quoted somewhere, you know, on twitter [00:18:31.17] spk_0:
or facebook or, or, [00:18:50.34] spk_1:
or, or Tiktok when, when the audio only features are, are, are available. Um, and then, you know, and then it could be part of, maybe it could be part of an email. Uh, maybe maybe it lives somewhere else on your website. You know, maybe it could be a social media post in print instead of audio. Um, right, so you want to be smart about [00:19:01.84] spk_0:
right? And one um, uh, an acronym that I use for that, that I’ve heard is cope create once, publish everywhere. Okay, so like your blog post, you created it once. But then you’re using all those pieces of the blog posts in different places on your social media or your website and your blog and your emails and all of that. [00:19:58.74] spk_1:
I love it create once, publish everywhere. So we got our capsule wardrobe. We have our, we have our cope. Okay, what? Um, all right, So this is interesting. This audio form. I mean obviously as a podcaster and I’ve been a longtime listener of radio and I think radio is just such a intimate format. It feels close. I mean, I got my inspiration for this show from radio shows. Um really interesting, you know, in one respect, it’s a, it’s a step back from, from the video because now you’re only getting really getting half the, not half the content really, but half the half the stimulation. I mean there’s the but but I don’t consider a step backwards, but but [00:20:01.72] spk_0:
somebody, somebody could [00:20:02.69] spk_1:
say, well, no picture anymore, what you know, but the video is the trending, but now, now now audio is trending. [00:20:09.94] spk_0:
That’s why [00:20:11.54] spk_1:
that’s why we need you on to make sense of this for [00:20:14.27] spk_0:
us. For [00:20:15.89] spk_1:
me, I’m not gonna maybe other people maybe more sad, but make sense of it for me please. [00:21:19.44] spk_0:
So as you were talking, I was thinking, you know how you said like, radio can feel much more intimate than watching the video. And I it kind of reminds me of like reading a book versus watching a movie, the way you described it kind of like, and sometimes, you know, using our own imagination. And and with with the content that were there were there were reading or listening, using our own imagination. I think also helps us build a bond in some way. Whereas when you have a video, it’s like you don’t have to use your imagination, you can see what this person looks like and where they’re sitting and how they’re speaking and all of that kind of thing which I think takes away some of I think that’s part of like our creativity that makes us, you know, interested in having, you know, not knowing everything right away, you know? And and I um especially think like with audio, you know, you’re you’re very you’re not thinking about how you look, you’re just you’re just you’re just really um participating with the content, [00:22:13.44] spk_1:
interesting. That reminds me of of a host I used to listen to on National Public Radio terry Gross. She she never wanted to be in the same studio as her guests, they always remote and and there was no camera feed. It would she she didn’t want the visual stimulation, she wanted to focus on the conversation and that’s it. She didn’t want the person in the room, she didn’t want to see them wherever they were, whatever studio they were in, she didn’t want to see them from there. It was just the conversation. Mhm interesting. Alright, of course I’m blowing, I’m blowing it here because I I can see you right now and we may put this on Youtube. Uh [00:22:15.11] spk_0:
well you’re stuck with the lack of choice that people have the choice so to watch or or just listen, [00:22:21.02] spk_1:
that’s true, you can turn your screen, you can turn off your screen absolutely, you could, you could go for the go for the creativity and, uh, and just listen, [00:22:29.84] spk_0:
I guess it’s [00:22:42.94] spk_1:
not so good to just watch though. That’s not gonna be good. Like don’t turn the sound down and try to read the lips that you’re, you’re missing, you’re missing too much content there, that I wouldn’t suggest doing it that way. All right. Um you think Tiktok is growing too, you have a, you have a prediction about Tiktok and instagram. [00:24:08.44] spk_0:
Um, yeah, so I was reading this and I think, um, hoot suite that Tiktok is growing will surpass instagram um, in the number of active users. Um, and you know, that’s, I mean, we do see a lot of, a lot of the, you know, younger audiences on their like gen Z and stuff like that. Um, and, and I, and I was also reading about, um, okay, well, let me say so, I always want to be like, it’s great when companies can grow and it shows how popular they are. But I do also want to go back to, you know, what we just said about why certain platforms grow faster than others or might succeed where others don’t even though they have the same the same features, But, um, and so, and I start with Tiktok, um, and instagram and, you know, which one is popular is important for our organism, which one’s most