By: Michelle McDonald (University of California, Irvine and CIHA Blog intern)
As an ever increasing percentage of the world’s population engage in rich conversation online, there is greater impetus to develop a thoughtful strategy and plan for online engagement. It is particularly important for the humanitarian sector working in and on topics relevant for the African continent to develop such online communications strategies given heightened critiques about transparency in the aid sector as well as the fact that online spaces are becoming an important point of dialogue for many African citizens. For example, recent estimates suggest that 85% of the Kenyan population is online as of December 31, 2017. The fact that the twitter hashtag #KOT (Kenyans on Twitter) has become a well-known convening digital space for Kenyans to raise issues they are concerned with is also indicative of the importance of online spaces for discussions about relevant humanitarian issues on the continent.
In this age of online social interactions, it makes sense for humanitarian groups and individuals to leverage social media and blog sites to communicate and build relationships with the communities they are working with. For example, several humanitarian groups such as AID LEAP and Care2, have begun to blog, which has broadened the sharing of information about Africa beyond mainstream media sources. Umra Omar and Degan Ali are also examples of individual humanitarians who have used social media to engage the communities they work with. Online channels create opportunities for interaction and engagement that may help to bridge some of the asymmetrical power relationships often inherent in international aid relationships of aid giver / aid recipient.
Degan Ali is a strong example of online engagement through social media because as the executive director of Adeso, an African development and humanitarian organization, she has demonstrated new innovative ways to deliver aid by communicating in Africa through cash-aid distribution. Using online platforms, she speaks out about the legitimacy of modern-day humanitarianism through these social media platforms. Umra Omar is another example of how one can not only use social media to reach those in need, but also connect with those who want to help and collaborate. She has worked with people like Brandee Barker (Board member of BUILD National and a Human Rights Watch Advocate) in a collaborative effort to provide better aid rather than pursuing certain projects alone. These are some of the many examples where social media can benefit one’s engagement within and across the humanitarian sector to enable collaborations with people who one might have never have been able to interact with otherwise.
In the following post, I outline the benefits of having a blog. Then, I highlight some of the best practices for social media engagement. Finally, I conclude why it is important to be proactive rather than reactive, in order to make the case that social media can be one possible avenue to democratize decision-making related to humanitarianism in Africa. This post is designed for local and international humanitarian organizations and individuals working within them who are interested in or have just begun to develop an online presence and are looking for tips and suggestions on how to go about doing so. I hope that by doing so, these organizations will then be able to better their interactions with others, whether that be through more collaborative efforts or by being more responsive to those across Africa who reach out to them via their blog and social media.
The differences between a blog and social media vary greatly. A blog is usually where most of the extensive content of a humanitarian or humanitarian groups is posted, e.g. content like informative news pieces, organizational updates, and op-ed pieces, etc. Because of the less restrictive character limit, posts on a blog can give more in-depth details as to what the organization is all about and should be used as the archive for detailed content about the organization and its practices. On the other hand, social media channels are generally legeraged in more real-time with greater capacity for back and forth conversations. One may amplify information already posted on a blog as a way to give further details (given the character limitation of social media). A blog also is a more stable point of reference (whereas often there are so many transient social media posts that it can be hard to go back and find a specific one). In a sense, social media can be a hook to engage and point people towards more in-depth materials that can be found on the blog. Not only are you relaying information to other people who may have missed it, social media also allows for greater back-and-forth dialogue. By having both social media and a blog, you can bring two audiences to both expand your readership and also further inform and engage with a rapidly growing online section of society relevant to your work.
Blogs
As a blogger, having a blog site is vital for building your brand, figuring out your target audience, and making it easier for people to reach out to you. This section looks at how to post on a blog in a way that will be most attractive to your readers, and introduces how to use social media as a supplement to your blog, which will enhance the efforts of humanitarian outreach.
Figure Out Your Major Thematic Topics
Part of building out your online profile is also having a clearly recognizable and identifiable brand. What kinds of topics does your organization care about? What kinds of information do you collect/share (reports, photos, videos, etc.)? Do you partner with particular organizations who also have a lot of content that you can regularly re-post? Can you ask some of your field staff to work on blog posts after their visits to the communities they work with? Figuring out what kind of information you will share and how you will build out a pipeline of content (and on what topics) is an important first step. Remember that you must also ask for permission from those you work with if you plan to use their stories or information online. You can find some best practices laid out here by our friends at Radi-Aid: https://www.radiaid.com/social-media-guide/.
