social media – dogpossum

I’m currently working on a covid management plan for a dance school. I’m quite enjoying the process.
Here’s the process:

–The Plan–

Restating the org’s values

Which helped me understand how and why the org would develop a covid policy, what issues to focus on, and how to implement it,
Which ensured we were all on the same page.

Stating the covid plan philosophy

In this context, a philosophy is theoretical or ideological model for addressing concrete issues,
Which is basically applying the org’s abstract values to a concrete issue (covid),
Phrasing the philosophy as a list of clear applications of values to a specific issue (covid)
This could be a list of a hundred items, or a list of two.

Developing two goals for the plan

These are deliberately limited in scope (ie this isn’t a govt department managing the health of a whole city or state, it’s a small dance school),
They are very focussed and practical.

Putting all this into practical actions

There are four ‘actions’ which cover four general areas of covid management,
These actions can be phrased as ‘guidelines’ (ie covid rules) for the org, but they can also guide procedures.
They deliberately limit the scope of the plan to keep it very local and very practical.

So that’s the whole Covid management plan.
From here, I use the plan to develop:

Guidelines (or rules)
Procedures (eg if a rule is ‘you must provide proof of vaccination’, who does this checking, where do they check, what do they do if someone doesn’t have proof, what constitutes proof, etc etc)
Social media strategy to communicate all this, and also to provide information about covid that will encourage people to participate
Website materials (eg a public statement of the guidelines)
A handbook that contains all the procedures, contact info, covid facts, etc.

–Developing the plan–

At this point I have a first draft, and it’s been to the org’s boss for comment and approval to go ahead and develop it.
After some tweaking, I’ll send it off to the rest of the org (teachers and staff) to get their feedback, impressions, comments, suggestions, etc.
I’ll also do a model for public comment.

This Plan development process, and the plan itself, are guided by:

Research I’ve been doing into how covid is transmitted, etc,
Research into different models that have similar values, and have been effective (incl. Camp Jitterbug, but also a model from AMSANT (The Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance Northern Territory), Abrome (a school in Texas), etc etc),
Social Justice/activist models of care like Tian Zhang’s Manifesto for Radical Care, or How to Be a Human in the Arts.

A key part of this process is an ethos of community strength, and collectivism. My experiences working on sexual harassment in dance has made it clear that top-down solutions are a) not effective, b) burn out the people doing the work, c) maintain existing power structures that _enable_ injustices like sexual harassment. As I learnt working on Melbourne Lindy Exchange (MLX) for years, you need to develop work practices that allow any one person to drop out or take a break at any time. Which is, of course, what flexible, healthy workplaces are all about.

–A final form?–

A key part of this plan is to be agile. It must be able to change and respond to social changes. Covid will change. The community changes.
An Important thing I learnt from working on sexual harassment stuff, is that we can’t just develop a code and leave it at that. That doesn’t work. We need to update it, to change and develop our approach, as we learn more, and as our communities change.
So putting this plan together, I’m assuming that it will need to be changed and updated regularly; I can’t just post it on the website and forget about it. There’ll be feedback from staff about the processes, there’ll be changes in covid, we’ll see things like the development of new vaccines and healthcare strategies.
This means that the Plan itself, and where it lives needs to mutable.
This is a very exciting idea. It’s a lot like lindy hop itself: you have basic structural elements, but it is, fundamentally, about innovation, improvisation, and responding to the needs of its users.

–Why am I doing all this work?–

I have a long history of writing and researching and lecturing, but I am rubbish at presenting my plans and projects in ways that make it easy for the audience to take my work and do their own projects with it.
So I’m deliberately learning how to:

Develop a plan
Present a plan to stakeholders who have different types of engagement
do good community/group consultation and engagement.

I’m also really interested in how social media management can be employed in social justice work, so I’m quite keen on using things like instagram, facebook, etc etc in new and interesting ways. Which, bizarrely (unsurprisingly?) circles back to my doctoral research and academic research, which was all about how small communities use media in unique ways.

–What have I learnt so far?–

One of the most exciting things I’ve learnt so far, is that if a project like this is equitable in design, it actually fights racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc. I think one of the most exciting things about the Camp Jitterbug covid plan, is that it came from the experiences of people of colour, people of a range of genders, people with lived experience doing activist community labour. It’s proof that anti-racist work is good for all of us.