popular is important. But we also want to look at where are our audience is in particular. So if you know that your audience is, you know, um this demographic, which is, you know, it’s um boomers who live in Arizona or, or whatever demographic it is, and it doesn’t, it’s not, you don’t see your audience on Tiktok, then it it doesn’t make um too much sense to go on there. But as we said, go and claim your account, make your space. So if you if it ever as the demographics change because that’s important to remember to demographics change over time. Um if we just look at facebook, for example, facebook was only open to university students. Um, so that was a very small demographic, but then it grew and grew. So, so we can see like these are where, where the numbers are for a moment. But that changes. And we can use that information to try to help make our decisions. But we should always remember that none of these are hard and fast rules. And we have to think about ourselves as the expert of our audiences and think about how social media is a tool to help us reach those people that that we know best [00:25:17.84] spk_1:
and you’re good point, you know, knowing where they are and and knowing that that may shift as well, grandparents were not on facebook 15 years ago, but now it’s common. Well even before the pandemic for grandparents to stay in touch with grandkids through facebook. So, [00:25:23.17] spk_0:
right. And, and a lot of my students do not use facebook anymore. [00:25:28.01] spk_1:
Right, well their their grandparents around [00:25:29.76] spk_0:
it, they don’t want exactly that’s going to look at pictures of your family and stuff, but not talk to your friends. [00:25:36.74] spk_1:
Facebook is a perfect study in shifting demographics. [00:25:39.69] spk_0:
That’s an excellent. Yeah, very interesting. [00:26:26.34] spk_1:
The pioneers were driven off by the by, I think by their grandparents, they were alright, so if Tiktok Tiktok surpasses instagram, alright, so that it’s just, it’s just something I like to be aware of that Tiktok is growing in in audience size that way. And so it might be, might be a place for you to look. Um but maybe not, and we’re gonna get to the maybe not, you know, every right, every platform is not for everybody. Um but again, I love your advice about, you know, claim your claim your spot, get an account in your name, so nobody, nobody beats you to it and then you have to be creative or You know, be Tony-Martignetti two or something, you know, [00:26:29.19] spk_0:
because [00:26:38.74] spk_1:
they were the real tony-martignetti you know, All right, so let’s talk about creating, creating content this emerging short form audio [00:30:11.64] spk_0:
with creating content and especially with short form, I think that’s definitely, you know, a challenge for a lot of social media accounts for a lot of our organizations, especially those that do very complex, you know, work and we want to communicate about it, but you know, this very brief, um, these very brief formats make it very difficult and I always try to emphasize with my colleagues and and reminding myself that social media is a place to direct people to more information. So like, yes, those clips are very short. But you want to make sure you’re using that to direct people where they can get more information. Words, you know, whether it’s, you know, signing up volunteers or donations or or what do you want them to do after? Well, and always have some kind of idea of what you of um, what each of your posts are doing for you. So you don’t wanna, you know, just put any kind of content out there. You have 15 seconds or, or however short the clip is and you want to make sure that you’re, you’re, you know, getting the most out of your time. So, um, when you are like, again, we will go back to the capsule wardrobe, making sure you have those solid foundations, creating some, some graphics that you can reuse. Um, but also, you know, look at what your, your peers um, uh, similar organizations are doing also what your audience is sharing, even if it’s not, you know, specific to your organization, you can see what your audience is interested in and how they are spending their time. Um, I often, you know, in my, in the course that I was doing with the intent, I would often talk about thinking about walking through the day in your audience in any of your audience members shoes and thinking about how are they spending their morning? You know, is that a good time to reach them and, you know, what kind, what are they doing in the morning and how might, you know, your work relate to that in some way. Like if somebody, you know, spends their morning, you know, watering their garden and you are, um, you know, an environmental organization and how you can um kind of show that you have common interests there and relating to what they’re interested in. So looking at looking at what what they are already interested in, but also looking at what some of your competitors and, and similar organizations to yours are doing, and, you know, identifying not just looking at what