This year we’ve launched our DigiComms 101 series of webinars, which will cover the basics of digital communications to support your organisation to engage with your audiences online.

Register to join our next session.

In the UK there are 45 million active social media users that equates to 79% of the population who are old enough to use social media (aged 13+), so there is a good chance that the people you want to reach can be found on a social media platform.

Our first DigiComms session; ‘Finding Your Followers’, covered the fundamentals of engaging with and growing a following on the most popular social media platforms in the UK, namely - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and…YouTube. Yes, that’s right, YouTube. Those who exclusively use the platform to watch old episodes of the Generation Game may be surprised to learn that YouTube can be considered social media. However, it ticks a lot of ‘social’ boxes including hosting user-submitted content that can be viewed by other users, ‘likes’, messaging, sharing and commenting.

If you are a regular user of social media you may already be pretty familiar with these platforms. However, changes are being made to the features, algorithms and functionality of social platforms all the time.

Getting to grips with these latest updates can help you find and grow your following:

Facebook groups vs Facebook pages

After 15 years of operation, Facebook is still adding new features to the platform. One of the latest changes has been analytics functionality for Facebook groups.

In response to the pandemic, many mutual aid and neighbourhood groups popped up on Facebook. Groups are a great way to build a community on Facebook and if you already have a Facebook page you can create linked groups with your page. You can now access ‘group insights’ for Facebook groups, which help you to understand how members engage within your group, see who the most active group members are and learn which posts have the most engagement.

Personal profiles and business pages

This isn’t a new update, but one that still throws people. To set up a Facebook page (also known as a ‘business page’) you must have a personal profile (account), this has been the case since 2018 when it was introduced to improve the transparency of advertising on the platform.

We know this can be a problem for those who only want to interact on Facebook as their charity or community group’s page, not their personal profile. We have created a troubleshooting video providing step by step instructions on how to join groups as your page and how to share posts in a group from your page. Sharing your page’s posts to relevant groups is a great way of reaching new audiences and growing your following. Watch via our YouTube channel.

Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels – direct competitor of TikTok – launched in August 2020 in the UK. Like TikTok, Reels provides a set of tools to help you to create fun and engaging 15 second videos. The editing tools include AR (augmented reality) effects, speed controls and clipping.

Video is the most popular and engaging content out there, but it can be intimidating to start creating video if you're not familiar with filming and editing. Creating Reels can be a good way to encourage you to experiment and get creative and the in-app tools mean you can edit for free.

Everything you need to know about Instagram Reels can be found in this Hootsuite article.

Twitter Fleets

If you are an avid tweeter you have probably noticed that ‘Fleets’ appeared at the top of your Twitter app back in November 2021.

Like Instagram stories and Facebook stories, Fleets are Twitter posts that are temporary, they disappear after 24 hours. They can only be posted and viewed via mobile apps, not desktop.

You can post text, gifs, photo or video via Fleet and you can also share your own tweets or others to Fleets.

The jury is out on whether Fleets will be the next big thing, but it can be a good way to share content from your followers and supporters quickly (and temporarily).

More information on Fleets can be found in this article from Later.

Join our next DigiComms session

Join us at our next session on Tuesday 27 April, 1.30pm - 3.30pm, we will cover some of the top free tools to help you to create attention grabbing graphics to help boost your online engagement!

Register now.

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