Social Media for the Green Party 2016/2017

What are the main goals of the Green Partys social media strategy?

The main goal of any social media strategy is generally to raise awareness and also
enable engagement with the general public/voters.

So with this in mind the Green Party should be aiming to

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Increase its number of followers on an ongoing basis

Increase engagement with its audience through interactions such as

mentions, retweets, comments and replies.

At 16.8k followers the Green Party has a sizeable audience on Twitter and also on
Facebook 6,157 followers. Instagram (326 folllowers) and Linkedin (144 followers)
have significantly smaller audience sizes so they need to be grown. However
audience size alone does not necessarily always relate to influence. Just because
an organisation has a lot of followers, that does not necessarily mean they can
encourage those followers to actually do anything.

For this reason the Green Party should strive to tweet and link to high quality
content in order to attract quality followers who have strong social influence.

Target audiences

The Green Partys target market is the constituents and party supporters in
particular those who believe in green and social justice issues and/or an interest in
politics.

Also secondary to this would be trying to attract environmental & social justice
advocates and organizations who are very influential particularly in the social
media arena for the environment and would help to increase our social influence.

Its good to always bear your audience in mind when using social media or indeed
any type of media and use the appropriate tone.

Recommendations for analytics:

Google Analytics & website traffic

Connect Green party website to Google analytics and make sure account is set up
correctly so that traffic can be monitored on an ongoing basis.

If possible, a full review to be done of Google analytics to analyze how much

traffic has been coming from social media sources and which social media sources
account for the largest amounts of traffic and track this to see has it improved
over time.

Also check if increases in website traffic correlate with increases in number of web
enquiries.

Based on this assessment could consider whether or not to invest in Google

Adwords, Twitter ads and/or perhaps other forms of online advertising.

Content analysis

When it comes to any type of content, relevance is key. We should always be

reminding ourselves of who our audience is. But its important to not alienate the
rest of our audience on Twitter who are not necessarily environmentalists but have
an interest in other issues such as socio-political ones.

It is equally that the Green Party tweets about the most topical political issues that
are important to the Green Party and not just the stories that directly involve
themselves.

It would be useful to set up a Hootsuite account which would allow you to analyze
your social media posts to see which posts and types of posts have generated the
most engagement to date.

This can be done through an analysis of all tweets, Linkedin and Instagram posts
within a specific time period i.e. 2015-2016 in order to find our most successful
social media posts to date.

Influence monitoring

Another aspect which might be worth monitoring is your influence on social media
i.e. who is talking about your organization and what kind of impact do they have?
You could look at using an online tool such as Klout or Peer Index which assign
people an influence score based on their potential ability to influence others
online.

Kinetic Social, on the other hand, would help you understand who is participating
in and driving conversation about The Green Party and its campaigns, and who gets
others to participate in these specific conversations. You can find your brand
advocates by focusing on people whose messages are amplified by others, and not
just who has the most followers.

Share of voice monitoring

It could also be useful to monitor how the conversation about your organisation
compares with conversations about similar organisations/competitors.

Determine what % of the overall conversation about your industry is focused on

your organisation compared to your main competitors you could start monitoring
your competitors/similar organisations anonymously via Hootsuite.

Recommendations to increase reach and engagement

Content

Its very effective to use media rich content i.e. images and videos as this is
proven to get higher engagement rates than text based ones on social media - you
can get a 150% increase in retweets just by including images plan to create more
video content or even imagery. People also process an image 60,000 times faster
than written words.

Use any video content from our filming at events such as local meetings with
Catherine or bigger events such as referendums, elections etc.

In terms of creating a tone and personality with your online presence it is good to
show a fun side so every now and again post something humorous on social media
to catch peoples eye and keep them engaged.
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Website

Overall the website has a nice clean, fresh look and is easy to navigate. The social
media buttons are well placed in the top right hand corner and so easily visible and
accessible.

The carousel of rotating images on the homepage are also and eye catching and
engaging feature

In order to make the news section more accessible there could be a tab added to
the main navigation bar on the homepage as another way of navigating there.

