Investment in Water Infrastructure Creates Jobs, Drives Innovation,
and Safeguards Public Health
Social Media Toolkit
Water for Jobs Campaign 2012
Created by Grace Hulse | Social Media & Creative Services | Water Environment Federation | ghulse@wef.org
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
Table of Contents
Social Media Strategy
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Campaign Overview
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Getting Started & Best Practices
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Campaign Strategy
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Social Media Monitoring
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Social Media Campaign Examples
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More Social Media Resources
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
Social Media Strategy
The Social Web (aka Web 2.0) revolves around conversations, social interactions, and the formation of
groups that in some way advance or act on collective knowledge. – Dan Evans
Social Media has brought transparency to individuals, businesses, and politicians alike. The immediacy
and reach of social media means that news and information can go viral and be picked up by news
organizations all over the world, in a matter of minutes. More than ever, social media can impact the
results of any politician’s campaign. – Don Power
Campaign Overview
The purpose of using social media for the jobs campaign is to achieve one goal: to get our nation’s
leaders to address the needs of America’s water infrastructure on a public platform. We will be using
Twitter and LinkedIn as our primary social media networks to reach and engage our congressmen and
political leaders and to tell them that “Water puts America to work! Investment in water infrastructure
creates jobs, drives innovation, and safeguards public health.”
Getting Started & Best Practices
Although we’ll primarily be using Twitter and LinkedIn, you are encouraged to use other social media
networks to expand our campaign message. Below you’ll find a list of social media networks and best
practices for each network:
// Twitter
www.Twitter.com
Description: Twitter is real-time information network. Millions of people, organizations, and businesses
use it to discover and share new information. On Twitter, anyone can read, write, and share messages
of up to 140 characters. These messages, or “tweets”, are public and available to everyone unless you
have set your settings to private. In the latter case, users will send a request to follow you and you can
either reject or accept their request to follow your tweets. Followers receive every one of your
messages in their timeline, a feed of all the accounts they have subscribed to.
When you craft messages that are straight-forward, easy to read, open to the public, opt-in, and
accessible anywhere, you have a powerful, real-time way of communicating. As a business, you can use
Twitter to quickly share information, gather market intelligence and insights, and build relationships
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with people who care about your company. Often, there is already a conversation about your business
happening on Twitter.
Best Practices: Build your following, reputation, and community engagement with these simple
practices:
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Share. Share photos and behind the scenes info about your business. Even better, give a
glimpse of developing projects and events. Users come to Twitter to get and share the latest, so
give it to them!
Listen. Regularly monitor the comments about your company, brand, and products.
Ask. Ask questions of your followers to glean valuable insights and show that you are listening.
Respond. Reply and/or retweet to all responses and direct messages, and do so in a quick and
timely manner. Remember, social media is in real time!
Reward. Find ways to creatively tweet about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals.
Be a thought-leader. Reference articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your
business – show your followers that you are THE source for xyz topic(s).
Champion your stakeholders. Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by your
followers and customers.
Establish the right voice. Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine, and of course, a likable
tone from your business, but think about your voice as you Tweet. Consider your audience (this
goes back to best practices no. 2) and how they interact on Twitter.
Twitter Lingo
One of the biggest obstacles to understanding Twitter is getting familiar with the lingo and the
abbreviations. Here is the list of the most commonly used terms. Get more definitions from the Twitter
Glossary at: http://support.twitter.com.
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Handle/Username: Must be unique and contain fewer than 15 characters. Is used to identify
you on Twitter for replies and mentions.
Tweet: A message posted via Twitter containing 140 characters or fewer.
Retweet (RT): A Tweet by another user, forwarded to you by someone you follow. Often used
to spread news or share valuable findings on Twitter.
Modified Tweet (MT): A retweet that has been modified.
Hashtag: The # symbol is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically
by Twitter users. Using the # before a term, makes that term searchable.
Direct Message (DM): Also called simply a "message," these Tweets are private between the
sender and recipient. Tweets sent over SMS become DMs when they begin with "d username"
to specify who the message is for.
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
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Trending Topic (TT): A subject algorithmically determined to be one of the most popular on
Twitter at the moment.
CT: short for "cut tweet," a retweet that has been shortened in ordered to fit everything into
the 140-character limit
Follow: opting in to receive someone's tweets in your Twitter feed
FF: Follow Friday, in which you recommend people to follow with the #FF hashtag
RLRT: real life retweet, tweeting something you overheard
Timeline: your list of tweets from people that you follow
Trends: a list of popular hashtags that appears on Twitter's front page. Twitter allows
companies to buy "promoted" for more exposure.
