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 are highly interrelated with other areas of the collective and, in particular, with the web-magazine, as we heavily promote every new translation that we publish and, furthermore, we also keep promoting translations long after the original date of publication (the benefits of featuring long-narrative content!). We also feature other non-translation content from the web-magazine, such as articles about GT/GMC, author bios etc.

We, like any other company or collective, also use Social Media to reflect stuff that we do outside of the web-magazine, such as interviews, events and personal appearances. We also, without fail, feature any republished translation featured elsewhere (other webpages, etc) through our own Social Media channels

Finally, we mainly feature our "own" stuff, but if any friends or sister collectives need a hand, we're certainly here 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 what we expect from 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, however, be subject to change in the future)

What social media channels are we speaking of?

For most intent and purposes, the big "two and a half": Facebook, Twitter and, yes, G +. We eventually would like to branch out into non-netarchical Social Media, but most of the content posted will be in these three platforms. You can actually use practically the same format and content for both Fb and G+, Twitter is, however, a different story.

You'll also be using Youtube and Vimeo occasionally, 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

Yearly Timeframe

Much like the web-magazine, we actively feature content in our social media channels, on a weekly basis, over most of the year. 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 further by further holidays!)

These are the exceptions:

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

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

If something out of the ordinary or urgent needs posting, we can do so and anyone and everyone is welcome to post content during the "OFF" periods, that's OK, but it won't fall within what we consider to be the Social Media Manager's "role".

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 is expected to become a true SM ninja over time, so the educational part of this role is very important. Here 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 the exceptions out of the way, we now get into the nitty gritty of Social Media scheduling on a per-week basis. We basically want there to be one or, at the most, two pieces of content per target language, per day on weekdays.

Weekends are, by nature, more easy going and we shouldn't publish more than one piece of content per target language on Saturday and Sunday and, whatever 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) get 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 in days we're not launching new translations or promoting events, you can pick and choose from what's listed below, trying 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 in our web-magazine get the "top spots" in the week (see link above) and, like TV dinners, are [| already pre-pepared 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 be residing in the Calendar board.
• Either scheduling the post for the date an hour set in the Calendar board, or launching it live at that moment in our Facebook Fan Page

TO BE CONTINUED