A FIRST EURES
SOCIAL MEDIA
STRATEGY
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
A. Introduction
Of course, a fully developed communication strategy will
identify many other audiences (e.g., learning partners,
media), and/or break down these major categories into
sub-categories (international employers, SMEs), but that
belongs in the overall communication strategy, which
proposed focusing on people aged 18-35, particularly the
unemployed of that age group (see “A.6. Target groups”
in the EURES Communication Strategy 2012-2014).
This documents aims to establish general principles
and a framework for EURES’ medium-long-term social
media strategy.
A.1. Organisational Context
A social media strategy cannot be useful if it does not
reflect the organisational issues and realities – i.e.
A.2. Two Guiding principles
• Who the audience(s) are;
A.2.1. One size does not fit all
• Who implements the strategy, their motivations and
resources (and if there are multiple organisations,
how they currently interact)
It is also apparent that there can be no single social media
strategy for all levels of the EURES network, as there are
31 different national contexts - for example:
EURES’ Social Media strategy is not an exception – it’s a
complex situation. Briefly, we have the following actors
and audiences:
• Employment situations are different in different countries;
• Social media platform usage differs from country to
country;
• Actors implementing at national level – these
“national communicators” are:
• in some countries: one national coordinator and
those EURES Advisors that are responsible for
communication;
• in other countries: PES Communications managers
• Different Advisors and PES Communications managers will have different situations (resources, experience, etc.).
A.2.2. A learning network
in a fast-changing world
• Actors implementing at ‘corporate (EU) level’:
EURESco, who may also coordinate between national
implementation, should that prove valuable.
A.2.2.1. Constant evolution
Finally, the only constant in social media is change. Any
strategy which sets itself in stone for 5 years will be out
of date within 5 months.
• Two principal audiences: jobseekers and employers.
National communicators’ audiences thus include:
• National jobseekers (i.e., from the same country), particularly seeking opportunities in another
country;
• National employers (i.e., from the same country),
particularly seeking HR from other countries;
• Non-National jobseekers (i.e., from another country), seeking opportunities in the national communicator’s country. Such jobseekers are, however, often ‘passed’ to the EURES advisors by their
counterpart in the jobseekers’ home countries.
Clearly, one response to this is to carry out regular
updates, set out in a series of annual workprogrammes.
This strategy therefore provides a framework for these
workprogrammes.
It should be noted, however, that we aim to build change
into the strategy itself, which means running a steady
stream of pilots and experiments across the network
and sharing the resulting experiences as part of a rolling
series of training workshops.
2
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
This would ensure that lessons and new techniques are
actually learnt, rather than simply ensuring that they
are recorded in Word documents. It also allows us to
experiment and learn on faster timescales than every
12 months.
Moreover, different national communicators are already
in different stages of development in their social media
work. This variation is likely to grow as some countries
embark on training before others.
To help structure the development of EURES social
media, the table sets out four ‘stages of development’
for national communicators’ use of social media:
However, this can only be implemented when those in
the network who are able to use social media platforms
for communications have reached at least the third stage
of development listed below (Spreading Wings).
A.2.2.2. Stages of development
EURES is here for the long-term, so we take a long-term
perspective when developing these strategies and tools.
Stage of development
Description:
The national communicator ...
Notes
Nowhere
Hasn’t done much more than think
about social media, but doesn’t
know where or how to start
Candidates for the full ‘Basic training
and strategy development’ Package
Getting started
Has developed a strategy and is
Uses EURESco content but does not
testing the waters with its first social run any social media projects
media accounts
Spreading wings
Has launched its first national social Candidate for cooperation in pilot
media campaign (see later)
cross-EU social media campaigns,
involving some countries
Full speed
Takes part in cross-EU social media
campaigns
Nirvana
All national communicators are both using social media locally and have
taken part in at least a pilot cross-EU social media campaigns. The network
is ready for 31-country campaigns, such as the EURESVISION competition.
3
Is involved in a pilot cross-EU social
media campaign, involving some
countries.
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
A.3. Approach at a glance
So how can EURESco help you using social media?
The recommended approach is therefore to:
• Provide and coordinate the EURES communication
training. See the EURES Communication Training Catalogue 2012 for a complete list of courses, available to
download from the Extranet;
• Set out a strategy for EURESco: this strategy is
designed to
• achieve EURESco’s own specific goals;
• support the social media work at the national
level;
• support internal communications throughout the
network.