they’re doing and copying them, but looking at what they’re doing, identifying what works and what doesn’t, and also how you can put a spin on things for, for your brand, um, you know, there’s, there’s a quote, like good artists copy great artists steal that. So, so we want to, so it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, perfectly legitimate to look at what other companies are doing and and try them um, in your own way. Another thing is there’s nothing new under the sun, So all of these ideas are we’re regenerating and, and recreating and which is creativity, you know, thinking of these things from all these different places and they come together to make new things. Um, so when you’re thinking about about your content and how to make it, you know, engaging. You want to go back to the things, think less about the technology and think more about, you know, the very essence of good storytelling and, and you know what makes a good photo making sure that they’re good quality and all of those things can will take you a lot farther than thinking about um friends and and styles because they change so quickly. [00:31:48.34] spk_1:
It’s time for Tony’s take two. Yes. You have my good wishes for 2022 for the new year. I’m I’m always optimistic at the beginning of the new year. Even when all evidence maybe to the contrary. I still, I don’t know. Uh Pollyanna naivete, blissful ignorance. I I don’t know. But every year I’m optimistic. So I’m optimistic about the new year. And you have my good wishes For your 2022 for you, your family, your work, your nonprofit, all those, all those things that are important. I hope 2022 is very good to you for all of those things in all those different ways. That’s it. My good wishes for the new year. That is Tony’s take two. We’ve got boo koo. But loads more time for social media outlook for 2022. Alright, that was a lot of excellent. So let’s start with calls to action. You want, you want, you want every piece of content to have some call to action, learn, learn more volunteer, donate, sign the petition. [00:31:53.34] spk_0:
Even if it’s not a direct call to action, like, you know, sign up. Even if it’s, but even if you know the purpose like, okay, we are interacting with this audience member in order to, you know, build a better um relationship with our audience. Always make sure that that you know why you’re posting and you’re not just spending time sending things out because that’s that’s where you start to, you know, sink all your time into something that might not be paying off [00:32:51.44] spk_1:
and in in short form audio. I mean if you want folks to go somewhere, maybe two learn more or you know, if there is an explicit call to action, learn more at a landing page, maybe you’re testing the, the, the outcomes so you have a landing page or whatever it is. Short form audio that you have to devote part of your 15 seconds to reading a web address. [00:33:47.34] spk_0:
So with the, the short form audio, it’s always going to be um in a place they’re gonna have to be looking at something to click on it or have some kind of text with it in order to like it’ll come up in their feet or something like that. So whatever description um or you know, sometimes you, I mean in most places you can comment even beneath yourself. So wherever you see any opportunity to put in that information um is important um to do that. But as far as you know with audio as well, I think it’s also sometimes I see um and that’s actually not, this is audio and text but sometimes I’ll see like very long you RL’s um and I think it’s important to remember to use a U. R. L shorter I think um definitely. And when you’re doing audio, whether you know short for more or a little longer and you want to include a U. R. L. Make sure that you use like um Bentley dot com or something where you can customize it to be something easy to remember and you don’t have to say http excuse, you know, all of [00:35:08.84] spk_1:
that. Uh I like to go even further. I have, I bought the the vanity domain, you know, tony dot M. A. So I could do tony through M. A. I think is Morocco. I’m pretty sure I bought that. I think I’m every two years I paid the country of Morocco I think I’m pretty sure that’s M. A. Um it’s not Mauritania, I think it’s more, I’m pretty sure it’s Morocco. So yeah, so tony-dot-M.A.-slash-Pursuant I can say, you know, non profit radio uh email sign up, you know whatever whatever. Alright so that may be worth investing in a little vanity vanity shorter too but but bitterly of course we like. Yeah, I like free resources. Absolutely. Um and then you mentioned peers, you know, evaluating what your peers are doing, what others see what other nonprofits are doing. So you mean literally looking at there at their feeds and and, and different platforms and see what they’re talking about and how they, how [00:35:35.64] spk_0:
