Talk:Social media

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Organic social media strategy update

We wanted to provide an update here that in February and March, members of the Communications Department met with ComCom to discuss social media strategy and got some great insights.

We talked about the ways in which the Foundation and Wikipedia accounts’ strategy is rooted in the movement’s strategic direction and goals to promote knowledge equity and knowledge as a service. The content we share aims to raise understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia and build trust with people who may not be part of our movement globally. It’s also intended to be a reflection of our values as a movement and the diversity of content created by volunteers around the world. A lack of understanding limits progress, as can be seen from data we’ve collected. In some cases, that may mean elevating a post that may not get a lot of engagement now, but will result in more gradual trust-building and increased understanding with audiences we are trying to attract.

Our guiding Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are centered on increased awareness, understanding, and trust in Wikipedia, Wikimedia, and the Wikimedia Foundation over time with our audiences. We know that some content gets more likes and retweets than others, but we consider what we post in the context of these goals. Further, we find that the most meaningful way to measure our impact toward these goals is through metrics that are evaluated through the Communications Department’s Brand Health Tracker. Through this report, which is updated every six months, we are able to track KPIs that directly relate to our audiences’ perceptions of brand awareness, trust, and understanding of Wikimedia and our projects.

In addition to tracking KPIs from the Brand Health Tracker, our team regularly monitors metrics from within the platforms to inform strategy shifts, which were also shared with ComCom. For example, in a review of Wikipedia Twitter’s performance in March 2023, the engagement rate by followers was 2.08%* ; the engagement rate by impressions was 1.96%**; the engagement rate according to Twitter’s methodology was 1.9%. These metrics are helpful, but again, not our north star. Especially in a time when Twitter’s algorithm is changing often, it is a more impactful and meaningful approach to align social strategy with movement strategy, and measure accordingly. We also track data around the impact of our campaigns. For example, the Open the Knowledge: Stories campaign just ended today, Friday 31 March, and we will be able to share those results in the coming weeks.

We truly appreciate the questions and feedback we received from members of ComCom and others — including how we can further share our movement values across social channels, apply learnings from past content and campaign performance, and more. We will continue to share regular updates with ComCom regarding social media strategy and continue discussions together. We’re incorporating feedback as we hear more. As always, you can continue to submit ideas and questions on this talk page.

*13,413 total engagements divided by 643,530 followers, times 100 = 2.08%

**13,413 total engagements divided by 685,967 impressions, times 100 = 1.96%

Source: Twitter Media Studio; data compiled on 31 March 2023.

LDickinson (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Dear Lauren. I'm not going to repeat every argument made before, but this message is truly disencouraging. I have read lots of messages about our social media strategy, but this one made me sad. We can't do it better if we don't aknowledge that the current situation is a disaster and we still push some numbers as proof of our brand health. 13,413 engagements in a month is a total deception. 685,967 impressions in a month should sound as an alarm. Any tweet by YouTube has more than that, and they tweet daily. Basque Wikipedia Twitter, without "verified" badge and only 8,100 followers made 101,000 impressions in March. We got 1,326 engagements. That's an engagement per follower of 16.37% (compared to 2.08%) and 12.46 impressions per follower (compared to 1.07). Wikipedia's global handle engagement is permoring bad.

You claim: These metrics are helpful, but again, not our north star.. Which is our north star then? Is there even any guiding idea on how to to become the central infrastructure for Free Knowledge on the Internet. Some volunteers are ready to work on making it happen, but, again, we find a wall in front of us. Today is late. Next month will be later. We are here to help.