• Provide a set of useful tools, such as an ‘own site’
platform to support central profiles and interactive/
virtual events, should the need be identified during
the initial strategy development. This will ultimately
depend on whether the PES organisation provides the
“own site”; or, when that’s not possible then, this will
be provided centrally, via the portal; or the national
communicator would set up a blog such as Tumblr,
depending on national ability to do so. The use of
web meeting tools will also be made available and
training is provided for the use of these through the
EURES Communications Training Catalogue 2012;
• Propose a training and learning programme at the
national level designed to:
• help willing national communicators develop the
most appropriate social media strategy for their
national context;
• ensure they take advantage of all content and
activity carried out by EURESco and – if appropriate – other national-level communicators;
• ensure national communicators use social media
to learn from each other’s experiences in EURES
communications, whether it be social media or
other forms of communication.
• Provide a central source of content – the website
itself and ENIB stories – for national communicators
to share locally.
A.5. Structure of this document
A.4. EURESco support
The structure of this document as follows:
EURESco activities will aim to support the national
efforts.
• Firstly, recommending a proper audience research
exercise, to inform social media and wider promotion
efforts and – ideally – the development of the site as
a whole;
It is the national communicators, working in national
languages, who are supposed to be EURES’ interface
with both employee and employer audiences.
• Then examining how social media can be used at
the national level, before outlining the training and
learning programme;
• And then setting out how EURESco social media can
both achieve its own goals and support the national
social media work, leading over time to pan-EU campaigns.
We therefore start with the national level first, as that is
where things will start.
4
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
B. Audience research
B.1.1. What is a Persona?
Personas are a widely used technique for conceiving and
developing user-oriented websites.
Audience research should be carried out in order to
develop Personas for the principal audience groups at
national level.
For each Audience defined for the website, one or a few
Personas are defined to encapsulate the motivations,
expectations and goals which drive the behaviour of
members of that Audience.
The purpose of this audience research is to ensure that
social media activities carried out at national level are
able to reach, influence and engage the target groups
listed in “A.6. Target groups” of the EURES Communication
Strategy 2012-2014.
Each Persona brings its audience to life by giving them
a name and a personality.
Although Personas are fictitious, they are based on
knowledge of real audience members. Starting from
existing data or some basic research can ensure they
genuinely represent the audience, rather than the opinion of the person writing the Persona.
The audience research will thus aim to identify:
• Where the target audiences are (i.e. which social
media platforms)
• What the target audiences respond to, in terms of
content (writing style, video content, infographics
etc) and engagement (competitions, outreach, discussions etc).
They are less often used when making content and design
considerations regarding offline communications products, but ideally one set of Personas are defined for the
client, and are used across their communications portfolio.
By developing Personas for their respective audience
groups, national communicators will be able to better
target those groups.
The following section provides one of our QMS documents about Personas.
B.1. Using Personas
Dear colleagues,
If we are to design communication products that match the needs and interests of our audience and achieve
our goals, then we must know what information our audiences are looking for, and why they are looking for it.
In other words, we need to consider each audience’s motivations and interests. This can only be achieved
through audience research, but the job doesn’t end there – we can then use Personas to further develop our
answers to these questions, and then guide the creation of communication products ranging from posters
to – in particular – websites.
This QMS document introduces Personas and how they can be used.
- Online Communications Department, 2 December 2009
5
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
B.1.2. Benefits
B.1.3. What makes a good Persona?
The most common benefits from using Personas are:
A good Persona description is a narrative that describes
the flow of someone’s day, as well as their skills, attitudes,
environment, and goals.
• Audience goals and needs become a common point
of focus for the entire team: communication strategy
development, web and publication design, editorial,
promotion, etc.;
A Persona first answers critical questions, such as: Which
pieces of information are required at what points in the
day? Do users focus on one thing at a time, carrying it
through to completion, or are there a lot of interruptions?
Why are they using this service in the first place?