they talk, yep. And so you should definitely be following your pure organizations. Um, there are also a great resource for creating content. Not just, you know, if you, um, work together sometimes on on a shared project, um, you can help boost each other’s visibility on social media. But you do want to be following following your peer organizations also, you know, as a social media manager. Um, you tend to befriend the other social media managers because you know, you said, you know what other each other are going through. And so that’s actually a great community and um, following each other because then you can reach out to each other. Help. Help because you’re you’re in it for the, for the same cause. So it’s like you’re boosting the same content and and you know, helping achieve your mission overall that both of you want to achieve. [00:36:27.33] spk_1:
That could even lead to some deeper collaboration. Maybe, you know, I’ve, I’ve had guests talk about the possibility of uh, like doing giving Tuesday, you know, combined campaigns. Mm hmm I don’t remember other examples, but but you know, just shared promotion. Pre shared projects, your promotion [00:36:38.43] spk_0:
and one of the ones that I’ve had the most success with as far as partnership and shared promotion is um well I don’t see them as much anymore, but for a time there were twitter chats were pretty popular. Um I don’t see them as much as I used to, but whenever I’ve done them, I we would always get like tons more engagement um with our content. That was one of our I will put that on twitter chats and and tweeting at conventions. That is when we would get the most followers, the most retweets the most engagements generally. Um and now I’m thinking, you know, with the twitter um audio rooms and stuff like that. That could be instead of having a twitter chat where you’re typing it out, maybe you have people come in and listen to your panel discussion of experts talking about whatever the theme is and um introducing people to, to your brand that way. [00:37:32.13] spk_1:
Cool. Excellent ideas. All right. You recommended paying attention to what your audience shares. Mm hmm. So you know what you want to you want to do more of what’s popular and less of what people think? Sucks. Right. [00:38:48.32] spk_0:
So, um yeah, so, well, before I was a lecturer at Howard, I worked in the office of the Vice President for student Affairs and I was managing the social media there. Um and the school environment especially important to watch what your audience is saying because we didn’t need to watch for any problems that are coming up and stuff like that. Um but that’s the kind of thing I think you you want to look for generally and not just you know, problems um not doesn’t have to be something dire, but you know, what is, what is your audience concerned about that your organization can help answer and um you know, what are the problems that they encounter or the ways that see that they that they feel the issue that you cover, how that impacts their lives. So sometimes it might be looking at, you know exactly what they’re posting, exactly what they’re saying and sometimes it means more about like you know looking at overall and kind of observing, you know what you um you might even notice like challenges and things that come up that that your audience does not. Um but you can perhaps you know show how your work can help with these things that they may not even notice our issues um relating to your organization. [00:39:06.62] spk_1:
What about the use of analytics to uh to evaluate what what your what your folks are sharing is that can that be valuable there? [00:41:00.61] spk_0:
Absolutely. You should definitely be um keeping track of your analytics if you so if you don’t have a dedicated person who can look at the analytics every month, you at least want to be downloading them. So you have them um whenever I have started a new position as a social media manager. one of the first things that I do is to go to, um, all of those social media accounts and download as much of their um, analytical history as I possibly can. So if you’re already keeping and, and the thing is some platforms that you can’t go back any farther than a couple of years or a couple of months. So it’s very important to get that right away. Um, even if you can’t look at it consistently, because one day if you, if you do have someone who’s able to dedicate time to that, they have tons of content to go on where they can look at, you know, oh, we had a huge jump in in subscribers um, at this time and then they can go and look at, well, you know, what was going on at that time, What did we post? What was drawing in so much engagement? And so that’s why you really, um that’s why your your analytics are so important and it’s thus about like looking through them every day. Or I’m sorry, every month or so, um, because you know, if you don’t have a dedicated person for that, that takes a lot of time. But being familiar with, you know, around how many followers you have or being able to see the trend of, you know, what is normal engagement for us. So that then you can see when you do have a huge spike, you’ll be easily able to identify like oh here’s where that came from and here’s how we can duplicate that success also because that’s another thing you want to think about. How can we do this again? Um how can we use it for a different campaign or or in what other ways can we can we benefit from you know this content that we that did so well [00:41:05.01] spk_1:
