1. Social Media with a Small Staff
Jamie Tatsuno | RFTA
Lyndsy Morse | Via Mobility Services

2. A (Brief) Guide to Social Media Content Calendars
What is the best way to plan and organize your content?
Which platforms will work best for your organization?
How often should you post?

3. What is a Social Media Content Calendar?
A system used to control publication of content across different media channels.
There’s no right or wrong way to do this!
Why should your organization use a content calendar?
Social media can be overwhelming, developing a system helps keep you organized.
Saves you time and energy.
Helps develop consistency in your messaging.
May require more than one slide

4. Via Show & Tell: Part 1
May require more than one slide

5. Via Show & Tell: Part 2
May require more than one slide

6. What system will work best for you?
It depends!
What systems are you already using?
Who do you work with for content creation and publication?
What systems are your collaborators using?
Calendar Brain vs. Spreadsheet Brain
What works best for you personally might not work best for your team, be flexible!
It’s an ongoing process; it won’t be perfect the first time around.
Experiment and refine!
The most important part of the process is creating a system that you will use.

7. Which platforms are best for your organization?
Again, it depends!
Most important factor: Where is your audience?
Do you have more than one audience?
Are there new audiences that you want to reach? Where are they?
What is your capacity?
Don’t try to do it all.
You can’t, and you don’t need to. Start small and grow as needed.
Don’t forget about your website.
You own this, drive traffic here.
If you have a blog, include this in your content calendar. If you don’t, think about starting one.
Keep your Google My Business profile updated!

8. How often should you post?
Post when you have something to say.
Use the analytics native to the platform to learn more about your audience.
Track what you’ve done, use those findings to refine your approach.
Don’t forget important dates/events.
Holidays, Transit Driver Appreciation Day, changes in service hours, company events, etc.
Reuse evergreen content and mine your assets.
What evergreen content have you created?
Ex. ‘Have You Had The Talk?’
Share statistics, news about your organization, staff or rider stories.
Share relevant content from others.
Less work for you and you’re engaging with the community!

9. Don’t forget to be SOCIAL!
It’s easy to neglect the social aspect of social media, who has time for that?
Schedule a few times a week to go on to your social accounts to interact with your audience; like and reply to comments, retweet a relevant news story, share a partner’s post.
The algorithms on social media platforms reward you for being social!
The more you interact, the more others will see your posts and interact with you.
Most platforms are ‘pay to play,’ and not all of your fans see your posts. It’s better to have five engaged followers than 100 unengaged followers. Cultivate these relationships.
Build community.
Ask a question, run a giveaway, go live, host a photo contest, etc.
Create a Facebook group.
Invite your list to follow you on social.

10. Don’t over think it, start now, learn as you go.
Social media plays an important role in our daily lives and can be an essential tool, that doesn’t mean you need to spend all of your time on your social channels, you have a million other things to do.
This is a lot of work up front, but it’s worth it.
You’re never going to be done learning; social media changes rapidly.
Subscribe to a few blogs that can keep you up to date on changes.
Schedule time to learn more about new platforms, or to improve your knowledge.
Take advantage of free resources but if you can, budget for training.

11. Resources Useful tools: Blogs I follow:
Google (Analytics, AdWords, Google Drive, Google My Business)
Trello, Asana, etc.
Hootsuite, HubSpot, Buffer, Sprout Social
Blogs I follow:
Social Media Examiner
Hootsuite, Buffer and HubSpot
Copyblogger and ProBlogger
Beth’s Blog
Classy

12. Questions?