• Communication products are conceived, written and
designed to support specific user goals – for example:
• different printed products can be written and
designed specifically for different personas,
increasing effectiveness and reducing overlaps;
• audience-centric web interfaces: Persona Scenarios (above) allow us to identify different paths
to information – particularly landing pages – for
different audiences;
Each Persona should also have three or four important
goals that help focus the design. Goals and tasks are different: tasks are not ends in themselves, but are merely
things we do to accomplish goals. Not just any goals will
do, however, so it’s important to understand which types
will help making design decisions:
• Life goals are only occasionally useful in design;
• They help avoid the trap of “building what users ask
for, rather than what they will actually use” ;
• Experience goals describe how the Persona wants to
feel when using a product; having fun and not feeling
stupid are experience goals. Not every Persona needs
an experience goal; in most persona sets, there is one
Persona who represents people with a lot of anxiety
about technology;
• They are relatively quick to develop and replace the
need to canvass the whole community and spend
months gathering requirements;
• Design efforts can be prioritised, with disagreements
over design decisions sorted out by referring to “what
the Personas would say”;
• Most Persona goals should be end goals that focus
on what the Persona could get out of using a welldesigned service. End goals can also involve indirect
benefits from using a service or product.
• Online designs can be constantly evaluated against
the Personas:
• improving design decisions about how a piece
of functionality will work, or about the creative
design of the web solution;
• helping develop scenarios for usability testing;
• reducing the frequency of large and expensive
usability tests;
• guiding expert usability reviews and focusing
additional user analysis activities, such as task
analysis.
Persona descriptions are ideally kept to one page to
ensure that they remain effective communication tools
and can be referred to quickly during design discussions.
Personas should also be arranged in a hierarchical order
which will help directing design priorities.
Once the Personas are written, a review should ensure that
they have remained realistic. If two personas seem close
in behaviours and goals, they might be merged them into
one Persona to keep the overall number manageable.
6
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
Insight: Persona Design Principles
Microsoft’s persona design process is as follows:
• We utilize a central “foundation” document for
each Persona as a storehouse for information
about that Persona (data, key attributes, photos,
reference materials, etc.). The foundation document contains goals, fears, and typical activities
that motivate and justify scenarios that appear in
feature specs, vision documents, story boards, etc.
• We attempt to start each Persona effort from previously executed, large sample market segmentation studies. The highest priority segments are
fleshed out with user research that includes field
studies, focus groups, interviews and further market research. We try to keep the set of characters
down to a manageable number: 3 to 6 Personas,
depending on the breadth of product use;
• After our Personas are created, we set up “sanity
check” site visits with users who match the Personas on high level characteristics to see how well
they match on low level characteristics. We do
this because our creation method utilizes multiple data sources, many of which are not directly
comparable or inherently compatible.
• Although we have not yet created full-on international or disabled Personas, we have included
international market information and accessibility
information in our Personas;
• We have also created one ‘anti-Persona,’ a Persona
intended to identify people we are specifically not
designing for.
• Once the Personas’ documents and materials are
in place, we typically hold a kick off meeting to
introduce the Personas to the team at large.
• As we tell the story, we try to employ qualitative
data and observed anecdotes when possible. A
not yet quite achieved goal is to have each and
every statement in the Persona generated from
or related to user data and/or observation.
John Pruitt and Jonathan Grudin: Personas. Practice
and Theory. Microsoft Corporation
B.1.4. Persona scenarios
• Join a website;
• Write a story about a working group outcome, or
submit a best practice;
• Propose a networking session for a conference;
• Download a document;
•etc.
While each Persona description will set out the Persona’s
goals – what the person wants to achieve – we will also
define the goals we want to achieve for that Persona.
We therefore define a scenario for each Persona. Most
such scenarios define a landing page for that Persona
and describe the page(s) and action(s) the Persona should
follow if they are to fulfil the goals we have for them - e.g.
We will then use that scenario when doing website usability testing.
7
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
B.1.5. Further reading
B.2.2. Other uses for Personas
The best single curation of Persona-related resources
we’ve found is located within Dey Alexander’s A-Z of user
experience design resources: http://www.deyalexander.
com.au/resources/uxd/personas.html
Personas can be used to underpin all communications/
promotional work, and also for improving the architecture, design and content of an existing site. Some ideas
include:
Update (7/6/2011): Dey Alexander is changing name and
relaunching their site, so when the above link doesn’t
work, search for “4 Syllables”
• Wherever focus groups are used, they should be
composed of people corresponding to the Personas.
Moreover, insights from these interactions should be
fed back to further refine the Personas themselves;
B.2. Developing EURES Personas
• Scenarios: each Persona can be assigned a scenario
describing their goals on the EURES site. These scenarios can then be used in:
• search engine optimisation: Will the Persona
find EURES using the search terms s/he is likely to
use? Will she find a landing page suitable to needs?
How can the content be changed to improve
search visibility for this Persona?
• information architecture analysis: Given the
most likely landing page, how many clicks would
the Persona have to make in order to achieve their
goal? How could the site be improved to reduce
the path length?
