Our online communication goals include creating original content and curating information for all Californians that heighten our program’s visibility and highlight key partnerships, communicate our strategic goals and value propositions, and support shared learning. We try to ensure the consistency of our brand, messaging, mission, and values with all public audiences. At the same time, we are working to meet a market need, build brand recognition and trust, and meet the high expectations of our audience. We have an incredible opportunity and also great responsibility to share information in a thoughtful way, in line with UC ANR and our program’s values and strategic goals.
Rose Hayden-Smith: How do you measure your impacts? What impacts can you report anecdotally?
Brook Gamble: We have primarily focused on growing the audience. Anecdotally, since we started sharing our community’s content our audience has almost doubled annually (we keep track of follows). Correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course, but my best guess is that approach really worked for us. I’ve noticed participants from all over the state are following each other and interacting, which feels like a huge win too. I am definitely re-thinking my approach to analytics.
Rose Hayden-Smith: How are you creating a narrative in the stories you share?
Brook Gamble: In generating content, in addition to marketing our courses, we use examples of stewardship, discovery, action, community science, education, interpretation, conservation, community service, the scientific method, problem solving, and art to instill a deep appreciation for nature and inspire individuals to become stewards of their local resources. We may translate scientific and policy information into effective communications ourselves as moderators, or we may be sharing others' work in that realm.
Rose Hayden-Smith: What are your best tips for using Instagram? Planning? Scheduling? Creating content? What would you want others to know, good and bad?
Brook Gamble: Pay attention to delegation of staff resources to social media. Our leadership recognized that social media is an important way to reach a wider audience and allowed each staff member to devote some time to this method of outreach. I attribute this one thing to a lot of the gains we have made. People with boots on the ground are sharing timely, relevant information. Also, have a plan. Analyze data, assess your approach, and make a plan that includes a content hierarchy so that everyone in charge of content understands what messaging resonates and what content to share. Be willing to try new things. When we acquired more staff capacity, we tried some experiments: we share original content from our naturalist community now, we use the "stories" feature, and we're trying to produce more video content. We're getting out there more, with different methods.
Be consistent. Our staff are responsible for certain days of the week. This approach ensures that we have fairly even, consistent coverage across most of the 7 days of the week, most of the year. We have started
generating a year-round editorial calendar - there is absolutely a cycle to our work and this makes it easier for planning. In addition to working with individual naturalists to share their content, we've formed strategic statewide partnerships - some formal and some informal - with organizations outside of our university that share science-based information. We can share content and amplify one another’s voices.
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