This month we are taking a deeper look at campaigns and how to incorporate social media to help make them successful, however, audience participation plays an important role in this partnership. To demonstrate that, I wanted to share another example from my visit to District 16 in the Miramichi (learn more about my visit and District 16 in this post and this post). They incorporated social aspects into some things they were doing everyday to make it work for their community. Take it from District 16 – the following are three ways to help ensure success in social media that can also apply to your social campaign.

1. Make it Engaging

District 16 wanted to make their district more social and provide their staff, students, parents and community members with some simple and easy ways to engage. They videotaped their morning announcements and shared them through their website, and posted pictures from the classroom of students working and learning. This was engaging for the audience of family and friends who loved a peek on what the students were doing daily. Students also enjoyed seeing themselves on the site.

This content was perfect for the audience to consume. Parents were provided with additional conversation starters at the dinner table instead of, “What did you learn at school today?” they could talk to their kids about what they saw. How are you considering your audience and what will draw them in?

2. Consider Ease of Use

When District 16 was considering the design of their school websites, the emphasis was put on ease of use. Since the users were teachers, every design decision was based on making their system as easy to use and as effective for educators as possible.  They created an interface whereby with 2 clicks any teacher can easily post Teacher notes, Image Galleries, Videos, Weblinks and Audio Files. It didn’t matter if a teacher or student changed schools because they knew exactly what to expect from the system. As Jamie O’Toole said, “The reason why ease of use is so important is that teachers do not have time to be learning new software. They needed something easy that was user friendly and required little professional development to get started.”

There were lots of opportunities for District 16 to add fancy features to their Drupal system, but they stuck to what they knew their community would use and be able to learn easily. Have you considered ease of use in your social campaigns? There are lots of ways to have community members participate, but are you considering the most intuitive and easy-to-use methods?

3. Replace an Existing Process

Instead of asking teachers to participate online by adding social as a task to do at the end of the day, educators at District 16 are encouraging teachers to use their webpages as a way to replace some existing processes. For example, they post homework online instead of taking the time to give it to students at the end of the day, enabling the teacher to spend less time posting it to the website.

Consider ways you might be asking your audience to participate that goes beyond their regular day. Are there ways that you can integrate what you are asking of them into their daily routine that will not add a lot of time, but will instead provide value?

How are you considering your audience for social campaigns? Any favorite examples of campaigns that make it very easy for the audience to participate?

Melanie Thompson is a Community Analyst at Radian6. You can see some of her previous blog posts and more about her here.

Tags: district 16, edu, education, social campaign, Social Media