The contact us buttons are very hidden and it may be better to have the contact us
button also featured in the main navigation bar on homepage to make it easy for
people to contact you.

Within the contact us section it would be good to have a built in web enquiry form
so the person doesnt have to exit the website and open their email application to
send an email. You could have a drop down menu bar within this for people to
specify what type of enquiry they have.

You could add a subscribe to our newsletter button in the news and contact us
sections of the website. A regular monthly newsletter would be a good way to keep
in touch with constituents and party supporters and keep them up to date with
what the Green Party is doing particularly any major speeches or bills being passed
etc. Try to use media rich content such as images and perhaps embedding videos in
the newsletter in order to grab peoples attention and keep them subscribed.

Tools to increase reach & engagement levels

In order to increase levels of reach and engagement with your social media
accounts ensure all Green Party employees have links to Green Party Linkedin and
Twitter accounts in their email signatures, their own social media profiles and on
all business cards and information leaflets/flyers.
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Facebook

Facebook ads/sponsored posts can be used to promote important

posts to a highly targeted audience based on interests and now even
their location. I noticed the Green Party is already using this tool for
Eamon Ryan.

Create localized content regularly which appeals to constituents

such as promoting local events or issues with specific constituencies
i.e. Eamon Ryan recently posted about the Dodder clean-up event.
More localized content tends to have a bigger draw for individuals as
it appeals to them on a more personal level.

Be responsive make it a habit to respond quickly to comments.

When you do that regularly, youll get more engagement with your
posts.

Use humor Dont be afraid to use humor and be light hearted

every now and again which helps to show personality and the human
side of the party.

Use media rich content especially videos as these have the highest
engagement rates on Facebook and most other social media
channels.

Use Facebook polls in order to ask followers and general public

about issues important to them. This will help to increase
engagement from your audience by conveying a positive message
that the Green party cares about peoples opinions and concerns.

Hootsuite

Use Hootsuite, the social media scheduling tool to schedule in

advance Tweets, Linkedin and Instagram posts. This is a great time
saving and planning tool.

Instagram

Connect your Facebook page to your Instagram account.

Use relevant, popular hashtags.

Engage by following others and liking their photos.

Cross-post selected images to your Facebook page with a hashtag

that aligns with your campaign or brand image to help people who
dont know youre on Instagram to find you there.

Create short 15 second videos on Instagram using the video on

Instagram application.

Embed your instagram videos in your website.

Make sure to follow Your followers back.

Showcase photos of employees - Showing your employees at work

not only gives a behind-the-scenes view of your organization, its
also a way to celebrate staff and show them how much theyre
valued.

Video Important moments.

Twitter

To increase engagement levels on Twitter one could consider using

some of their other tools such as Twitter polls where you can survey
your followers on a particular question or a #TweetChat which is a
live Twitter event, usually moderated and focused around a general
topic. To filter all the chatter on Twitter into a single conversation a
hashtag is used. A set time is also established so that the moderator,
guest or host is available to engage in the conversation in real time.

Post media rich content regularly inc. images and videos. Twitter
Vine can be used, it is a video creating app which allows you to
create short videos via Twitter.

It is important to engage more with other peoples content by

retweeting etc. as this is also proven to increase your own
engagement levels rather than all the content you share being
exclusively yours. You have to be careful to manage your image

online and not to come across as purely self-promoters with no

interest in other organizations and issues.

With this is mind you should also limit the number of tweets you
publish to max 4 per day as that is the industry recommended
guideline so as not to bombard and bore people with constant
tweets.

Use hashtags they double your engagement ratethey are their

own implicit call to action and they create higher visibility on
Twitter.

Include links in your tweets Salesforce reported that 92% of all

Twitter interaction (retweeting, replying, etc.) happens when
readers click links. Also, tweets with links get way more retweets
86% more.

Ask for retweets - When you clearly ask your followers for a
retweet, you have a good chance of getting one. Salesforce reports
that asking results in 12 times more retweets.