Challenges & Takeaways

Nov 2

One of the challenges with social media strategies is that organizations are at the whims of social media platforms—and so when changes occur, adjustments have to be made.

Facebook Algorithm Changes

During the Season 14 concert cycle, Facebook changed its algorithm significantly, to prioritize what content is and isn't seen.

In a nutshell, links, event shares, and external video links (e.g., to YouTube) are being de-emphasized in people's timelines; in contrast, text-only status updates, videos posted directly to Facebook, photos, and items that encourage comments are being seen more.
This has proved to be a slight challenge, as the existing social media strategy—which prioritizes sharing interesting links and YouTube videos—has had to be tweaked and reconsidered.
This is still a work-in-progress, as statistics are showing that sharing from other sources—and sharing things that provoke a strong reaction, whether it's laughter, sadness or anger—is garnering more engagement.

Facebook Analytics Changes

During the Season 14 concert cycle, Facebook changed how and what its analytics measures. When coupled with the algorithm changes, this influenced statistics tracking.

For example, two categories—the "Daily Total Impressions" and "Total number of times videos have been viewed for more than 3 seconds numbers"—saw decreases between Concert 2 and Concert 3.
With the algorithm and analytics changes, this makes sense: The Daily Total Impressions statistic now measures "the number of times that any content from your Page or about your Page entered a person's screen," and this is something directly affected by the algorithm.

Content

Photos and video are king on social media—which is great news for orchestras, organizations which are visual and audio feasts.

However, having fresh photo content can be a challenge, as there can be long gaps between concerts, and high-quality videos are time-consuming to create.
Archival photos are useful—but it can be a stretch to re-share things that have been shared before.

Takeaways

For arts organizations, social media success comes with getting buy-in from stakeholders—including musicians, directors, event spaces, freelance photographers/videographers and other staff members—to help generate and provide social media content. Only by having support will a strategy succeed, as for smaller organizations it takes a village to help contribute content.

And while it makes sense for one person from a branding standpoint to be the point person for social media posting/creation/strategy, at any organization, there should be more than one person with institutional knowledge of operations and best practices. No one person should be the only person with the logins and passwords; there at least needs to be backup users as admins and a list of account logins available to anyone who needs them.

This is also relevant to social media strategies, which often fall under the purview of one person due to the nature of the work. Strategies should also be available for anyone to view, so people can see what works and what doesn't, and contribute ideas if appropriate.

Here are some other pro tips:

Have a Dropbox folder shared between the social media team and orchestra stakeholders with archived photos and videos, as well as hi-res logos. Having this readily available will help spark content ideas and inform posting strategies.
Post videos both on Facebook itself and via a YouTube channel. Facebook's algorithm prioritizes things posted directly, so it's good to have things in both places.--YouTube can be considered more like an archive.
Ask musicians (if applicable) and/or other members of the organization to tag and acknowledge the social media handles of an organization when they are posting relevant content. This way, engagement and sharing can happen, which improves the type of content posted.
Share content posted by other members of the organization—and be sure to thank and shout out sponsors, venues where you're performing, other events happening at venues, etc. Being a good, friendly neighbor and supporter online is a great way to put together a strong online community.
Don't be afraid to post videos on Facebook, Instagram (and Instagram Stories) or via Twitter that are shot on a high-quality smartphone, as those kinds of sneak peek videos do well with audiences. Not every video put out there needs to be professionally shot and produced.
Listen to your audience. If certain kinds of content are doing better than others, post more of that. Use a combination of analytics and your own instincts to create content that shows off the organization's personality. Being more human and personal online will endear people to your organization.