The Basics In Social Media
A roadmap for getting started
By Leo Manning
Particularly after 2020, parks and recreation professionals are busier than ever. Increased traffic during quarantine and a long-standing funding deficit have caused professionals to focus on a park’s physical presence and ignore any attempts at a digital presence. This is a mistake; there is a digital presence, whether it’s wanted or not. And like the need to be aware of weeds and other infestations in a park, professionals need to be aware of any issues or discussions happening on social media.
Photo: © Can Stock Photo / cienpies
What Channels Should I Have?
When considering introducing social media for an organization, the first question is normally, “Which platform should we be on?” And like most questions, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer; it depends on a park’s goals.
The first step is to ask, “Why are we doing this?” Start by thinking about what you want to achieve. Unlike with other organizations, you’re not trying to sell a product or service. You may want to increase awareness about a park and the services it offers to the community. You may want to engage with visitors and the community by providing resources and answering questions. You may want to fundraise to support operations or recruit potential employees. No matter the goal, begin by acknowledging it.
Once you’ve chosen one or two primary goals, determine the people you are trying to reach to achieve these goals. If you want more awareness or engagement, you may try to reach neighbors and the local community. You may also want to collaborate with centers of influence, like community leaders and businesses. If you want to fundraise, you need to reach donors. Looking to hire? You need to reach employees.
With goals and audiences in mind, evaluate the opportunities on each platform. In a dream world, you might make an account on every social channel. However, no one has unlimited time and resources. That’s why you need to be selective and focus on the platform best suited to your goals. For a park, that will likely be Facebook and Instagram, but some may find opportunities on other platforms like LinkedIn.
According to Pew Research, 69 percent of U.S. adults have Facebook accounts. This makes it ideal for reaching the community, neighbors, and leaders, and engaging with them. Additional features, like Facebook Groups, make it easy to find and engage with not only the local community, but also other target groups.
Similar to Facebook, Instagram is a great way to engage with visitors and the community. However, Instagram is much more visually focused. By leveraging the Instagram grid, a park can showcase its beauty and benefits through the seasons, while Instagram Stories can showcase more behind-the-scenes work and live-event updates. Depending on the goals, park professionals can also leverage IGTV and Instagram Reels for other purposes, such as light-hearted educational videos or “day-in-the-life” segments.
While not relevant for everyone, LinkedIn can also be useful in achieving specific goals. By actively maintaining a professional profile, park leaders can engage directly with business leaders, potential employees, and even donors and other partners.
The list of channels above is by no means exhaustive, and depending on the goals, other platforms may make more sense. Twitter is extremely relevant for news and engaging in expert conversations, along with being a channel where people may ask questions or make complaints. YouTube is great to house longer-form, higher-quality videos. What matters is that you look at your options and choose the platform that will help achieve your goals. It’s better to have two well-managed channels than four poorly-executed pages.
I Made A Channel. Now What?
Congratulations—you now have a profile created. But merely having a profile isn’t enough—you need to actively post and engage with your audiences!
Before posting, look at how others post. Voice, tone, and general requirements vary, platform to platform. Images that work on Facebook may not resonate as well on Instagram. The more lighthearted tones that make a well-crafted Instagram post may not resonate with audiences on LinkedIn.
When starting to use social channels, you may wonder what to post. To begin, it is recommended to test different types of content on each platform to see what people are engaging with. Initially, post your own content, such as photos of the park, your team, and other relevant events and news.
After posting this content, you may try leveraging user-generated content (UGC). UGC includes images, quotes, and other materials from people who have engaged with you. For a park, this might be people who have visited and shared pictures, either tagging the park’s handle, using a branded hashtag, or using a geotag.
Aside from content directly related to the park, be mindful of engaging and listening to target audiences. One way to do this is to collaborate. For example, you might partner with local businesses for shout-outs and cross-promotional giveaways. These efforts generate more than just awareness; they help showcase the park as an active part of the community that is working with others in the neighborhood. You may even start more simply by re-sharing news and updates from these partners.
I’ve Posted. Is It Working?
Congratulations—you have social accounts set up. Hopefully, after a few weeks of posting, you’ve begun to see some new followers and engagements. But you might ask, “How do I know it’s working?”
The first step is to remember your goals. What are you aiming to do? On social media, there are several ways to measure success, dependent on the goals. Those most interested in awareness should pay attention to impressions and reach. Impressions refer to the number of times content has appeared on people’s screens, while reach is the unique number of screens the content has appeared on.
On the other hand, those interested in more interactions with the community will look at engagements. An engagement is people’s interaction with any post, whether it is by “liking” or reacting to the content, commenting on a post, sharing it with friends, or clicking on a link.
Other goals, like employee recruiting and donations, may take more work and time to measure. Website integrations with tools like Google Analytics can track what traffic is coming directly from social media and segment goal actions, like donating or submitting an application, based on platform or campaign.
Remember: the number of followers a page has is not everything. What matters is creating quality interactions with people. It’s better to have 100 engaged followers than 500 who don’t even acknowledge your account.
To keep track of all of the hard work, using a scorecard may be a good approach. Most simply, a scorecard includes the key metrics you’re tracking, and then weekly or biweekly updates showing where you are. Start by tracking metrics to make a benchmark, and from there make quarterly goals.
Social media, while often not the first thought for park professionals, can have many benefits when executed properly. With some strategic thinking and effort, you can reach audiences in more ways and increase interest in the hard work done by your team.
Leo Manning is a Digital Marketing Strategist at Slice Communications. He believes that every campaign needs a data-driven story told through custom content—and he calls on his unique experience in social media, email, and graphic design to produce those stories. Reach him at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmanning513 or lmanning@slicecommunications.com.