which are the platforms that you think have the better analytics. [00:42:49.90] spk_0:
I definitely have opinions about that. Twitter, Twitter has great analytics um you will find so in um in a lot of communications scholarship like peer review journals and stuff when they’re when they’re talking about social media they will often use twitter twitter analytics because they’re the easiest to access. So twitter makes it very easy to to download all of your analytics from your account and put it in an Excel spreadsheet and then from there you can do whatever you want to do with it. Um there are on the on the other end I would say like for example instagram you cannot you have to go to like each individual post and see how many how many had right? So you have to type them in and yeah so and and that that allows um face meta now meta to have you know um more control over that content. Um The facebook analytics I are pretty good but again they are there, you kind of have to keep them within facebook Um So it’s harder to you know take them out and analyze them in different ways. So any platform that’s going to allow you to download them in an Excel spreadsheet is ideal. Um But you know sometimes I have had to go through and I’m writing typing them in individually from instagram. So and and that could that could also you know be a factor in deciding which platforms that you spend most of your time on because you know if you if you are focusing on if you make if you want to focus a lot on your analytics you wanna and and you want to have a platform where you can easily download them and it doesn’t take a lot of extra work. Um So you know these are all things to think about when you’re when you’re deciding you know what works best for for how you present on social media. [00:43:15.50] spk_1:
What’s another one that’s good besides twitter Analytics one judging the analytics. [00:43:20.00] spk_0:
I mean I do I like facebook uh the analytics that they that the way that they’re analytics [00:43:27.47] spk_1:
are in the [00:44:20.59] spk_0:
classroom right? You can’t export them. So um I’m thinking I mean for the most they tried there so you can I would also recommend. So I don’t know of twitter is the best ones, I don’t know of any other other ones don’t really compare to that but yeah but twitter is also starting to lock down um some of that like it’s not quite as much um data as you could get it before so um but there’s also you know platforms where like Hoot suite for example where you can have multiple social media platforms and see your analytics aggregated there. I do caution though that when you use um you use one of those platforms um the numbers might be a little bit different like there might be like some lag time between you know twitter and twitter on Hoot suite you know so um and also like the labels and the way that data is is labeled so you know on one platform a certain action might be called interactions whereas on another platform they’re called engagements and how they measure each of those things and what they’re called could could be different. So it’s just you know making sure we’re watching for those. [00:44:52.69] spk_1:
Why would like a twitter start restricting the the robustness of the of the analytics the way you just said they’re they’re they’re tightening that up. Why would they why would they offer less? [00:45:01.29] spk_0:
You want to charge for it? You want to start [00:45:03.45] spk_1:
charging a fee to get it or [00:45:29.19] spk_0:
you know what that’s and you know we we don’t know until they until it’s public. So that is 11 thing that could, I’m I haven’t um I’m not sure why it’s more difficult to get information but you know it’s beneficial to companies you know that information is money to them. So it is beneficial to them when they, you know, have proprietary um keeping content that that is valuable to them. I would um but twitter, [00:45:43.49] spk_1:
they could have it too and share it with us too. I mean they’re they’re only sharing it with users. Users can only get there there little bit. The company is welcome to aggregate the hundreds of millions of users. They can do whatever you want with your proprietary data. But let me have my little share what are you taking in the era of transparency? What are you taking my little share away for? [00:45:57.29] spk_0:
You would think, But I don’t know. All [00:46:36.38] spk_1:
Right. You don’t have all the answers. Nobody does know these black boxes that we’ve all signed onto 2020 years. Sometimes they’re more annoyance than than than than additive but sometimes not not, I’m not, not saying I’m I’m opposed to social media obviously, but they can be very annoying, very annoying. We don’t even, we could spend a whole hour talking about facebook or a day about the annoyances behind facebook and in the shift from organic to paid, it’s just to me it’s just corporate green. All right. [00:46:39.48] spk_0:
