Hi my name is Jayne Corso and I am the Community Manager for AEA. It’s expected that by 2020, there will be close to 6.2 billion smartphones in the world. This means your social posts need to adapt. Posts that reign king on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and, Instagram are targeted to be viewed on a mobile device. So, how can you make these changes to your content? I put together a few tips to help you out!
Hot Tip: Keep Your Content Relevant
No matter the platform, you want to keep your posts short and straight forward. Avoid fluff language and deep description. You want your action, such as “register today” or “read more” to be clear. You can add details on the site where you are directing your audience.
In addition, when they leave your social page for more information about your post, make sure this transition is easy. It’s difficult and frustrating to explore a website on a phone, so simple is best.
Hot Tip: Use Videos
Short videos are great for capturing attention on a mobile device. They can be more eye catching than a photo or text post, especially when users are scrolling through there newsfeed.
Videos do not have to be professional and can be shot using your own mobile device. Try posting tips for data visualization, lessons learned from your programs, or insights discovered at recent conference.
Hot Tip: Try Live Videos
There are currently a bunch of options for directly communicating with your followers. You can try Facebook Live videos, live Instagram Stories, or YouTube live channels. These channels allow you to have real-time interactions with users and respond to questions or comments on the spot.
Let your followers know in advance when going live on any of these platforms to ensure the maximum viewers.
I hope these strategies help you increase your reach within the evaluation community.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on theaea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.
Hi Jayne,
My name is Jessica and I am currently a student at Queen’s University in the Professional Masters of Education program.
The current class I am taking is called Program Inquiry and Evaluation, and it was asked that we reach out to one of the author’s of and AEA post which interests us.
I personally work for a non profit organization. My main stakeholders are youth, educators, schools and school boards or districts. Since we are funded primarily through our sister social enterprise and private funders we are constantly asked for reports and evaluations. This contains and is not limited to the quality and impact of our educational programming, campaign sign ups, stories, polls, qualitative and quantitative reports etc.
To be perfectly honest, we have been having a very hard time getting the response rates that we need to appease our stakeholders/partners as well as be able to analyse and assess our programming. I do feel a large part of this is because we are doing it in archaic ways. We are asking educators to sign up online to campaigns after receiving email prompts from us, to fill in a 30 min report about their actions twice a year, grant applications through surveygizmo, questionnaires etc. I have been racking my brain on ways in which we can make evaluation and reporting more efficient, easier and with a larger response rate.
Your post on how to use social media and evaluation really started to get my wheels turning. We are not using facebook, live streaming, IG etc. at all to its full capacity. We have videos on campaigns, but then don’t have a direct link to register. I loved the idea of the concrete action items, linking directly to the sign up page. Also the idea of live streaming strategically to collect data in the moment. Even something as simple as using FB polls to gather data etc. could be useful.
I really appreciated your post as well as the way in which it has me thinking outside of the box.
That being said, how do you filter the good data from the non relevant when using social media as a way to evaluate? With the web having very little constraints, do you ever run into issues?
Thanks!
Thanks for adding my comments to your article Jayne much appreciated!
You are absolutely correct. Having been in the online business since 1999, We now find it is imperative to make a huge move towards mobile devices. It is estimated that millenials now spend 20 more times utilizing mobile and more importantly apps in this day and age as they do actually surfing the internet. Failing to focus social media to any mobile device would be a catastrophic event for anyone who is looking to have a major presence.