CIS-A2K/Media Strategy/Social Media Strategy
Social media strategy[edit]
As an organization, it is important for us to maintain visibility. As a movement, it is important for us to engage. In order to do these, we aim to keep our engagement informative, interesting and entertaining. Thus far, we have told the stories of Indic Wikipedias through blogs posts. We believe that our social media engagement could run parallel to our blog posts and help to highlight the stories and efforts of Indic Wikipedians and their journey.
Our social media channels hope to keep Indic Wikimedians engaged through information about our national and global events, interesting facts of the day and developments in our programmatic work. This type of engagement could also help us identify potential areas of collaboration where we could take our various initiatives forward for the benefit of the Indic language communities.
Social media and the CIS-A2K blog are the best way to showcase our content and explain our work and the reach behind it in a continual way that meets Indic Wikimedians and the general public at large in platforms where they too can interact.
We also plan to use Twitter polls and Facebook questions to understand our audience better. We have noticed our social media reach peaking during our flagship events, reaching over 900 followers on social media. We hope that with this new social media strategy, we will be able to interact with audiences in a sustained and meaningful manner.
Our social media strategy is to showcase relevant content to existing Indic Wikimedians and explain the movement behind it to the general public who may align themselves more closely with it as a result. We do this collaboratively with the community, the A2K team, and other like-minded organizations in ways that adhere to the pillars of the Wikimedia movement.
Engaging with the public on social media[edit]
Our social media accounts hope to act as brand ambassadors for involving individuals and potentially, new editors and Wikimedians. The A2K team will attempt to engage with people who comment on our posts. This is the direct responsibility of the person who posted (and will know most about it), but is the shared responsibility of the team. Friendly acknowledgment of our social media community is highly encouraged, as are answering questions and providing helpful links. This appears to bring direct results—from higher Newsfeed rankings on Facebook to more participation in the movement.
Do not get entangled with trolls or unfriendly users. When in doubt, check in with manasa@cis-india.org before responding. Take a basic approach to problems: greet, acknowledge, suggest and provide email address to contact. We strive to be of help to any member of the Indic Wikimedia universe or the general public. This means being polite, helpful and resourceful.
What to post[edit]
Our posts generally fall into two categories: informative content and global engagement.
Interesting/ informative content: We have noticed that our informative content is liked by many of our social media followers. Posting informative content that directs Wikipedians towards articles, events and other interesting projects is a priority for CIS-A2K. Posting everyday content such as fascinating Commons photos and fun lives from our events will also benefit interested members of the general public.
- We are pan-Indian, and hence, multilingual, multicultural and diverse in many ways. Our content should reflect that. All efforts should be made to connect with and reflect a diverse audience, including outreach to underrepresented communities, translations of blog posts and social media messaging, and efforts to include content from across India and Indic languages.
- We have an important challenge to reach out to more women as part of our ongoing effort to bridging the gender gap on Indian Wikipedias. Our social media content needs to include concerted efforts to include women features from different walks of life. We also aim to highlight our research from time to time that identifies issues facing women that impede or hinder their contribution to Wikipedia. Our tone will be gender neutral and gender sensitive.
- We also need to be careful around any messaging that could be insensitive to gender, race, ethnicity, age, or disability.
Global engagement: The Indic language Wikipedia movement in India could benefit a lot from engaging with the wider global movement. CIS-A2K would serve as this idea exchange platform and connect global themes and projects with Indian Wikipedians. In order to do this, we will be clued into the buzz of global chapters and affiliates and most importantly, the Foundation and its social media outreach. We will direct our audiences towards participating in these global projects through re-tweeting and making ourselves available to answering questions on the same if any. Such exciting ventures will also hopefully inspire the public to join the movement.
- We need to actively search to present global opportunities to Indic Wikipedians that may be suitable for them to partake in.
- We need to be available for follow-up and assisting them in any possible manner, leveraging the network we have as an institution.
- We need to be careful not to appear as speaking on behalf of another project, chapter or the Foundation.
- Blog posts, videos and wiki pages that walk beginners through the basics of taking part in global projects would be very useful especially if coming from Indic Wikipedians who have already taken part in these projects.
When to post[edit]
Our posts have generally been during the mornings and late evenings so as to get as much traction as possible. While we are very active on social media during our events, we hope to make this presence more sustained and regular on a day to day basis. We also believe that being housed in CIS, a prominent organisation in India, we could benefit from RTs and shares from the organisation's offiial accounts and notable persons from the organisation.
Voice and tone[edit]
Our voice is smart, encouraging, factual, principled — with a pan-Indian tone. We don’t do sarcasm or snark, profanity or slang, flame wars or gushing compliments. We are a community serving platform and our messaging should have similar focus. We don't involve ourselves in debates and arguments; we focus instead on engaging meaningfully to foster the growth of Indic language Wikipedias. If there are conflicts, we will release statements addressing them in a timely manner on social media accounts and on our on wiki discussions on the topic if applicable.
Other platforms[edit]
In addition to our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, we will also be working on enriching content on our YouTube channel. We are open to suggestions on any other modes of engagement. Please email manasa@cis-india.org.