• traffic analysis: How many people follow the
sort of path we foresee for this scenario?
• usability testing: The scenario is assigned to a
focus group member (i.e., corresponding to the
Persona), who tests wireframes and/or mockups
and/or a prototype site to see whether they successfully navigate the site to achieve the scenario.
B.2.1. Recommendation
Any centrally-created Personas will not be equally relevant to jobseekers and employers in Greece, Spain,
Denmark and the Netherlands.
Hence we recommend:
• first developing a set of ‘EURESco Persona Templates’, and using them both for improving the site
(next) and informing the EURESco social media strategy. We recommend developing Personas for:
• jobseekers of different age groups, skill levels and
ambition – all, however, are either actively seeking opportunities in another country, or could
be interested in one if the opportunity was put
to them;
• employers of a variety of organisations: small/
medium/large; different sectors; looking for different types of employees (young, experienced,
manual, professional, etc.).
• using these Templates as inputs to the national-level
training and learning programme packages designed
to help develop national strategies (see C.3.1.2).
8
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C. Supporting national
strategies
C.1.2. Picking the low-hanging fruit
Doing social media does not require 24-hour presence on
15 different social media platforms and the maintenance
of a blog updated every hour.
Each national strategy will be different, reflecting the
national and organisational contexts.
The relationship between the effort made and the result
obtained is far from linear: a certain minimum effort
must be made to get any result, but once that is done
one often sees the “30/70” law come into play, where
the first 30% of the effort gets 70% of the result - the
‘low hanging fruit’.
This chapter therefore sets out:
• some general principles for the use of social media
• a framework for the basic social media tactics which
each national communicator can combine together
to form their strategy
Conversely, while increasing the effort will increase
results, it becomes increasingly less efficient – just
because there is one more blogger to engage, or yet
another LinkedIn Group to join, does not make it the
best use of time.
• a proposed Training and Learning programme at the
national level.
Pan-EU campaigns, involving several national coordinators and (in most cases) EURESco, on the other hand, are
dealt with in a later chapter.
One of the most important priorities for the first year
for each national communicator is therefore to identify
the low-hanging fruit within reach, given the resources
available.
C.1. General principles
C.1.1. Start, observe, learn, iterate
C.1.3. Purposes
As mentioned earlier, we aim to build change into the
strategy itself, allowing EURES to adapt to social media
evolution and learn from its own best practices, via
courses offered in the EURES Communication Training
Catalogue 2012.
A social media presence can fulfil a number of functions.
The most relevant ones are to:
• promote a service (i.e., EURES website, face-to-face
or email-based advice) or event;
The ideas below are therefore Starting Points:
• actually provide the service on the spot, as part of
an online conversation;
• they should first be validated both against audience
research and the personal experiences of the national
communicators, to derive an initial strategy;
• get feedback from users about the service.
• the initial strategy is then implemented, tested,
refined and improved over time, with inputs across
the network in the form of training and best practice
exchange.
9
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.2. Basic strategies,
tools and tactics
• Carry out a social media audit to identify where the
key audiences are (if one intends to go where the
audience is, it helps to know where that is);
Different purposes, of course, require different strategies.
• Identify the low-hanging fruit to pursue as part of
the initial strategy;
C.2.1. National strategies
Different purposes aimed at different audiences, using
different resources, require developing different strategies.
• Establish a regular learning/revision programme,
with EURESco support.
Each national communicator will therefore develop their
own strategy, although EURESco can support this process
through training and other resources.
C.2.2. Basic Tools at a glance
Each strategy will involve the deployment of a number
of tools and tactics. Some of these are set out below as
example. They are all interrelated, which makes setting
them out in a linear fashion difficult.
The first stage of developing the social media strategy
is therefore always to:
• Define the audiences – as suggested earlier, by customizing the Personas provided centrally by EURES;
The following figures sets out a minimal setup, and a
more complete setup, of the basic tools.
• Define the purposes of the national social media
promotion work;
EURES central
site
EURESco
ENIB story
Communicator Account(s)
Country X
Twitter
Linkedln
other
National
communicator
Platform
Groups
Social Media Platforms
Share content
Outreach
10
Web-based groups,
communities, news,
discussions....
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.2.2.1. Social media accounts only
At the top of the Figure, EURESco publishes ENIB stories
centrally, in all languages.