Sincerely. Theklan (talk) 07:47, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Brand exposure sources

LDickinson (WMF), can you clarify how the Brand Health Tracker helps assess individual communication efforts and venues? You mention the @wikipedia Twitter account, but I can't find any way to trace any of the tracker's metrics back to it. If you mean the "brand exposure" value for "social media", can you clarify how that's relevant, whether the WMF is trying to increase that number and if so why and how that furthers the WMF's strategic goals? Thanks, Nemo 06:27, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Hi @Nemo bis, Thanks for this question and for your patience on my reply! I seemed to have missed this somehow. To clarify, the Brand Health Tracker (BHT) does not measure the direct impact of each social media channel. Rather, it measures the extent of exposure of the brand via social media channels versus other channels generally. Our goal is to diversify the channels that expose key audiences to our brands, rather than only relying on search engines (which is our primary source of first contact currently). We want to promote other channels, including social media, as a means to increase awareness, understanding, and affinity for our brands over time. We know based on the latest edition of the BHT that 22.2% of people are first introduced to Wikipedia from social media. Our goal is to increase the percentage over time. Please let us know if you have further questions. LDickinson (WMF) (talk) 15:06, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello Laura (glad to meet you in person!). I'm really perplexed to read this: "22.2% of people are first introduced to Wikipedia from social media.". If this data is true, the current strategy of not tweeting/tooting content is even more strange, as we are losing opportunities to be first introduced in those social media channels. Sincerely, Theklan (talk) 14:59, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Twitter verification checkmarks

On 20 April, Twitter removed the blue checkmark for accounts that did not pay or subscribe to Twitter Blue – which they are calling “legacy verified checkmarks”.

This action included the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia accounts.

At this moment, we do not intend to pay for the checkmarks.

Please know we are closely monitoring this situation. We are also in contact with other nonprofit organizations to evaluate next steps. We will share updates here.

LPasqual (WMF) (talk) 19:32, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

After this move, is more important than ever to grow an audience and have interactions with them. The algorithm used to push higher the blue checkmarked accounts, but now the only way to trick the algorithm is the number of interactions. There are some proposals for achieving this, I hope the team in the WMF takes them in consideration. Theklan (talk) 07:27, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

IMO, the WMF should consider leaving Twitter entirely. It is no longer a safe space for our community to interact on. Nosferattus (talk) 18:31, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Definitely. Facebook and Instagram are even worse, as we know at least since Cambridge Analytica, so these would also be excellent candidates for a first place to leave. Nemo 06:52, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Usage of proprietary services

I notice that recent announcements claim «We also know there are other social media options launching or that have launched (e.g. Threads, Bluesky). We are also looking into experimenting with these». Can WMF explain what it has learnt from its past usage of proprietary software social media services, and how it plans to use that knowledge? Nemo 06:51, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, @Nemo bis. Thank you for getting in touch! Wikimedia Foundation, affiliates, and user groups across the movement have used social media as a way to gain attention for movement work, invite them to join as contributors, and help them to understand how our projects work. They are an important pathway for meeting audiences where they are. E.G., in a global survey asking people how they were exposed to Wikipedia, nearly 25% said it was through social media. We have seen them help to create strong pathways into our projects, and we continue to learn. LPasqual (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

wikimedia.social comments

Hi, very excited to see this move forward! It would be great to have a wiki page for wikimedia.social, in the same style of Wikis World and wiki.style.

It's been pointed out that the @wikimediafoundation account isn't verified yet, probably the easiest way to do so would be to use the RealMe extension on the home page of foundation.wikimedia.org (happy to help with this). At the very least it would be good to turn the current "domain" profile field into a clickable link.

The privacy policy appears to be using the default Mastodon one and should probably refer to the non-wiki privacy policy instead?

Finally, could we get some details on what the current moderation situation is and what the rules are (the server rules are currently blank)? On Wikis World we already saw some harassment come in from the announcement of the WMF account, so it would help us if we knew what to expect out of this instance.

HTH, Legoktm (talk) 06:11, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, @Legoktm. We appreciate you getting in touch and sharing the excitement on the new instance!

As we mentioned in our update on Wikimedia-l, staff from the Product & Technology department will maintain the instance. The team is already working on the points you mentioned and will update the instance soon. Thank you! LPasqual (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 26 July 2023 (UTC)