For the Professional Social Media class I teach at Sonoma State University, I created an exercise designed to help folks practice both content creation and looking at metrics. Nonprofit’s can use this at a staff meeting or other gathering to help people improve their content creation skills as well as their skills with looking at social media data.
The equipment is mostly analog, the index cards and colored dots pictured, plus a place to record the results. To view the results I use a shared Google spreadsheet, but you could make a grid on a whiteboard on even just a piece of paper.
Here’s how it works:
1. Stage setting: Brief everyone on what is going to happen. Each person will be given an index card and enough dots for the number of folks participating. I ask folks to not write their name on the card, but see below for options.
2. Content Creation: On the card, write a short (preferably one sentence) social media update. In my case I use a Facebook update but you could use an update on any channel with the relevant engagement options, in this case Like, Comment & Share. Ask folks to think about the people in the group and what content would appeal to them.
3. Engagement: The cards are collected, mixed up, then each person is given one card. Using the dots, they will indicate if they would “Like” (blue), “Share” (yellow) or “Comment” (green) on the post. Each person reads a card, attaches any stickers that indicate how they would respond if they saw the post online. The card is then passed to the next person until everyone has “voted”. I ask folks to put the stickers on the back of the card.
4. Metrics: The totals are then tallied. You could collect them all and write on a piece of paper or whiteboard what each person’s totals were for each of the possible actions. In my case I will ask folks to take back their card and type their scores into the online document, which we will view live. One advantage of using an online spreadsheet is that once the data is in, I am able to easily sort the columns to see who had the most of each type of engagement.
5. Debrief: We review which updates got the most and the least engagement, ask folks to suggest why they think something worked or not. You might have a token prize for winners if you choose, if I do prizes I do them for everyone as I want to reward learning not just success.
This exercise helps people to see in real time how much engagement their examples post gets, see what worked – or didn’t – for others, and helps spark a conversation about the shared characteristics of the posts that elicit engagement. Participants are wonderfully creative in the ways they try to tap into the interests of their audience.
You could also do this anonymously using numbers on the cards if for example you are doing this with folks who are strangers. You could also have folks include their names, as the credibility of the source can effect engagement. For my cohort, I prefer the anonymous route to reduce bias. The other influencer can be that as a card is passed around that has a lot of engagement/stickers, that could either spur or deter folks, but that is the same online.
I like how the exercise shows that some posts are better if sharing is the main goal, while other posts (especially questions) are better at sparking conversation and generating comments. If some get a lot of likes but little sharing and comments, why is that? While I think just “likes” are not a great metric, it’s better than no interaction at all, and this exercise helps point out how the different types of posts are received.
Feel free to remix, modify and share this exercise. Beyond social media, this could also be interesting to use for donation appeals, event messaging or any other messages your nonprofit is sending out.
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