Using social media to grow your community - Sarah Jennings

Q1. How can you identify the influencers on social media?

• Identify who the offline influencers are, search for their online persona, and find out who they are connected to.
• Use simple tools to manage Twitter hashtags you’re interest in, e.g. Tweetdeck.
• Look up key organisations and people in the field to find relevant hashtags to follow.

Q2. What is the best way to approach people on social media to join your group?

• Sometimes a direct sell and targeting specific individuals works well (if you know/have interacted with them).
• Signposting content that will be of interest to a particular person.
• Use the relevant hashtags to promote content/activity in your group to those who could add value/find value from the group.
• Find out what hashtags are already in use and are popular, and reuse.
• If you want to create a hashtag, think about what it relates to, if it’s already in use, and which words best describe it.
• You can use analytics tools such as Tweetreach to monitor hashtags (use unique hashtags to avoid picking up non-related tweets).

Q3. How can you use social media to promote what your group is doing?

• Regularly communicate the tangible outcomes (using relevant and consistent hashtags).
• Create your own Twitter handle (if it’s appropriate/your group exists outside of KHub).
• Include other Twitter handles that might retweet you, e.g. @KnowledgeHub
• Use story telling via social media, such as regular updates and blogs.
• Write a public blog on KHub and share it via LinkedIn and Twitter to help promote your group’s outcomes.

Q4. Is it possible to be an effective facilitator without being part of the wider social media world?

• Yes. You can make use of your members who are active on social media.
• A good facilitator excels at convening people, herding cats, moving the conversation along and identifying key knowledge assets produced along the way.
• If you want to use social media tools, think about how much value you think each tool adds to what you're trying to achieve. 
• Think about your KHub group as being at the centre and the other forms of social media are satellites to attract people in, as signposts.