Alicia ZunigaLIBR 294

Spring 2014Social Media Report for digitallearn.org

January-May 2014

This report outlines the actions taken to increase community engagement on social media channels during the SJSU Spring semester and suggestions to continue to improve.

Daily (or near-daily) posts on Facebook and Twitter

This task was accomplished using the third-party application, Hootsuite, and setting up Google alerts for specific phrases. Google alerts were set up for “digital literacy,” “digital inclusion,” “digitallearn.org,” “digital divide” and “broadband adoption.” Using news stories emailed to me from setting up these alerts, or others if found, schedule posts on Twitter and Facebook throughout the week. It’s best to schedule them between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. PST since this targets the peak social media hours of all time zones in the U.S.

It’s important to create a steady stream of information for followers and fans so that they don’t forget you are there. Potential followers and fans that view the digitallearn.org pages also need to be interested enough to “like” or follow us. If they see that there have been no recent updates, this is a big turnoff.

Suggestions for future phrases to include for Fall 2014 intern: “computer literacy”: casting a wider net for digital literacy news “digital instruction”: same reason as above

Before, a month-long gap between posts on Twitter:

Recent screenshot of constant interaction on Twitter:

Increase in number of followers and fans

From March 9th to present, digitallearn.org’s Facebook fans increased from 224 to 241 (the increase over the entire semester was most likely more than 16, but unfortunately I did not check the number earlier than this date). From February 9 th to present, digitallearn.org’s Twitter followers jumped from 294 to 398. This shows that if digitallearn.org would like to focus more of their attention on a single platform it should be Twitter. This makes sense because it affords more of an interactive platform and the ability to search for people talking about specific topics.

Before:

After:

Most popular posts

Below are the most popular posts from both Twitter and Facebook this semester:

Facebook

Twitter

Suggestions for future posts based on these popular posts: Use the word “library” in your post, if relevant. Many of the most popular posts

use this attention-getting word for librarians and information professionals. Talk about success stories or innovative programs, like the Facebook post about

Michigan Tech students helping seniors and the Twitter post about drop-in technology office hours

Post about free resources. You can get many of these from our Pinterest site or once they are posted to digitallearn.org’s discussion forum. It’s great to cross-market across platforms.

Interactions Follow people that actively tweet about digital literacy, have librarian in Twitter

bio Saved search for “digitallearn.org” to find people talking specifically about us

o Retweet and thank them for the mention/shoutout

Creation of Pinterest account and strategy

Login information:Email: support@digitallearn.orgPassword: plal0g!n

Since it’s poor taste to have social media accounts that are redundant, I wanted to distinguish between what digitallearn.org’s discussion forums would serve as and what their Pinterest account would be. digitallearn.org’s discussion forum will still serve as a place for sharing and discovering resources, while the Pinterest account will be an archival system for all of the shared resources. Future interns should feel free to create additional boards as needed, or condense some if they find that not enough information is continuously found. Timely boards, like for specific events, are also encouraged. A good place to look for topics that are important to the community are on the digitallearn.org discussion forum.

Created boards include: Internet Resources: Need tools for surfing the web? We've got you covered here Social Media Resources: Teach to tweet and post on the most popular social media

networks Resources in Other Languages: Technology class resources for those teaching in

languages other than English Microsoft Office Resources: Teach the basics of the most popular office program

suite with these tools Digital Literacy: An assortment of infographics and articles relevant to understanding

and working towards digital literacy Skype Resources: Miscellaneous Digital Literacy: Great handouts and curriculum resources that don't

fit into any of the other boards. Check them out! Kids and Digital Literacy: Start tech savvy early with these inspiring tools

Interactions on PinterestIn the announcement of our Pinterest account on digitallearn.org’s discussion

forum, I urged our followers to bring resources to our attention that we would then disperse to our Pinterest followers. This can be accomplished one of three ways:

By sharing resources on the digitallearn.org discussion forums

o Either the discussion forum post with the resource or the resource website will be pinned. Be sure to thank the individual that posted it:

By a Pinterest user pinning their own pin and tagging @digitallearnorg in it. We will repin it and tag the user in the caption thanking them

By a Pinterest user finding someone else’s pin they think is relevant to the digitallearn.org community and tagging @digitallearnorg in a comment on the pin. We will thank them in a comment, repin it and tag the user who brought it to our attention.

Follow similar initiatives and organizations

Digitallearn.org is currently following like-organizations, included but not limited to: CurrClick, Gaggle, Common Sense Media Education, edutopia, American Libraries magazine, Stanford Graduate School of Education and some individual librarians. Fall 2014 interns should continue to cultivate these Pinterest resources and follow more similar initiatives and organizations, but be sure to only follow the individual boards that line up with digitallearn.org’s mission, and not just automatically follow every board that an account has. This will dilute the homepage with information that isn’t relevant, making it harder to find valuable content. Interns should also feel free to comment on specific pins to interact with the accounts they follow.