C.2.2.2. Social media plus own site
As before, but the national communicator has an interactive ‘own site’ which enables up to three types of page/
subsection:
In Country X, a national communicator has one or more
social media accounts. S/he shares ENIB and other content via these platforms, and reaches out to and engages
with users of these social media platforms in ‘Platform
Groups’. • Event subsites;
• A blog;
• A Central Profile, aggregating all of his/her social
media activity and blog posts;
S/he may also share this content and engages in conversations on websites (i.e., non-platform), such as news
sites, web-based communities, etc. To have an identity
in these conversations, the communicator must use the
profile on his/her ‘primary’ social media account.
It is this central profile, finally, which the communicator
uses when outreaching to web-based groups, newsbased discussions, etc.
The following sections explore each component in a
little more detail.
EURES central
site
EURESco
ENIB story
Own site
Country X
Event
Communicator Account(s)
Twitter
Linkedln
other
National
communicator
profile
Blog
Platform
Groups
Social Media Platforms
Web-based groups, communities,
news, discussions....
11
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.2.3. Tool: Social media accounts
C.2.4. Tactic: Sharing content
One of the basic tenets of social media is to Go Where
the Audience Is.
There is no point entering social media if you have
no content to offer.
So if the audit shows that the audiences are on LinkedIn,
then join LinkedIn. If they’re on Twitter, set up an account
on Twitter. Some platforms are quite country-specific, so
there should be no hard and fast rules.
The essence of social media is to publish sharable content, and share others’ content, via sites, blogs and social
media platforms.
However, this is much wider than simply publishing
traditional forms of content– it is also a question of having a conversation with other people interested in the
same subject.
Communicator Account(s)
Twitter
Linkedln
other
There are few hard and fast rules, but it is fair to say that
the best results are when one:
Platform
Groups
• has something useful to say, and to offer;
Social Media Platforms
• be regularly present;
However, there’s no point setting any platform accounts
up if they are not used. These accounts:
• be generous: share other peoples’ content, not just
promote one’s own;
• Allow the communicator to share content;
• be a human being, not an EC-funded project.
• Allow the communicator to outreach to ‘Platform
groups’ – these are communities and conversations
hosted by the platform itself – e.g., LinkedIn Groups,
Facebook pages, communities formed around Twitter
hashtags, etc,
But what content can a national communicator share
efficiently?
C.2.4.1. Sharing EURESco content (ENIB)
National communicators can very easily share ENIB content, which provides a core supply of content around
which a basic social media presence can be built.
• Provide the national communicator with a ‘followable
profile’.
If the communicator does not have a Central Profile (see
below), then one of these social media accounts should
be considered a ‘primary profile’, to be used when engaging in conversations outside the platforms.
How this is done depends on the account used – they will
be tweeting the story in their language, or posting it to
Facebook, or to LinkedIn, or all three, or other accounts
specific to the country.
RISK: Blindly posting all ENIB stories three times to three
social media platforms is not enough for a social media
account: it simply treats social media as a press release
channel, and the audience with contempt.
12
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.2.4.2. Own content
National communicators need to add their own content,
and their own personality, to the mix.
In many cases, as with ENIB stories, they will be pointing
to a page on EURES (e.g., a EURES service or landing page).
In some other cases they will be able to point to media
hosted elsewhere – e.g., a YouTube video, a news article.
Exactly what this is will depend on the platform, but
the typical professionally-oriented social media stream
consists of a mix of:
But there will be some cases when the national communicator will need an ‘own site’ – e.g.,
• Professional news: discussing activities, events and
so on;
• one or more pages dedicated to an event;
• blog posts;
• Other relevant content: e.g., linking to and/or remarking on interesting resources, news articles, etc.,
• etc.
• more personal anecdotes.
Own site
Remarks:
• If the communicator feels uncomfortable with sharing
personal thoughts and insights, then s/he should not
publish any, and will probably start doing so later,
when more comfortable with the medium;
Event
National
communicator
profile
• Most of the above content can be shared purely
through social media platforms, but users often
eventually find these limiting, which is when they
start a blog to host their more in-depth content (see
C.2.4.2C.2.5).
Blog
It is generally useful if this ‘own site’ is interactive, allowing
people to comment directly on it and thus supporting the
conversation. This site can also host the communicator’s
central Profile (see below).
Ideally the local PES organisation will provide the required
functionalities. Where this is not the case:
C.2.4.3. Each others’ content
As set out later, the third source of content to publish
to social media will be other national communicators.
Cross-border social media cooperation is set out later.
