Social Media is a great way to promote your team and communicate with supporters, family members, sponsors and the general public. Be sure you always have plenty of clear and consistent marketing ideas.
The following are a few ways we use our Social Media marketing:
Monthly Newsletter~
This is a great way to keep sponsors, families, alumni, team members and outreach connections informed on what your team is doing and what events you are attending.
It is usually good to have three or four team members responsible for collecting outreach info and pictures and writing up a newsletter. We have found that MailChimp is a great and easy way to create a newsletter.
Google Calendar ~
Our team uses this to keep track of all of our meetings, deadlines for submissions, conferences, outreach events and community service events. We have two team members responsible for updating the calendar for our website.
Facebook~
Facebook is a great way to keep your community and alumni updated with your team. You can also share upcoming events with team members and parents, this helps make communication easier.
- Create daily posts to include info, pictures, links and questions that relate to the team, FIRST and/or STEM
- Have one or two people who can be responsible for replying to post and or messages that come in within 24 hours, be sure that they communicate with each other.
- Search out relevant Facebook pages to “like”
- Actively share and comment on other “liked” Facebook page posts
- Post on other “liked” Facebook pages when relevant
Twitter ~
Twitter allows you to quickly update your followers on how your team is doing, and keep in touch with other teams.
- Have one person post Tweets that may be different from Facebook - info, pics, links and questions that relate to the team, FIRST and/or STEM
- Respond to comments within 24 hours
- Search out relevant twitter users to follow
- Actively engage with other users and create a dialogue via reply and retweets
- Monitor FIRST key terms on twitter and google - #omgrobots, “The Holy Cows”, “Team 1538”, “Dean Kamen”, “FIRST Robotics”
Digital Media ~
By using digital media, you can:
- Arrange for team members to be at EVERY event to take pictures and/or video. Make sure they get it uploaded to a team’s photo sharing account
- Ensure photos are organized / categorized
- Develop Animoto videos for key categories of photos - Past robots, Outreach Events, Awards, etc
- Post video onto a team Youtube account and share with other teams
- Coordinate a team member to take video and pictures at competitions, including off season events, outreach, team meeting and build season
Website ~
Here are some things to keep in mind while working on your website:
- Be sure that website is up to date
- Be sure that you have current contact information on your website so anyone can get in touch with you easily
- Provide info of managers and mentors, including a short summary of the position and a biography of the student or mentor
- Provide pictures and summaries of past robots
- Don’t forget functionality and convenience, keep links working and together
Team Blog~
Daily updates of what your team has done helps keep all your members up to date if they ever miss a day.
- Ensures that events are posted on the blog within 2 days of the event
- Post a minimum of 1x per week
- Each post should contain at least one large engaging photo or video.
- Be sure to tag post so someone looking for a specific topic on your blog can find it easily
Public Blog ~
This is a great way to communicate with your followers about what your team has done at an event, conference, workshop or tournament.
- Ensures that events are posted on the blog within 2 days of the event
- Post a minimum of 1x per week
- Each post must contain at least one large engaging photo or video.
- Bookmark each post (Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc)
- Set up a Google Reader to follow other FIRST and/or STEM blogs
- Comment on other blogs
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