Reading through a few different style guides by different brands, I came across the Mailchimp style guide.

One of the most interesting bits is the discussion of what they post on which social media channel:

Mailchimp has a presence on most major social media platforms. Here are our most active accounts and what we usually post on each:

Twitter: Product news, brand marketing, events, media mentions, evergreen content, “we’re hiring!” posts

Facebook: Product news, brand marketing, events, media mentions, evergreen content, “we’re hiring!” posts

LinkedIn: Product news, recruiting content, media mentions, evergreen content

Instagram: Design outtakes, cool office visitors, life at Mailchimp, cool stuff we made

This caught my eye for the way each channel has a specific job, and the brand has a specific type of content on each channel. So Linkedin mailchimp is all serious business time, and instagram mailchimp is fun and visual. Comparing facebook and instagram is especially interesting. Instagram reads as a ‘cool’ channel for mailchimp, whereas facebook is more serious. The biggest difference between the two is the way facebook works as an avenue for sales (product news), and instagram does _not_ do sales (it’s essentially about brand identity).

This caught my eye because I’ve been thinking about the way we need to develop an audience before we start to sell them things. Or rather, we create a relationship with people, and when they’re ready, they go looking for our products. This is a more long term strategy, but it’s also a less didactic, less aggressive relationship. Particularly in the dance world, where brands are often dance schools speaking to their students. We don’t see a whole lot of different brands using social media in a cohesive way in the dance world. There’re usually just bands, dance schools, events, teachers, apparel and footware brands, and perhaps DJs. There a couple of social enterprise brands (largely based on antiracism goals), and a couple of other odds and ends. But the discourse is largely dominated by pedagogy. Which brings with it a very… top down power dynamic and mode of address.

There’s also a degree of panic or anxiety about ‘time running out’ from the brand itself, as they fight to improve numbers for class enrolments or event registrations. Both have fixed due dates, and both tend to work with the assumption that more is better. I suspect this impetus is largely the result of a bigger narrative in the dance world: that we must ‘grow’ the scene. ‘Share’ the dance. It’s a powerful ideology, particularly when it’s coopted by businesses selling a product that can be attached to this discourse (classes in particular). And it of course brings a worrying blend of cultural appropriation, capitalism, and colonialism.

So if we are developing a brand or public profile for a business or entity (a dance school, a social enterprise, a band), how can we use social media to be economically sustainable _and_ socially sustainable? In other words, how can we not be pushing salesperson jerks when we speak to people via our social media.

I think that it’s most useful to remember a few key rules:
Build the audience before you start to sell.
There will be a lead time from when you start posting to when you should expect people to come looking to buy what you’re selling. So don’t try to sell your product right up front.
This holds true for brands that are doing things like anti-racist activism work as well. Speak to your audience, to your community before you start selling or asking for donations.

Devote an entire channel to the ‘other stuff’.
Offer stuff that you enjoy about dance, or that is central to your dance community (or community of people who also dance), and then create clear pathways to your product from there. Don’t push people to buy; let them come looking when they’re ready.

Don’t panic sell.
There’s a tendency in dance event social media in particular to suddenly ramp up the number of posts, and the urgency of the tone, the closer we get to the event date. Particularly if there’s a perceived ‘lack’ of sales. Guilt-selling is not a successful strategy.
Again, this brings us back to the idea that we devote our attention to nurturing the broader profile of the brand, rather than just focussing on sales.

And of course, this all brings us back to the point of the mailchimp style guide: plan ahead.

Plan your social media strategies well in advance.
Think carefully about your ‘brand identity’.
Make clear decisions about what role each social media channel plays in your overall strategy.
Let your content do its job; don’t force every post to sell sell sell.

All this will make your social media work much less stressful, and make engaging with your channels a lot more enjoyable for your audiences.

And if you are working with a social enterprise brand, then you’ll find your social media strategies fit more comfortably with your ethics and values. In particular, you’ll see your relationship with the people in your local community not as a series of chances to raise money or recruit volunteers, but as a network of relationships that build and sustain a community.