Update Regularly
Once you’ve established a blog space online, you should update regularly, whether it be original information or reposting of others’ relevant content. Doing so will help you to accumulate followers and establish an audience that visits the blog consistently. Having a set schedule for posts will create a concrete identity to the blog that will help to generate a larger audience, and will attract more readers to the subject. What “regular” means will depend from organization to organization but, on average, you should plan to post at least once every week or two. As you post regularly, the blog will be more recognizable on the internet via search engines such as Google Search, Bing, etc. A growing audience can also allow for a chain reaction of unintentional marketing of the blog because if people find the content engaging and interesting, they will share it with others which can in turn spread awareness about the work.
Incorporate Social Media Links/Buttons on Blog Page
It is important to focus on a few social media channels because having too many can be overwhelming for the reader. The point of this is for people that are interested in your content to share it and spread awareness, so it is important to limit the social media links to the most relevant ones. The most common and relevant social media outlets prove to be Facebook, and Twitter. Instagram has more recently become popular, especially for more multimedia heavy content. You should not have more than three to four social media buttons on your site.
Think of Social Media as Providing “Sneak Peaks” of Blog Posts
One of the best ways to generate a following is to publish posts that seem to be social media only content as a way to get your followers to go to the blog. Often the topic of humanitarian efforts can come across as boring or dry, especially in the age of technology where people are less likely to voluntarily read anything that is significantly long. Having posts on social media that are short and sweet can potentially make the content more interesting to the reader. A key tip would be to pull out 3-5 direct quotes from the blog posts that can ultimately be read as a Twitter post. By having such “short reads”, you can draw your reader into the topic (and perhaps even lead them to read the whole article). Another pro tip would be to occasionally include links to the blog site. However it is important to avoid too many links, especially in just one social media post. If you save the links for key pieces of content the technique will guide social media readers to the blog without the audience even realizing they were being led to the blog site.
Choose Quality Over Quantity
It is better to focus on quality rather than quantity to avoid your posts coming across as spam. You are more likely to sustain a consistent audience that way. If you post several posts a week, you must be sure that each post is contributing something relevant, insightful and new. You want to post something that will prove meaningful and useful to your readers, not something that they will glance over without a second thought. Even if you post one unique and original blog post a week, you can leverage social media to highlight different insights from the piece and post them online (via your social media channels) over the course of the week, maximizing on the content you produce. The idea called the “Pareto Principle” claims that the majority of your social content shouldn’t be promoting yourself. Rather, it should be about adding value for the audience. This can include reposting relevant news from other sources and highlighting key themes and topics that could be of interest.
Automate Publishing of Blog Content
You can take steps to have your blog site connected to various social media platforms of your choice and schedule your blog content to be automatically shared to those sites. One option is using WordPress plug-ins such as Jetpack most of which have sharing settings that allow you to schedule and edit what is being posted. With this set-up, the highlights along with a direct link to your site will be automatically posted to every social media site of your choosing.
Social Media
Given that social media is a primary means for online engagement today, if you are not leveraging social media sites, you are not making full use of your blog. This is where strategizing is essential. It can be very easy for your posts to be overshadowed by others as the average reader of your potential audience has a slew of posts on their newsfeed every day. So being mindful of what you post, how often you post, and when you post is critical when using social media. You also have to keep in mind what is catchy, and what would sound interesting to your target readers that will lead them to click on links to read more.This section will cover what what the most ideal social platforms are for wanting to accumulate a bigger audience, and how to be eye-catching and stand out on someone’s newsfeed by highlighting the best strategies for posting.
Best Social Networks for Promotion
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, and Instagram are arguable the best social networks for promoting your blog. On Twitter, posting twitter “rants” or a multitude of tweets from time to time helps to make the blog more attractive in terms of content. Facebook has a broader demographic audience and allows for more content in a single post which can help to get new readers to visit the blog. Longer posts allow the readers to have a better idea of what the blog post is about. On Google+ people can set up their own custom alerts as to when they want to be notified of you posting more content so you can worry less about “spamming” them. Linkedin amps up the relevance and prestige of the blog in the professional world by attracting potential volunteers, interns, employees, etc. who are looking for work. It can even attract potential sponsors that may want to reach out if your blog is engaging enough. Finally, instagram is for the more graphically inclined and foregrounds images and video.
Post Several Tweets Per Blog Post
In today’s busy world, it can be easy to overlook a single Tweet that has been made about a blog post. The goal is to give the readers as much of an opportunity as possible to be informed that a new blog has been posted. A good idea would be to revise the wording of the tweets, usually something along the same lines and just as catchy so that it is attention grabbing. You can even create multiple tweets that touch on different sections of the article. One person can find one thing interesting and not the other, so it would be key to diversify your tweets regarding different sections or ideas of your blog post.
Recycle Blog Content
Recycling older blog content on your various social media channels will give more chances for potential readers to visit the post, since they may not have seen it when you first published it. It is recommended that you come up with new titles for the social media posts (rather than reposting the exact same language) so that readers don’t look at your archived feed and see the same post reposted over and over again.