• EURES could provide a central platform to provide
each national communicator with the basic functionalities they need, generating major economies
of scale and improving EURES;
C.2.5. Tool: Own site
Just as when posting ENIB stories, which point to the
story on the central EURES platform, posting professional
content often needs a destination – i.e., the communicator will often be publishing short posts linking to more
details elsewhere.
• Individual national communicators could be trained
by taking part in the ETC in the use of services such
as Tumblr or Posterous, which make creating and
publishing such a web presence, as well as publishing to social media platforms, as easy as sending an
email.
13
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.2.6. Tool: Central profiles
C.2.7. Tactic: Outreach
When setting up any social media account, each communicator will create a profile specific to that platform
– i.e., a Twitter profile is a few lines of text and an avatar;
while a LinkedIn profile is far more detailed. All contributions on that platform link back to the user’s profile on
that platform.
It is important to start publishing content onto social
media so that people find something when they discover
the communicators’ account, and, behind it, EURES.
However, simply publishing content will not bring people
to it. The communicators must also reach out to the community, and introduce/raise awareness of themselves.
Outreach refers to joining online discussions to highlight
useful EURES content, services and events which are
relevant to the discussion.
Communicator Account(s)
Twitter
Linkedln
other
National
communicator
profile
These online discussions may be on websites, blogs or
within social media platforms – e.g., LinkedIn Groups
focused on job hunting and/or recruiting, blogs by
recruitment specialists, online communities set up by
job hunters, etc. It is also possible to ‘reach out’ to individual Twitter users, although this is usually not very
cost-effective, and to reach out to communities of Twitter
users convened via a Twitter hashtag.
Web-based groups, communities,
news, discussions....
When reaching out to people via blogs, news sites and
other web-based forums, the communicator can choose
to use one of these social media platforms as their main
one – e.g., “find about more about me on my LinkedIn
profile”.
RISK: It is absolutely vital to not spam such discussions.
It is possible, through the use of an editorial message
document, to draw up a template for making a contribution, but it must be customised to the specific discussion.
What constitutes spamming varies from platform to
platform – it’s perfectly OK to post a ENIB story to Twitter or one’s own Facebook page, for example, but only
to a website forum or LinkedIn group if it is relevant to
the specific issue being discussed.
For communicators with multiple profiles, a Central
Profile that aggregates together all of their social media
activity and provides all relevant links would be better.
There are several options for creating this Profile:
• Profiles created on the EURES site – requires development of EURES;
BENEFITS:
• first and foremost, pointing out a useful resource
– such as a link or event - to someone who fits the
audience profile is helping that person, and so is
an implementation of the EURES mission, not just a
promotional task;
• Profiles created on the coordinators’ local organisation (PES) site – requires development at the national
level;
• An account on a EURES-supplied platform or a service
such as Tumblr, Posterous and so on (see C.2.4.3).
• moreover, that person will discover the EURES project,
and may share it with others.
• crucially, because these conversations are public,
these benefits extend far further - everyone else in
that conversation will also discover the resource, as
will people joining later and others discovering the
conversation later through search.
14
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.2.8. Tactic: Target Specific Sectors
Studies have shown that such links still generate
traffic 12 months later, so this is highly effective
marketing and search engine optimisation.
Note: this tactic goes hand-in-hand with the next (integrating events and social media), wherever an event is
targeted at specific sectors.
Finally, the national communicator’s Profile (either a
Central Profile, or the profile developed for his/her ‘primary’ social media platform) is also promoted via such
outreach activities, and will gain followers among group
members as a result. Group members who follow the
national communicator’s Profile and updates will thus
stay informed about EURES services and events in that
country from that point on.
Targeting opportunities in a specific sector allows the
national communicator to find and outreach to online
communities and Platform groups focusing on that sector. One of the main motivations users inhabit these
spaces is to find job opportunities or employees, so this
is a potentially highly effective tactic.
However, one must have something concrete to offer – it
is not enough to announce that some job opportunities
can be found on a particular site menu every few days.
COSTS:
• the set up process involves
• auditing the local social media landscape – i.e.,
discovering which groups to join, news sites to
follow, etc.
• an editorial messaging document should be
drawn, particularly if the responsibility for outreach is shared amongst several staff;
Possibilities include announcing and/or discussing:
• an event (physical or virtual) targeting the sector
(see below);
• a resource or piece of information relevant to the
sector, such as:
– ENIB article
– a EURES report: a purpose-written article analysing statistics, opportunities, trends, etc.,
published either on EURES Portal or the communicator’s Own site;
– external news article – e.g., posting a newspaper article with a comment and link to the
relevant EURES report
• the groups, news sites etc. must be followed so that
contributions can be made in a timely fashion.
