Social media demographics

Congratulations on your election. We put together this page of digital resources to capture the tips and tools discussed at the Academy for New Legislators, December, 2018. If you have additions or questions, please email me. At UMass Journalism, we have a lot of expertise ready to help.

Why social media? Because that's where people are increasingly getting their information.

Where should you be on social media? You don't need to be on all platforms, but you should be where your constituents are. For most, this will be Facebook, and, increasingly, YouTube, but Twitter and Instagram are useful at different times in different ways. (It's useful to see the chart below for the different demographic social preferences.) Anecdotally, anyway, I would say that Twitter is a good platform for reaching journalists, for example (check out the #mapoli hashtag), and Instagram is good for rallying good feelings around an event or cause.

Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), for example, has made great use of Instagram in the time between her election and actually taking office. With 1.1 million followers, she is reaching a national and global audience with her message. People even watch her cooking dinner. Don't laugh; more than 250,000 people watched Rep. Beto O'Rourke make dinner on Facebook Live. 

How should you think about social media? As a core component of your communication strategy, rather than an add-on. And you should be thinking mobile.

It's also important to keep track of tech companies--and the public's relationship with them--is changing. 

The platforms themselves are also always changing, so it's important to keep up with the social media industry, with sites like Social Media Today, Digiday, and social media demographics with sites like the Pew Research Center.  Social media management takes time and commitment. You're better off with one channel that is well-maintained than several that are not.

Here are some basic resources and information about the demographics of social media.

For policy perspectives, The Pew Research Center is an excellent source to keep up with the intersection of technology, media, social media and the workplace.

WHO USES WHAT?
Different social platforms have different demographics. This chart comes from the Pew Research Center. Here's a link to the full data.

Resources for developing and managing social media

General
How to Use Social Media in Your Career and Business, New York Times
This post, by the social media expert Sree Sreenivasan (@sree) covers the waterfront. Your social media manager should also join Sree's Advanced Social Media Group on Facebook. It's a closed group, but he'll let you in. You can keep up with trends and practices through his newsletter archive here. 

Platforms for managing social media
With these dashboards you can schedule posts and manage your message across platforms.
Buffer, Hootesuite,  Tweetdeck

Here is a link to a downloadable social media posting calendar.

Twitter tips and tools
Canva enables you to easily create social graphics. And it's fun. 
Typorama enables you to create nice mobile graphics.
Twiangulate lets you track your followers and messages.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE:
Here's Buffer's Big List of Twitter Tools: 93 Free Twitter Tools and Apps to Fit Any Need 

Instagram tips and tools 
Planoly lets you schedule posts.
Boomerang lets you create short, uploadable videos on your phone
PicCollage features frames, graphics and stickers

Facebook tips and tools
If you're considering a Facebook Live broadcast, here are some resources to help you get started. 
Facebook Live resources from Amherst Wire
These materials were created by the editors of Amherstwire, who created a presentation for the College Media Association Conference.
NPR's Facebook Live guide
Cinamaker is a terrific app that lets you shoot and broadcast livestreams with multiple cameras from a phone or tablet.
Social Media Examiner's Best Apps for Going Live 

Social media policies and practices
Does your office have a social media policy that spells out the rules of the road for your staff? You should. Here are some examples. Here is the Mass.gov social media policy. Here's a collection of municipal social media policies compiled by the Institute for Local Government. And here's a comprehensive database of policies that includes corporations and public entitite.

Here are some guidelines for developing your own policy. Here's a roundup of policies from state legislature and executive branch offices, via the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Here's a directory of state legislature social media sites from around the country. See what other legislatures are doing. Here's an archived webinar on Social Media Policies for State Legislatures sponsored by the NCSL. And here's the PowerPoint that accompanies the presentation.

Social Media Today covers it all.

Social media tutorials
Lynda.com has hundreds of tech tutorials, using online video.

Want to create a Twitter list for your followers around a particular topic? Here's how.

Want to embed your Twitter feed onto your website? Here's how. 

Want to create an animated  GIF using Photoshop? Here's how. 

Want to learn how to use Facebook Live to take questions from constituents? Here's how.  (This is an archived, ticketed webinar, well worth the $19 fee.)