Use Up-to-Date Hashtags on Social Media to Advertise Blog
Pulling out keywords from a post that are relevant to the current events could be useful to create hashtags and plug into ongoing conversations. Hashtags are organizing words or phrases that help to keep a conversation together (even amongst strangers or people who are not yet “friends”). You should use no more than 2-3 hashtags on a post as #hastagging #every #word #is #distracting #and #comes #across #as #novice. Instead, choose one or two key words that already have hashtags that have been used by others and include them in your social media post. What this does is enable your content to show up when others use and look up that hashtag and also enables people who wouldn’t have seen your content otherwise to follow you. This can be particularly relevant when you are at an event and leverage the event’s hashtag and begin to build a thought community with those at the same event. Current events also often result in related hashtags such as the #FeesMustFall or #RhodesMustFall hashtags in 2015/2016 in South Africa that provided a metalayer social commentary on events or social phenomenon.
Keep Abreast and Respond to Queries As Soon as Possible
Responding to people on social media when it comes to commenting on your posts or Tweets/conversations about your posts, makes your group seem more approachable, which thus makes the readers want to engage with you. If you never respond to any posts, it makes the group seem aloof, disconnected and not interested in readers. The whole point of social media is to engage with your readers so ensure that you regularly check your social media channels and “comments” section of your blog (so that you can approve any comments that may have been posted). Responding to posts also gives the audience a glimpse of who you are, and lets them really feel like there is someone (a human) behind the posts. People will also be more likely to reach out with you whether they want to join you, help you, sponsor you, anything that will help you spread your cause.
Schedule Content in Advance
When you are not thinking of ideas to post on the fly, it can make your life a whole lot easier. If you start planning your posts ahead of time, you can make tweaks to them along the way. Nothing is more stressful than trying to come up with content right before you’re supposed to publish it as scheduled. Use tools like Hootsuite or Sprout to schedule social media content in advance. If your blog is on WordPress, you can also schedule blog posts in advance.
Listen
While some humanitarian groups arrive at social media as a means to present their own causes and get more people interested in the subject, a key characteristic of social media is that it enables one to listen to existing conversations and debates and to better understanding what others are thinking. Therefore, an important aspect of proactive use of social media is not only to amplify the work you are doing but to also listen to what communities you are working with are already doing and what they care about. Posing questions (instead of solutions) and seeking to understand rather than prescribe can be an important way to better understand how you might work with those on the ground.
Conclusion
In today’s age of technology, humanitarians can not only utilize blogs, but social media as well in order to be more strategic about explaining their humanitarian efforts, and also better engage with the communities that they are working with. Using social media helps to generate more traffic to blog sites and vice versa, so that humanitarians can engage in discussions with their readers and build new relationships. Online engagement also has the potential to spur new ideas and to receive feedback from various stakeholders on one’s projects and approach to humanitarianism.
While it is very important that humanitarians use the benefits of social media and blogs, it is also imperative to keep in mind that some of the most marginalized groups are not online. Therefore, while this post focused on encouraging humanitarians to expand their interactions into the online sphere, it is important not to forget the importance of offline engagement. Offline engagement may include radio talk shows, handing out of flyers, focus group meetings, and whatsapp discussions. A cohesive strategy for both online and offline communications is imperative for community engagement and we hope may help bring about more egalitarian relationships within the humanitarian aid space on the African continent.
Further Resources
- “The Complete Guide To Building Your Blog Audience – Chapter 5.” Quick Sprout, www.quicksprout.com/the-complete-guide-to-building-your-blog-audience-chapter-5/.
- This site gives an in-depth breakdown into the logistical aspects of not only enhancing a blog site but social media handles as well, in order to generate more traffic in a step-by-step format
- Dunlevie, Sue, et al. “Blog.” Successful Blogging, www.successfulblogging.com/blog/.
- Sue’s website provides various articles about how to become a successful blogger whether it be tips to establishing a blog audience, or how to effectively post content
- Marc. “10 Social Media Tips for Small Businesses.” Hootsuite Social Media Management, 20 Nov. 2017, blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-tips-for-small-business-owners/.
- This site covers the best tips to attract social media users to your business/organization
- Singh, Madhumeeta. “20 Social Media Marketing Tips For Bloggers.” Digital Seo Guide, Digital Seo Guide, 31 Jan. 2018, www.digitalseoguide.com/social-media/20-social-media-marketing-tips-for-bloggers/.
- This link provides useful tips for bloggers that probably aren’t very familiar with using social media, and how they can use it to market their blog site.
About the Author:
Michelle McDonald recently graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a major in International Studies and a focus on business management. She has conversational Japanese language skills after studying in Japan during Spring 2017 as part of the UC Education Abroad program. Michelle is interested in helping businesses with their social media strategies and public engagement.