Note: it is reasonably easy to set up an iGoogle or similar
monitoring tool to provide a single dashboard bringing
all activity from relevant sites and platforms together.
This could be the subject of a training and/or setup
support package and integrated into any of the social
media courses available in the EURES Communications
Training Catalogue 2012.
15
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.2.9. Tactic: Integrate events
and Social Media
Once the event site is live then promotion via social
media can begin:
This section looks both at physical events, particularly
Job Days, and virtual events, such as webinars.
• posting the news via the various accounts;
• dissemination via the EURES network (see below)
• outreach to groups and communities relevant to
the event’s topic.
The ideas here are relevant to sectoral, nationally focused
and general events, although having a sectoral or national
focus helps promote an event as it gives the event more
focus, and thus makes it more relevant to specific, identifiable groups.
b) During the event
There are a few main possibilities here:
As a general rule, social media can be used to:
• Covering the event online as it is being held –
i.e., live coverage through social media, online
streaming, etc;
• Recording content from the event for post-event
posting for those who cannot attend;
• Creating a specific ‘virtual event’ within the physical one (see below).
• promote attendance;
• make the event more useful to those attending;
• bring some of the benefits to those who cannot
attend;
• generally widen awareness of EURES to nonattendees;
All, of course, are possible.
C.2.9.1. Physical events
Adding social media to a physical event can involve many
tactics. The following sections include all of them, but a
subset can be used.
Live coverage is only worth the expense when people
following the event can interact with it. The classic tactic
here is to provide a channel (Twitter, online forum, etc.)
through which remote uses can pose questions and have
them answered, generally by some established authority.
This requires someone performing online community
management at the event – i.e., representing the virtual
visitors to the physical event, and transmitting the physical event back to the virtual visitors.
a) Before the event
A dedicated event subsite is first set up. This can easily
be just one page long, as it only needs to set out:
• Event aim and offering – who is attending, who
is speaking, what will the visitors discover?
• Registration functionality, backed up by a Contact
Relationship Management system (CRM) – this
is optional, but is ideal as it will help build up a
database of attendees for further contact;
• Feedback – e.g., a comment function through
which users (generally only registered ones) pose
questions/issues which they would like to see
covered.
Recording the event represents the best value for
money – simply recording any useful expertise provided at the event and posting it online through various
methods (video, text interviews, presentation share sites)
achieves two aims:
• Those who couldn’t attend get some benefit from
the event;
• It provides useful content with which to promote
the next event.
Note: additional (and optional) functionalities for the
online face of the event will be explored later.
This should therefore ideally be implemented as an ongoing series, not a one-off.
16
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.3. EURES Communication
Training
Note that these activities do not necessarily have to be
performed by officials - there is a tradition of engaging
with bloggers and other social media natives to ‘live blog’
an event, and/or attend and blog about it afterwards.
This is obviously set up before the event, as part of the
pre-event social media promotion, and provides an
additional hook for attracting attention.
C.3.1. “Getting Started” training
C.3.1.1. Introduction
As set out earlier (A.2.2 A learning network in a fastchanging world), we aim to develop a constantly evolving project, reflecting the evolution of social media and
the different circumstances found in different countries
and PES.
Should attendees cover the event, the organisers should
curate the content – i.e., link to all coverage, and engage
in conversations around it.
Therefore this section first looks at the elements of the
training designed to get all willing and able national
communicators to the Getting Started phase, and so
focuses on:
c) After the event
After the event one would normally publish any material recorded at the event or supplied by the speakers
afterwards (presentations, supporting material, etc.),
which then provides additional information to promote
via social media.
• helping willing national communicators develop
and then implement the most appropriate social
media strategy for their national context;
• ensuring their strategy and operations take advantage of all content and activity carried out by
EURESco and – if appropriate – other national
communicators;
• ensuring national communicators learn from each
other.
C.2.9.2. Virtual events
A virtual event brings together jobseekers, employers
and EURES advisers into an online dialogue. Essentially
it is an online conference or webinar, with the expertise
and employer presenting information – for example, a
presentation in the form of a webinar, or a Skypechat –
and the jobseekers posing questions, which are managed
by an online community manager.