Common internet abbreviations (some of these will never be used for business, but they are here for
your reference):
B/C - because
FTW - for the win
BB - BlackBerry
JK - just kidding
BTW - by the way
LMK - let me know
CLK - click
LOL – Laughing out loud
IMHO - in my humble opinion
NSFW - not safe for work
IDK - I don't know
OH - overheard
IRL - in real life
TY - thank you
F2F - face to face
YW - you're welcome
// LinkedIn – Group
www.LinkedIn.com/directory/groups
Description: LinkedIn groups allow you to discover the most popular discussions in your professional
group. You can play an active part in determining the top discussion by liking and comment on other
people’s posts. You can also follow the most influential people in group by checking the top influencers
board or by clicking on their profile image to see all of their group activity. Furthermore, you can see
both member-generated discussions and news in one setting.
Best Practices:
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
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Look to competitor’s groups as a benchmark for your designing and monitoring your own group
profile.
Join a conversation/discussion. We should not feel shy about sharing our expertise on
LinkedIn’s “Question and Answer” section or in group discussions. The more we share, the
more people will recognize WEF as an expert.
Use your company page to get the word out about a campaign, product, event, etc. See the
below case studies for examples.
Case Study
13 Brands Using LinkedIn Company Page Features the Right Way
+ http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31889/13-Brands-Using-LinkedIn-Company-PageFeatures-the-Right-Way.aspx
// LinkedIn – Personal Profile
www.LinkedIn.com
Description: LinkedIn is a professional, business-oriented social networking site. Users can add their
resume, apply for a job, and make new connections within and outside of their industry. LinkedIn lets
you connect with friends, colleagues, and other people you've worked or done business with in the
past or present.
Best Practices:
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Look to your colleagues’ profiles as a benchmark for your own profile. Use their profile as
reference to see what you may have missed on yours.
Post status updates with articles or advice that would benefit your followers.
Join a conversation/discussion. The more you share, the more people will recognize you as an
expert.
Connect with a member on LinkedIn after ending a call or post-meeting. Establishing a
connection on another medium makes the relationship more personable.
Case Studies:
+ 20 LinkedIn Case Studies and Examples for Professionals: http://kylelacy.com/20-linkedin-casestudies-and-examples-for-professionals/
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
// Facebook
www.Facebook.com
Description: A Facebook business page is a social networking site where users can ‘Like’ our
organization. Once they have “liked” our page, users can receive updates, engage in conversation, and
interact with our organization through comments, likes, photos, mentions, check-ins, and more.
Best Practices:
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Deliver content relevant to the campaign with the intent of garnering a response from the
audience
Post only two times a day (morning, early afternoon)
Monitor the page and interact with responses in a timely manner
Offer a balance between promotion, industry news, and fun content
Encourage audience to “like” posts. This is free publicity and word of mouth advertising at its
finest. More “likes” will result in a higher customer base and name recognition.
Facebook is a very visual medium. The more pictures, video, etc., the better.
// YouTube
www.YouTube.com
Description: YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, view, share, and watch
videos. YouTube hosts the largest collection of user-generated videos.
Best Practices:
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Videos longer than a couple minutes in length typically lose the audience’s interest, depending
on the content. Keep videos short and engaging/interesting.
Add keyword “tags” to each video. The more keywords you include, the more likely it is that
the video will appear in the search results under those key words. YouTube is the world’s 2 nd
largest search engine, so make sure to optimize all videos with the right keywords.
Optimize the first 15 seconds of the video; include a call to action, both in the content itself,
and in the annotations.
Promote the campaign or similar videos on YouTube.
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
// Blog
Description: A blog is a public journal consisting of discrete entries (a.k.a. “posts”). Blogs are
interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and create discussion around a topic. Blogs usually
include text, images, video, and links to other websites.
Best Practices:
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Blog only when you have something to say. A blog is not a soapbox or an online press room; it
should be resourceful, engagement, and somewhat controversial to your target audience to
encourage discussion.
All posts should engage the reader and get them to think about the content of the post in order
to have them return again. Blog posts should typically range from 400-600 words and should be
written in an appealing voice/tone.
Stick to your goal of blogging and stay consistent in the frequency of posts. A good rule of
thumb is to post at least twice a month or not at all!
Always accompany a post with a photo or graphic. Mix it up with videos and/or slideshows as
well. Offering contests/trivia on the blog also creates excitement.
Follow blog etiquette and general guidelines; do not leave comments that slam, slander or
spam the blog. There should also be commenting guidelines on the blog for all contributors to
review.
Less is more. An example of a blog that exemplified this very well is Zen Habits blog by Leo
Babauta (http://zenhabits.net).
For the best reading experience, the average length per line should be between 55-75
characters. The web average is 88 characters.
Segment audience: determine who you’re writing for.
Set real goals, and then add numbers. Have a general objective and then define overtime what
works best for your blog (using analytics) and make the appropriate adjustments.
Make sure to have a commenting policy on the blog.
Set up a review process, give notice ahead of time with your manager and make sure the
content is approved to be published.