Tech experts worth following 

Kara Swisher's Recode Decode and Pivot  podcasts, along with her column in the New York Times can keep you updated on tech. She's the best tech reporter out there.

Amy Webb's Tech Trends for Journalists is an annual update on tech and media.

Jeremy Caplan, director of education, Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, is an excellent resource on digital media and social media. Here's his slideshow on 50 plus Social Media Tools and Sites: Beyond Facebook and Twitter.

Digital communication management and productivity tools

Communication and productivity 
MailChimp,  Constant Contact and Emma enable you to connect directly with constituents via email.

Paper.Li enables you to aggregate content around particularly topics and distribute it to constituents.

SurveyMonkey enables you to conduct informal surveys.

Slack enables you to do group messaging, across teams and topics.

Google Docs, Campfire, GroupMe and Yammer  enable individuals to work on projects together online.

Doodle enables you to schedule meeting times with several different individuals.

Canva is a fun tool that enables you to integrate text and visuals into your social posts.

Jing lets you create and share short screencasts. Its bigger sister,  Camtasia lets you produce longer videos, including screencasts of Powerpoints, etc. Recordit also works.

Evernote lets you keep track of a variety of media all in one file.

Pocket lets you save links from social media sources to read later. SERIOUSLY, THIS APP WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Invaluable for collecting items to read from Twitter!

Dropbox offers cloud storage that makes your files accessible on any device.

Op-ed writing advice

Have you got 750 words to say about a topic? This piece, by the late New York Times columnist William Safire, offers excellent advice on how to write a solid op-ed piece. It's more than 20 years old, but it still holds up.

Social media lists

Twitter lists to follow:
These lists can help you keep up!

David Bernstein has created a Twitter list of Massachusetts News Feeds.

The Statehouse News Service has a number of valuable lists, including state senators, reps and newsmakers.

The Statehouse News Service sends out its MASSterList  every morning.

Social media and politics
This this Forbes article is a must read. It details the social media strategy that Jared Kushner used to target supporters, raise money, identify topics that resonated, even plan rally locations that ultimately helped elect his father-in-law president. (And Kushner himself has never posted a single tweet. ) And 2020 is likely to have the same dynamic, only on steroids.

Some takeaways:

Television and online advertising? Small and smaller. Twitter and Facebook would fuel the campaign, as key tools for not only spreading Trump's message but also targeting potential supporters, scraping massive amounts of constituent data and sensing shifts in sentiment in real time.

...For those who can't understand how Hillary Clinton could win the popular vote by at least 2 million yet lose handily in the electoral college, perhaps this provides some clarity. If the campaign's overarching sentiment was fear and anger, the deciding factor at the end was data and entrepreneurship. 

Digital sources related to municipal management and citizen engagement

Apps and tools like See Click Fix, CitySourced, and PublicStuff enable citizens to report problems or issues in their neighborhoods and communities, and connect local governments with citizens.

How Mobile Apps Help Local Governments Connect with Citizens

The federal government's open data website is data.gov

Governing: Building the Innovation Nation

Governing: 2018 Digital Cities Survey

Interested in a deeper dive on digital and civic technology?

Susan Crawford is a technology and policy expert, and the author of The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data Smart Governance. Crawford advocates the use of technology, including big data, to solve problems and build citizen participation at the community level.

Here's a case study of how these theories were put to work in the City of Boston.

Here's an NPR interview with Crawford about high speed Internet access in the US.  Here's another piece from Time Magazine: Is Broadband Internet Access a Public Utility?

Here's the Knight Foundation slideshare: The Emergence of Civic Tech: Investments in a Growing Field.

Amy Webb worked as a Neiman Fellow at Harvard, and is the CEO of Webbmediagroup, which identifies emerging tech trends, for both businesses and municipalities. Here's Amy's report on Emerging Tech Trends for 2018.

The MIT Center for Civic Media covers all kinds of interesting tech developments. Worth a look.

Pew Internet Center has research on how citizens use technology, including social media. Here's a report on The Political Environment on Social Media.

Wired magazine offers an interesting read on technology developments.

Mashable tech section offers a look at consumer tech, along with BusinessInsider and
Re/Code.