General Social Media Protocols

Overview

"Social Media protocols" are the various tasks that a Social Media Manager performs regularly. Briefly, the Social Media Manager takes care of our Social Media presence on a weekly basis. We encourage rotation in Social Media Management to keep it as fresh and exciting as possible.

These protocols interrelate with other areas of the collective, in particular with the web-magazine, as we heavily promote every new translation that we publish. We also continue promoting translations long after the original date of publication (one of the benefits of featuring long-narrative content!). We also promote other non-translation content from the web-magazine on social media, such as articles about GT/GMC (featured in the blog), author bios, etc.

Like any other company or collective, we also use Social Media to reflect the things we do apart from the web-magazine, such as interviews, events, and personal appearances. Without fail, we feature any republished translation featured elsewhere (other webpages, etc.) through our own Social Media channels.

Finally, we mainly feature our own material, but if any friends or sister collectives need a hand, we're certainly there to help, although that isn't the main focus of our Social Media Strategy.

Read on to find out more about our recommended Social Media Protocols and the responsibilities of all Social Media Managers.

Language Specific Managers

As some people in the collective are not totally fluent in both languages, we've split social media management tasks by target language. As of now, all social-media pages are multilingual, so you'd be sharing the same space. This may be subject to change in the future.

What social media channels are we speaking of?

Mostly, the big "two and a half": Facebook, Twitter and, yes, G +. Eventually we'd like to branch out into non-netarchical Social Media, but most of the content posted will be on these three platforms. You can use practically the same format and content for both Fb and G+. Twitter is, however, a different story.

You'll also occasionally be using Youtube and Vimeo (depending on the context), and Scoop.it, which is its own story. To see a full list of our current and projected Social Media channels, please read our general entry on Social Media

Yearly Timeframe

Much like the web-magazine, we actively feature content on our social media channels on a weekly basis, over most of the year. However, we have planned for certain periods of time off from social media posting (as well as publishing), in order to follow our national holiday calendars and get some time off and synch with everyone else (mostly). There's plenty of time to work, but it's best to plan for the down time so that we maintain a flow and enjoy our vacations and holidays together.

We're a leisure-minded collective founded in world-famous siesta'n'fiesta loving Spain, so we actually keep to the Spanish holiday calendar. (We want this to be the 1st step on the world holiday calendar, to be furthered by further holidays!)

Our logic is, if everyone is on holiday, why would they (or we) bother being in front of a computer?

If something unusually urgent needs posting at any time, we can certainly do so. Everyone is welcome to post content during the "OFF" periods but it isn't planned for, and it won't fall within what we consider to be the Social Media Manager's role.

These are the times of year when we are OFF from social media and web-magazine posting:

• August
• Two weeks at the winter holidays/Xmas/choose your own pagan equivalent
• A week at the spring holidays/Easter
• Spanish national holidays (all 22 of them)
• US/UK national holidays (all, um, two of them?)

Become a Social Media Ninja

Although most of us use Social Media on a regular basis, that doesn't mean that we know how to use it in the best way possible. The Social Media Manager has the opportunity to become a true SM ninja over time, so the educational part of this role is very important. There are two excellent resources within this wiki to help you achieve that goal.

• How to post on Facebook (Most of what's written here is also applicable to G+ or Diaspora)
• External Social Medial Resources (Lots of great links)

Weekly Schedule

With those holiday exceptions now out of the way, here is the nitty gritty of weekly Social Media scheduling. We want there to be one or, at most two, pieces of content per target language, per day on weekdays.

Weekends are more easy going by nature, and we shouldn't publish more than one piece of content per target language on Saturday and Sunday, and what we publish should be "bottom of the pile" stuff. (For more on what "bottom of the pile" means, see the section on "SM hierarchy" below (no "kink" jokes, please).

SM hierarchy

Within the week, you will choose and schedule Social Media posts based on the hierarchy listed below. It's very simple:

• Stuff at the top of the hierarchy (new translations) gets priority, and the "juicy days and times" (Tues, Wed, Thurs, from 12:30 to 3:00 PM, but check out the link to see for yourself) to the exclusion of everything else, barring important events.
• If there's no new translations that week (oh noes!) or on days when we're not launching new translations or promoting events, you can pick and choose from what's listed below. Ideally we'd try to mix it up and give more prominence to the stuff at the top of the list.

Promoting new translations

New translations are the most important items we can promote. Social Media promotion for new translations published on our web-magazine gets the "top spots" in the week (see link above) and, like TV dinners, are already pre-prepared by the pro-bono translation's project admin, and ready for you to launch.

Your responsibilities here include (in this order):

• Visiting the Publishing Schedule Trello Calendar Boards to see what's due this week. (Read the link on Trello Calendar boards if you're not familiar with them).
• Retrieving the Social Media Matrix for the translations you're promoting. You'll find the links to this in the translation's project card, which will reside on the Calendar board.
• Either scheduling the post for the date and hour set in the Calendar board, or launching it live at that moment on our Facebook Fan Page.
• If the translation team hasn't prepared a Social Media Matrix, chase them down and tell them to get it done. Your job depends on their fulfilling of their tasks, so don't be shy about this.

TO BE CONTINUED