C.3.1.2. Basic training and strategy development
The goal of this training is to help the national communicators develop an outline social media strategy which
reflects the country’s specific context (organisational,
employment situation) and is underpinned by a set of
customised Personas.
These events are, so they are an ideal way of transmitting
useful information about, for example, job opportunities in a particular country, or sector, or with a particular
employer.
Such sessions can also be part of physical events, where
the speaker(s) answer questions posed by chat, twitter
or Skype before or after the physical meeting.
It should therefore be used before other training, although
for some advanced countries it can be shortened.
The event is promoted via social media as per a physical event. Moreover, during the event the conversation
should be recorded, with the recordings and transcripts
published afterwards being promoted via social media
and providing a useful legacy: both for people interested
in the subject who couldn’t attend, and to promote the
next event.
17
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
It will cover:
• Understanding your audience
• Introduce the EURESco Persona Templates;
• How to use them? How to modify them for the
national context?
Covers:
• Account setup – the specifics of account setup on
the platform;
• Social media guidelines: what are the Do’s and Don’ts
for blogger outreach, and for behaving on each platform? What is accepted practice, and unacceptable
behaviour? In particular
• how to share content;
• how do ‘groups’ work on the platform
• how does one reach out to users, gain followers/
friends, etc.?
• Basic training in social media: What, How, etc.,
including a very basic overview of the major platforms, blogging, etc.;
• Auditing the local social media landscape: if you
aim to “go where the audience is”, the audit is the
first step to figuring out where they are;
• Advanced tools – these will be specific to the platform
and will feature best practices e.g.,
• How to manage multiple social media accounts
using tools such as Hootsuite;
• How polls and games work on Facebook, Groups
on LinkedIn, hashtags on Twitter, etc.
• State of the Art: Ensure the national communicators
take advantage of all content and activity carried out
by EURESco and other national-level communicators:
• outline of what’s available from EURESco (above)
• outline of other training available
• brief survey of ideas and best practices carried
out elsewhere in the network
C.3.2. “Spreading wings” training
• Strategy development: help the national communicators develop their own strategy by combining
and modifying the various Packages and ideas from
across the network.
Some of the next set of packages will be suitable for
those national communicators who are already exploring
and familiar with social media. Other national coordinators will take these courses after they have familiarised
themselves with the basics of social media.
C.3.1.3. Social media platform and outreach
While technically there will be training per platform, a
typical training session would cover all of the platforms
the national communicator has included in their strategy,
and would have some common elements. This will also
cover the basics of blogger outreach1.
This training will also, wherever possible, use best practices from across the network.
Their content will therefore depend on both the best
practices and the needs discovered during the implementation of the earlier training packages, as well as any
supporting tools EURESco decides to offer in response
to those needs.
1. Note that blogger outreach should also be covered as part of any Press Relations training.
18
A FIRST EURES SOCIAL MEDIA STR ATEGY
C.3.2.1. Event package 1: Job Day
This Package provides an interlinked set of social media
services and training in support of a Job Day.
Possible topics to be covered include:
• Facebook apps (games, polls, quizzes), advertising
and Timeline;
This would include training in:
• Developing the Job Day strategy: elements for inclusion, the resources and time periods involved, etc.;
• LinkedIn groups and Twitter lists;
• Advanced curation tools;
• Developing an event (sub)site for a physical or virtual
event; this may include specific training in using any
tool EURES provides, or a look at the tools which
are freely available online (Meetups, Ning, webinar
software, Skype, etc.);
• Forming a community of interest or practice around
a particular sector;
• Competitions based on other social media platforms
(e.g., YouTube).
Note pan-EU campaigns (i.e., campaigns involving more
than one country) are set out in the next Chapter.
• How to bring a physical event to an online audience:
live Tweeting, vlogging (video blogging), audiovisual
recordings, virtual-physical interfaces, etc.
C.3.3. Full-speed and beyond
C.3.2.2. Social media campaigns
Here we will look at how a national communicator can
make further use of the social media platforms they have
adopted by developing national social media campaigns.
Once some national communicators are at full-speed,
it is time to start piloting pan-EU campaigns. These will
be developed and rolled out through training packages
and workshops, and coordinated by EURESco.
The focus will be on exploring best practices from the
EURES network and case studies from the rest of the
employment-oriented industry, so we cannot foresee
the exact content here.
If you have any questions about the Social Media Strategy, please contact Sylvia Arthur at GOPA-Cartermill
at [email protected].
19