Step 19: Social Media Marketing

Estimated Time: 5 hours

Step 19.1: Get Access to the Primary Channels for the Various Platforms

• For most social media channels you will be granted temporary moderator/admin access during the course of the campaigning.

• Once you're ready for campaigning, reach out to the editing team for access to the social media pages/groups on various sites.

Platform Wise Details

1. Instagram: Posted by admin team.

2. Youtube: Posted by admin team.

3. Facebook: Posted by admin team on page. You should join various psychology related groups and share the content there. 

4. LinkedIn: Posted by admin team on page. You should join various psychology related groups and share the content there.  

5. Pinterest: Eligible content is auto-posted on the page from Instagram.

6. X (Twitter): Get your X handle added to the ICIMWS list.

7. Quora: Get contributor access to the two groups to post.

8. Reddit: Join the community to post.

9. Tumblr: Submit your post using this link https://psychologylearners.tumblr.com/submit

   1. Submit the articles and videos as links, preferably you should add descriptions.

   2. Submit the posts as images. You must add the captions.

10. Discord:Join the channel to post.

Please note: wherever special (admin) access has been provided to you, it is only for posting your approved campaign material. If you wish to post anything beyond that you may reach out to the admin team for approval, which may or may not be granted.

Step 19.2: Post

For #6 to #10 above, you must post the contents yourself as per the posting functionality of the respective sites.

Prepare to Post

Posting on social media involves the following components:

1. Core Content: This is the social media content that you have created - banner, links (to your article and webinar), posts and videos.

2. Caption/Description: A few sentences that describe the content while attracting the reader to engage with your content.

3. Tags/Hashtags: These are indexing tools that increase the visibility of your content in contexts where users are seeking that content.

4. Meta-data: This is information that is hidden from your eye - used amongst other things for improving Search Engine Optimisation and Sharing- most websites use the information that you have provided in the previous 3 to automatically generate this.

Good News! While submitting your content, you would have already prepared the above. You may discuss with the editing team if you whish to further improvements before sharing.

Post

Posting is a fairly simple and uniform process (with minor differences) across platforms:

1. Select content type - link (of your article and webinar), photo/image and video

2. Drag/Paste/Upload the content

3. Add the caption/description along with the hashtags

4. Add tags (if functionality is available)

5. Submit

Step 19.3: Share

Why Share?

Simple - this is the only way your content goes viral. If it isn't shared, no one would know that it exists.

Unless you have a well-established social media following with millions of followers, sharing is crucial to the success of your content. In fact, even if you had millions of followers, your content would go viral only if those followers share your content.

Why not just post again?

The social media algorithms function in a way that the more engagement a post gets, the more visibility is given to it, leading to more engagement. It's a cycle.

If you post something 10 times, and each of these is viewed 1000 times - it will have much lesser ranking in the algorithms then if you post it once and share it 10 times getting 10,000 views. In fact, it will be shown even more due to its higher ranking and get even more visibility, increasing the chances of it going viral.  

How to Share?

• There is in-built sharing functionality on most social media sites. 

• You may need to additionally wish to share the content beyond the current site to other platforms for which usually there is a copy link feature.

Where to Share?

• Wherever you will find a relevant audience - depends on how you define your target audience. 

  • For ICIMWS: to identify the relevant audience you need to ask - whose awareness are you attempting to increase?

• After you've identified your target audience, join the groups or communities on the various social media platforms where this audience will be present. 

  • Example: if your topic is related to romantic relationships you might want to join groups for romance, dating, divorce, singles etc.

  • Unless you're dedicated to social media fulltime, you should target joining 3-5 such groups on each platform - these should be selected on the basis of number of members and relevance (and your posts getting approved there).

• Once you've joined the groups - whenever there's a relevant post, simply share it using the share functionality. 

This might seem like drudgery - it is - but it is also extremely critical for your content's social media success.

Remember, as part of ICIMWS you are expected to engage with and share the content of all campaigners - this will help us to significantly increase the reach of all awareness campaigns, including yours!