Do you understand social media? 

Social media is undoubtedly seen as the best way to get your name out there nowadays.

But effective social media takes some leg work and if you don’t fully understand the benefits of it, and how it can work for your club, why would you put the leg work in?

Here is a brief introduction to the most popular social media platforms and how you can make each work for you to get more people engaged with, and ultimately sailing at, your club this summer.

The biggest thing to know – IT IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF! Your social media effort should reflect and support the content on your club’s website, not replace it.

Facebook

What is it?
A place where people with similar interests can ‘congregate’ online and share information, pictures, videos, documents, events, thoughts, opinions, whatever you want!

How does it work?
Facebook comes in ‘groups’ and ‘pages’. There are pros and cons of each but put simply, groups are more exclusive, and pages are more inclusive. With pages people anyone can share information with the people on that page, groups require permission to join.

How can it work for you?
Depends on what you want from it? If you’re after creating an online community whereby your club members can talk about the club and access documents, event information, pictures etc you would only want club members to see, then creating a group is useful. But, if you want your Facebook page to act as a marketing tool for your club, groups don’t work as effectively as outsiders can’t see what you offer without permission. For many people that will be an action too far. For this reason, pages are becoming increasingly popular and groups less so. Facebook is big on ‘sharing’ – effectively word of mouth online - and that is a function restricted within groups.

How much hard work is it?
Once you’ve created a group or page for your club simply by registering at www.facebook.com you have an immediate audience with your members and the more they contribute the more self-perpetuating the group becomes. The role of the administrator is marginal, maybe just policing what’s being posted is appropriate to the audience you are targeting and uploading documents and/or keeping events up to date.

Twitter

What is it?
Twitter is a hugely effective and immediate exchange of short, sharp bits of information. Limited to 140 characters per Tweet, information must be pointed with a purpose. Twitter is probably the most instant mass communication tool available now.

How does it work?
Twitter works through people ‘following’ other people on Twitter. People ‘follow’ something or someone on Twitter if it/they are of interest to them. When you tweet a piece of information it is seen by people ‘following’ you – your followers. When people you follow tweet something, it is seen by you. This information can then be shared by ‘re-tweeting’. This is why and how information can be shared so widely instantly.

How can it work for you?
The beauty of Twitter is anyone can follow you so you can communicate with anybody. The potential for tapping into new audiences or exploiting existing market is absolutely limitless. It serves three distinct and invaluable purposes by enabling you to:

• ‘follow’ people/organisations that may be of interest to your club - to learn about different events/initiatives/programmes you/your members could get involved in to benefit your club
• notify your ‘followers’ or potential followers of club news / events / courses / cool pictures and videos
• build relationships with local organisations with bigger numbers of followers than you - can ‘retweet’ (RT) your information to their followers to reach a wider and new audience, for eg CSPs.

How much hard work is it?
The information you Tweet is only any use if people follow you. To start with that takes a bit of leg work as you find people/groups to follow and get them to follow you. Also whereas Facebook is self-populating, Twitter requires someone to post Tweets and people will only follow you if you give your Tweets – whether links, videos, photos or simply a bitesized piece of information - interesting and relevant.

YouTube

What is it?
The world’s second most popular search engine. YouTube allows you/your members to upload content to a club ‘channel’ and create a library of cool videos for your club.

How does it work?
Registering is easy and once your club has a channel, YouTube gives you the platform to host video content to link through to your club website and share via Twitter and Facebook.

How can it work for you?
Everyone’s seen videos that have caught public imagination going viral. The free publicity and profile raising that brings you could never, ever achieve through a press release. As we saw above, the success of your Twitter and Facebook accounts rely on the type and variety content available to share. YouTube provides instant links for you to share videos. People are more likely to watch a video if they see a link to it than they are read information.

How much hard work is it?
As hard as you want it to be! Setting up a YouTube channel takes less than five minutes. The type of videos you post are then entirely up to you whether short, sharp pieces of action filmed on a phone, to slightly slicker ‘welcome’ HD videos filmed on a digital camera to full on productions, with presenters, voiceovers, graphics and music, for a special event.

Local/regional newspaper websites

What is it?
Many local/regional newspaper websites now invite contributed material to be uploaded for free.

How does it work?
Register online on your local paper’s website(s) and then upload your own stories, photos and events to their sites whenever you have something to add. Papers often take this information and will use it in their print editions also.

How can it work for you?
Gone are the days where you would just send a press release to the local paper, follow up with a phone call and then hope they printed it. Of course you should still do but uploading your own content now means you can guarantee an online presence at least.

How much hard work is it?
Depends what you’re uploading. Once you’ve registered events and photos can take seconds to upload, if you’re contributing an article, that article obviously has to be written. Tip – always take the opportunity to add a photo when uploading article