Social Media Messaging

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ben friedmann

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Digital Strategy, U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Global Public Affairs

Benjamin Friedmann was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of Digital Strategy for the United States Department of State in April 2019. He leads the multiple offices responsible for the Department’s global digital communications and engagement strategy, including the Office of Global Social Media, the Office of Global Web Platforms, the Global Public Affairs CRM Office, and the Digital Lab.

Over his 22 month term as the Department of State’s top digital strategy official, the Digital Strategy organization grew from 20 to 120 personnel, across four continents, through the Department’s largest internal merger in 20 years. Friedmann’s historic transformation and expansion of the Department’s Digital Strategy organization powered unprecedented growth in global reach and engagement.

Best practices in Social Media to Advance Policy

  1. Recommendations for operating effectively within a government agency
  2. Building your toolkit food managing social media output
  3. Principles to guide your content creation process

Part I - Recommendations for Operating Effectively Within a Government Agency

Best practices for how to empower your team:
  1. Find and empower your allies in the civil service
    1. Identify smart, motivated civil servants who are eager to support your work
    2. Limit the influence and involvement of those who are going to hurt morale or hinder the quality or volume of output
  2. Convey your policy priorities internally
    1. Whether civil service employees do not agree with the President’s policy or they simply do not understand it, you MUST properly train them to articulate policy - explain the what, the how, the why
    2. Create externally shareable talking points, quotes, and other approved messaging material that are accessible to everyone on the team
  3. Seek continual feedback
    1. Hold weekly 1:1 meetings with senior staff
    2. Use the SWOT analysis to encourage individuals to assess and collaborate on the team’s strengths and weaknesses
    3. Send an end of week email to staff to highlight key priorities, share accomplishments, and give some positive shout outs
  4. Get support and buy in from leadership
    1. Career civil servants can be adamant about operating within their hierarchy
    2. The most effective tool against bureaucratic pushback is to have the support of political appointees higher up the ladder

Part II - Building your Toolkit for Managing Social Media Output

  1. Approval process
    1. Document your team’s approval process in detail
    2. Keep it as lean as possible, to not slow down or complicate getting content out the door
    3. Everyone in the organization should have a copy of the approval process and confirm their understanding 
  2. Create an agency-specific style guide
    1. This is one of the most valuable tools for making sure your content is visually consistent
    2. Your style guide should include everything from the fonts to the color palettes, logos, and icons that are most commonly used by your organization and guidelines for how to use them. 
  3. Template your creatives
    1. Create social media graphic templates that align with your style guide and fit almost every possible messaging use case
    2. This will revolutionize the speed and consistency of your social media output AND make your messaging more effective
  4. Create a Content Calendar
    1. Populate your calendar a year out with any well-established events, anniversaries, or holidays
    2. Allocate sufficient time to properly execute social media campaigns. It may take several weeks to produce and approve high quality videos, graphics, and landing pages
      1. It is very hard to do high production value work at the last minute! Avoid these fire drills!
    3. Be wary of scheduling posts
      1. You do not want to accidentally put out content that is outdated or tone deaf based on events that have taken place since the scheduling was set
  5. Take advantage of collaboration tools
    1. Identify a collaboration tool for instant communication between teams as well as a place for shared documents
    2. Make sure all necessary contributors are included on these platforms
  6. Create a Pre and Post-Production Checklist
    1. Errors in social media posts have often attracted the attention of the national media. Proofreading is critical to prevent distracting or embarrassing news coverage
    2. Pre-publishing protocol
      1. Check the handles
      2. Check the links
      3. Proofread for spelling and grammar three times
      4. Publish
    3. Post-publishing protocol
      1. Click the handles on the live post
      2. Click the links on the live post
      3. Reread for spelling and grammar three times
  7. Define Success and Select Metrics to Measure Success
    1. Design a simple report that the team can pull every week that will allow you to:
      1. Compare the metrics to your definition of success
      2. Compare performance over previous weeks

Messaging Best Practices

  1. Message for the medium
    1. What works well on one social media platform is going to be different in both minor and significant ways from what works well on other platforms 
  2. Competitive Advantage
    1. What information or access do you have that differentiates your account from everyone else?
    2. Leveraging these areas and others can make your accounts indispensable for those who want to be in the know
  3. Test and iterate
    1. Don’t get complacent with your content
    2. Think strategically about what large or small differences could have an impact on how audiences engage with your accounts
  4. Keep your eyes on the horizon
    1. Whether they are in your sphere or an entirely different one, pay attention to which accounts are building audiences and shaping narratives
    2. How can you learn from these accounts and bring those best practices back to the platforms that you manage
  5. Make it Brag Worthy
    1. Be proud of the content you create!
    2. If you or your team are not proud of the content being produced, you may not be operating at your fullest potential 
  6. Do no harm
    1. If you're joining the administration to increase your follower count, you're the wrong person for the job
    2. You are there to deliver a message for the president
    3. An off message or offensive post from a juror staffer with a small following could capture far more media attention than the accounts and content that your team is working to amplify