“Social EURAXESS” guidelines for Facebook

Milan Zdravković

Always keep in mind..

◦ Online “distance” to desirable audience in the social space is very short !

– Thanks to virality effect, even social pages with low subscription rate may have very high visibility

..but it’s a competitive market

..but, it’s a competitive market

Guideliens areas

Guidelines’ areas

1. content and tone of a post

2. frequency and timing

3. engagement

4. profile information and design

5. promotion

1. Content and tone of the post

Social “EURAXESS” guidelines for Facebook

1. Content and tone of a post

◦ Post messages that mean something to targeted audience

◦ Focus on a single topic, write concisely

◦ Be very careful when asking for external engagement of the subscribers such as posting invitations to participate in surveys

◦ Do not publish official long documents, directives, etc. Publish key points that mean something to researchers

◦ Have appropriate voice and personality

◦ When choosing a content to publish, think about the network effect

◦ Place information-carrying words at the beginning of the message

◦ When posting, link to more details on EURAXESS portals (and to other reputable websites)

– Do not link to documents directly such as PDFs or others

◦ Create sense of urgency

◦ Share Facebook posts of other networks

◦ Don’t repeat messages (send unique posts)

◦ Vary the types of posted information

◦ When posting video, describe video content and provide supplemental information

◦ Proofread messages for spelling and grammar errors

Frequency and timing

2. Frequency and timing

Social “EURAXESS” guidelines for Facebook

Why frequency is important?

Why frequency is important?

◦ Facebook is the most addicting social network– 23% of Facebook’s users check their account 5

or more times DAILY– The mean

number of daily look-ins by Facebook users is 4

◦ Life span of postedmessages on Facebook is extremely short

Why timing is important?

Why timing is important?

◦ The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays

◦ Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week

Frequency and timing - guidelines

◦ Send timely messages. Avoid posting job ads which expire soon

◦ If possible, send messages with consistent frequency. Users are easily accustomed to the frequency and are often confused when this frequency is changed

◦ Send messages at the time of a day when users are likely to access social network

◦ Use Insights tool to evaluate reach of the posts in different times of a day. Use this results to adapt publishing plan.

◦ Allocate resources to have regular posts.

◦ Build and maintain a list of general posts and associated resources (links, photos, videos)

◦ Consider building or using specialized applications which automatically post new information according to the desired frequency and based on the list of planned posts

◦ Combine the consistent frequency with strategy for varying the types of content.– For example, post new job advertisements on

Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Every Thursday, publish one post about EURAXESS and every Tuesday about your country e.g. (“Did you know that...”)

◦ Try implementing a poll asking the subscribers for the time of a day when they most frequently access Facebook– Use these findings to revisit the frequency and

timing strategy

Engagement

3. Engagement

Social “EURAXESS” guidelines for Facebook

Engagement - guidelines

◦ Be conversational and informal to stimulate discussion. Informal tone of the posts stimulates discussion because it gives more “personal” identity and impression of the content.

◦ Engage in two-way conversation and respond fast (24hrs max)

◦ Allocate resources for such engagement. Sometimes, participating in discussion may be time consuming, because getting a right answer to a posed question may involve consultation.

4. Profile information and design

Social “EURAXESS” guidelines for Facebook

Profile information and design - Guidelines

◦ The name of the profile or a page should have attractive, easily searchable words

– Combine keywords, such as “Europe”, <name of the country>, “research”, “careers”, “jobs”. Don’t use “mobility” because this term is ambiguous

◦ Avoid using “EURAXESS” alone in the name of the profile or a page or in combination with general terms. Don’t assume that researchers know what EURAXESS is

◦ Include a brief mission statement or summary in the profile

◦ Include URL to a national or local EURAXESS portal

◦ Choose meaningful and eye catching profile pictures and covers

Lets take a look at some covers

5. Promotion

Social “EURAXESS” guidelines for Facebook

Promotion - Guidelines

◦ Attract high number of subscribers.

– Users often judge the validity of the social network presence by number of subscribers, especially when they conduct a search (higher number of fans, higher the position in search – both credibility and visibility are increased)

◦ Place links to your social network page on the website (homepage) with recognizable logos (Facebook) or calls for action (“Become a fan on Facebook”).

◦ Place links to social network content on your website (e.g. photo album).

◦ Include a page on a website completely dedicated to social network presence

– explain the types of information that users will get from the social network page

◦ Include information about social network presence in your email communication (signatures) and newsletters

◦ Create a Facebook Ad. The display of Facebook Ads is personalized and contextualized. The ads are displayed to the Facebook users based on some demographic restrictions that may be created by the ad publisher and/or different other criteria related to relevance of the users actions to the content of the ads.

Now, let’s get busy