Social Media Basics, Part 2: How to Use it

In Part 2 of a two-part series on best social media practices, Laurie Greenspan with the JCC of Greater Buffalo shares insights on how to utilize social media marketing in today’s increasingly digital world.

Social media gets your word out and in front of your members quickly. Because each social media platform is different in terms of what it does well, the content of each brand’s messaging should be tailored to the demographics of the audience using it.

According to Laurie Greenspan, the director of marketing at the JCC of Greater Buffalo, in order to pick which platforms your facility uses, you have to know your audience and which platforms they are active on. “On average, I have found folks ages 40 to 70 are on Facebook, and ages 17 to 60 are on Instagram,” she explained. “These platforms have analytics that can tell you who is on your site and what time of day they frequent it.”

These statistics are helpful when you schedule your facility’s posts. The Buffalo J uses Hootsuite and Facebook to schedule their posts in advance. Both are free, and they can also monitor posts, keywords and activities.

“Keywords are great if you want to see what people are saying about a specific thing, such as preschool, early childcare or nursery schools,” said Greenspan. “Both of those platforms also have terrific analytic tools so you can see the best time to get your message out.”

When it comes to who should be running your social media accounts, look to your marketing team. Greenspan and the rest of her marketing team post to Facebook, and she has a full-time graphic designer on staff and a part-time employee helping run their Instagram. They do not post a lot on Twitter, LinkedIn or Snapchat, focusing primarily on the other two platforms.

“Additionally, I use Constant Contact to send weekly emails and they also have analytics regarding who is opening their mail and clicking on your links,” said Greenspan. “A lot of this is experimentation to get a better feel for what works and what doesn’t.”

Before launching a social media strategy, do your research to see what each platform does well, the demographics of the audience using it and how each brand’s messaging should be tailored as such. Overall, it’s important to know you don’t have to be on every platform, just the ones your members are most active.