But I think a lot of that is, you know power from the users and putting it back in the hands of the company because users do have so much power and we have a lot of their ideas come from the users that are using the platforms. So I think it’s, you know, wanting to control how, how people use that platform and the information that you can get from it. [00:46:59.28] spk_1:
Yeah, I mean, [00:47:03.77] spk_0:
it’s [00:47:28.88] spk_1:
exploitation. I mean, I’ll use, I’ll use facebook the most egregious example as, as the example, but you think goaded us all in, you know, they have 2.5 billion users now, a third of the planet is they, they brought us in and then they, and then they shepherd uh, you know, much less organic reach now. You want the same organic, you want the same reach, add pay for it, pay for it, pay us pay Goldman Sachs and uh, and you can have that, we have your reach back that we gave you originally and you know, it’s, it’s egregious. It’s uh, just exploitation. [00:47:43.38] spk_0:
And I, I feel like social media has so much power for bringing people together and, and so that’s why I caution about like with trends and stuff we do need to be critical about, you know, is this trend, was this trend created because it’s something users wanted or because the company needs to innovate and grow. You know, so that’s another reason why you can wait and give yourself some time to see which trends are taking on and what makes sense for you because you don’t want to just be throwing your your time into this machine that is just there to make money for them. You want to make sure that you’re getting the best value out of that, [00:48:37.77] spk_1:
what a beautiful segue to, to a closing section, let’s talk about, you know, every every platform is not for every non profit you know, you’ve you’ve made the point already, you know, you can uh squat on your account, you create your account and just and just squat it, hold it, but but every, you know, even the bigger platforms, we don’t have to be everywhere. [00:48:42.07] spk_0:
Exactly, so, [00:48:43.29] spk_1:
you know, [00:50:17.66] spk_0:
you definitely right, so there are like you and this is something I say in my class to like in learning about social media and there’s constantly new stuff, you do not have to know everything about it, you do not have to be on every platform, your audience is not on every platform, no single person can manage all of the social media accounts that their social media platforms that there are. So I think the most important thing, you know, is to get back to that good structure and knowing who your audience is and um how to communicate with them and then, you know, using the different quirks of those social media accounts and different features to, to tweak that, but um as far as, you know, you might also want to think of as we’re talking about, you know, these big companies and what data they’re keeping and control and stuff like that, that might also be an a factor in deciding which platforms you’re on like um, back to N 10. Um, and 10 is no longer on Facebook because you know, the, some of the business practices that Facebook has used do um, do not, you know, does not work well with end transmission and the ways that they operate and you know, those are things you have to weigh that. Um, you know, if a lot of your, your audiences on facebook and that’s the only way to reach them, then maybe, you know, you do stay, but you know, you have this understanding of like um, that there are issues and were working around them and trying to make the best of these environments, but you know, they are businesses and so we need to be smart about where we’re spending our time. [00:51:22.46] spk_1:
Excellent advice, very savvy. Thank you. All right. Sharos King Matthews, you’ll find her at narrows A C K. I’m gonna spell her name so you can find her C H A R R O S C King, Thank you very much. Great, great advice. Thank you my pleasure Next week, the log for j software vulnerability with Joshua pesky, eh, if you missed any part of this week’s show, I beseech you find it at tony-martignetti dot com. We’re sponsored by turn to communications pr and content for nonprofits. Your story is their mission turn hyphen two dot C o. It may be a new year, but some things never change. Our creative producer is [00:51:23.54] spk_3:
claire Meyerhoff shows. Social media is by Susan Chavez. Marc Silverman is [00:51:28.24] spk_1:
our web guy [00:51:41.66] spk_3:
and this music is by scott Stein. Thank you for that. Affirmation scotty. You’re with me next week for nonprofit radio big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. Go out [00:51:43.14] spk_1:
and be [00:51:53.36] spk_3:
great.
Amy Sample Ward returns to discuss the issues around graphic images and descriptions of poverty. How can you avoid the porn trap and white savior stereotyping, while telling compelling stories and advocating effectively? She’s our social media contributor and CEO of Nonprofit Technology Network (