Determine the roles for each person who is involved with blogging.
Think about potential partnerships with like-minded organizations to share content.
// Photos – TwitPic – yfrog - Ow.ly - Instagram
Description:
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
TwitPic is a website that allows users to easily post pictures to the Twitter microblogging and social
media service. Users can upload and distribute pictures in near real-time as an event is taking place.
yfrog is an image hosting service run by ImageShack. It is designed primarily to allow users to share
their photographs and videos as links on Twitter.
HootSuite uses the URL shortener ow.ly to shorten URLs submitted to its service.
Instagram is a free photo sharing program that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it,
and then share it on a variety of social networking services. It is currently owned by Facebook;
therefore you have easy integration and upload between Instagram and Facebook.
All of the above products are free third-party tools that enable user to share photos and/or videos with
social networks via mobile app or website. With some of the third-party tools, such as Instagram, you
can edit the photos (as you would in Photoshop) before you post them to your social networking sites.
Best Practices:
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Tweet live from events with photos and a relevant hashtag to encourage discussion. Real-time
tweets perform better than tweets about past events.
Create short videos no longer than 20 seconds on TwitPic and yfrog.
Use Instagram to make photos more interesting and artistic with the various filters they offer.
Host a contest or scavenger hunt by asking people to share photos with their social networks.
Turn your Instagram photos into postcards, art, posters and/or giveaways.
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
Campaign Strategy
You may not believe it, but many more voters are members of online social communities or one or
more of the above social networking sites.
Here’s why social media is so perfectly tailored to help in political campaigns: because there has never
been an easier way to stay in immediate and direct contact with thousands and thousands of
supporters. While political campaign promotion in the past involved laborious tasks such as bulk mail
lists and automated phone calls, social media lets you reach out to every single one of your supporters
with just a few keystrokes. - Killercampaign.com
Key Action Items:
1. Send the same consistent message to key officials on Twitter (ref: Jobs Campaign Twitter
Toolkit)
2. Build a network of supporters on the website and on our Water4Jobs group on LinkedIn
3. Get the message out to the public to educate them about the current state of America’s water
infrastructure
Our main vehicle to reach political officials is Twitter. It will be imperative to coordinate and send the
same tweets to key people on Twitter, including the broadcast stations hosting the debates, the
presidential candidates, campaign managers, journalists, news outlets, and our congressmen.
Please use the “Jobs Campaign Twitter Toolkit” spreadsheet as your guide for the following
information:
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A list of prepared tweets
Tweeting schedule
Who you want to start following
Hashtags you need to use
Twitter references
Tips for Tweet Delivery:
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All of the messages are not time dependent, but there are a few that should be tweeted at a
specific time.
40 tweets have been prepared for the campaign. Each tweet has been written for 140
characters or less; however some will need editing if you need to include hashtags and/or a
handle.
Depending on where you live, you can swap out handles and/or hashtags to make it more
relevant to your specific audience.
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
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Each tweet can be scheduled for posting up to three times a day: morning, early afternoon, and
evening. Vary your times each day to maximize reach.
Try to include the designated hashtag #WaterforJobs in every tweet, along with the campaign
website: http://bit.ly/w4jbs
Social Media Monitoring
It is recommended that you use a tool such as Hootsuite to schedule and monitor your tweets.
Another way to keep track of the campaign dialogue is to create a “stream” in Hootsuite that follows
the keyword (i.e. hashtag) “WaterforJobs”.
Here are some YouTube videos that provide tutorials on using Hootsuite.
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
Social Media Campaign Examples
Read about the top 3 politicians with expertly run social media campaigns:
+ http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2011/11/social-media-politics/
+ http://www.fastcompany.com/3001091/social-media-insights-inspired-barack-obama-americas-first-trulysocial-president
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org
More Social Media Resources
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Mashable - http://mashable.com/social-media/ - The world’s largest blog focused exclusively
on Web 2.0 and Social Media news.
Pew Internet & American Life Project - http://www.pewinternet.org/ - One of seven projects
that make up the Pew Research Center, the Project is a “fact tank” providing information on
how internet and technology trends, issues, and attitudes are shaping the U.S. and the world.
SiteAnalytics - http://www.compete.com/about/ - A web analytic company powered by the
largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry.
Quantcast - http://www.quantcast.com/ - Site providing detailed audience profile information.
Technorati- http://technorati.com/ - A blog search engine.
HubSpot - http://www.hubspot.com/products/ - Leading marketing analytic company that
provides social media information, training and webinars on a periodic basis.
Nielson Online - http://en-us.nielsen.com/ - The world’s leading marketing and media
information company measuring audience and demographic information.
comScore - http://www.comscore.com/ - A source of digital marketing intelligence providing
online audience measurement information.
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Water For Jobs Campaign 2012 | Social Media Toolkit | www.WaterforJobs.org