Facetweeting: How To and Lessons Learned from EPA's Experiences
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The document provides guidance on facetweeting, which is simultaneously posting news and announcements on an agency's Facebook and Twitter accounts. It discusses best practices for finding material to post, writing posts for different platforms given their character limits, engaging with comments, monitoring discussions, and scheduling posts. The key lessons are to be concise on Twitter, provide more information on Facebook given its higher character limit, respond promptly to questions, and have a thick skin when dealing with critical comments.
Facetweeting: How To and Lessons Learned from EPA's Experiences
- 1. FaceTweetingHow to do it and lessons learnedAndy PrugarEnvironmental Protection AgencyWednesday, June 22, 2011
- 2. What is Facetweeting?Facetweeting is releasing news, announcements, etc from your agency on its Facebook and Twitter accounts.The posts on Facebook and Twitter will happen almost simultaneously and will have the same information.Because of character limits, you will almost always have to rewrite posts for the other application.
- 3. Finding MaterialWe get facetweet material from a variety of sources:Agency News ReleasesRequests from Agency OfficesSpecial Days/Weeks/MonthsSpecial Agency Projects or EventsNew Clips – Google, Washington Post, etc
- 4. General Lessons LearnedProvide the conclusions and link to more information, but know that few people click links: "Radiation levels far below concern <URL>" instead of "Latest radiation levels: <URL>" . Similarly, because of space limits, link to data instead of trying to post it.Repeat, repeat, repeat. Followers and fans miss a lot of things. Don't assume everyone sees your first post or your first response to someone's comment.Some people won't believe you. They don't like your agency, they're scared, or some other reason. Try to respond to the ones who seem willing to listen and try to ignore the others. This is difficult.
- 5. Some people will ask numerous questions. You have to decide, usually on the fly, what to respond to and how often.Balance individual attention, which produces intimate connections and top-level customer service but is a huge time demand, with serving the broader audience. Remember that you are responding to everyone who looks at your page, not just one person.Engagement begets engagement. Posts where we responded to comments got more than 3 times as many comments.More Lessons Learned
- 6. Language: FacebookFacebook tends to be informal, so be folksy when possible. “Good morning, folks!”Facebook users are not necessarily web savvy people. Much of the general public uses Facebook.With a higher character limit, you can include more information on Facebook than you can on Twitter. If you are posting something that is more than 420 characters, you can post it as a Note.
- 7. Language: TwitterBe concise! You only have 140 characters.Shoot for 120 characters to allow for retweets, @mentions, hashtags, etc.Utilize bit.ly and go.usa.gov to shorten URLs. All .gov and .mil addresses shortened via bit.ly will become 1.usa.gov URLs.If you have to, you can tweet back-to-back when there is a lot of material. Indicate that the tweets are part of a series (“1/2” “2/2”).
- 8. Posting on FacebookInclude a link to more information, whenever possible, although few people seem to follow the links.420 character maximum.We aim for at least one post a day.You may want to post something on occasion as a reminder, which we do with our comment policy or radiation data updates. Keep the language the same to avoid confusion and save time.
- 9. Posting With a Link & ThumbnailYou have the option to choose among thumbnails or not to have any thumbnail.You can edit/delete the bold link title textYou can delete or write text below the link, which Facebook automatically populates.Don’t forget to delete the link from this text box.Your post with link and thumbnail should look uncluttered.
- 10. TweetingInclude a bit.ly or go.usa.gov link with no punctuation after itAim for 1-5 tweets a day.Retweet from followers and people you follow.Retweet from other agency Twitter accounts.
- 11. Comments and QuestionsHave a thick skin!We get a lot more comments and responses on Facebook. We aren’t exactly sure why. Facebook is more widely used. Maybe the public is more comfortable with it?The amount and attitude of the comments often depend on the subject of the post.
- 12. More on Comments and QuestionsHave a thick skin!Facebook people tend to be more direct or aggressive as well.Read everything and don’t totally ignore frequent critics. Sometimes they’re trying to get at broader issues that many more people might be concerned about.
- 13. More on Comments and QuestionsHave a thick skin!
- 14. Write about and link to your comment policy: http://www.epa.gov/epahome/commentpolicy.htmlNo profanity, threats, or promotions. We had to report one commenter to Federal Protective Services because he continually made threats against the agency.Many people post YouTube links. I strongly recommend viewing videos.Capture comments before you delete them. Include the original post, date and time, commenter’s name, and the comment.Guidance on Monitoring Comments
- 15. More on Monitoring CommentsFacebook marks possible spam with a gray box, and these are visible only to administrators. You can decide whether you want to unmark it as spam or remove it. You can manually mark comments as spam while you decide how to handle them, then unmark them if you decide they're ok.
- 16. Responding to commentsSeparate serious questions from arguments and conspiracy theories.Be considerate and careful.Respond within 24 hours if possible.When necessary, consult with subject-matter experts.With very sensitive topics, we run things past our communications leaders.
- 17. Checking Twitter for ResponsesCheck for @mentions and retweets.
- 18. @Mentions
- 19. Don’t forget to check replies!
- 20. Retweeting
- 21. Scheduling FacetweetsYou may occasionally need to facetweet on weekends or days off.Facebook and Twitter: HootSuite, LaterBro, TweetDeck, Social Tomorrow.Twitter only: Twuffer, FutureTweets, twAitter, SocialOomph.Make sure you have appropriate terms of service.