Social media 101 for campuses involved with Journalists for Human Rights.

1. Social Media 101
A School Chapter Guide
Justine Abigail Yu
Social Media Coordinator
September 2011
jhr | Journalists for Human Rights
web. www.jhr.ca • tel. 416 413 0240 • fax. 416 413 1832
147 Spadina Avenue, Suite 206 • Toronto, Ontario • M5V 2L7

2. Table of Contents
What is Social Media?....................................................................................................3
Resources...............................................................................................................................................3
School Chapters and Social Media ..............................................................................3
General Tips & Tricks..............................................................................................................................3
Creating a Dashboard..............................................................................................................................4
Facebook.........................................................................................................................5
Get Creative with your Profile Pic! ..........................................................................................................6
Customizing your Facebook page...........................................................................................................6
The Code.............................................................................................................................................8
Twitter............................................................................................................................10
Who to Follow........................................................................................................................................10
Create Lists...........................................................................................................................................12
Use and follow hashtags........................................................................................................................12
Troubleshooting...........................................................................................................13
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3. What is Social Media?
Social media are the various online and mobile tools that allow people to share and discuss information
across time and space. It includes but is not limited to social networking sites like Twitter and
Facebook, news sharing and bookmarking sites like delicious and Digg, and photo and video sharing
sites like Flickr and YouTube.
…but as a GenY-er, you already knew that.
Resources
In case you didn’t, here are some superb presentations that’ll give you a thorough rundown of social
media and their increasing importance.
• Social Media in Plain English
• Social Media Revolution
• What the F**k is Social Media?
To learn a bit more about jhr’s social media engagement efforts, browse through jhr’s prezi - “WTF is
this Social Media thing?!”
School Chapters and Social Media
jhr School Chapters all across North America are already using social media tools to reach out to
students and clubs on campus – the most widely used being Twitter and Facebook. What follows are a
number of tips and tricks to help you maximize your reach on campus and even beyond.
General Tips & Tricks
• Be worth following! Want to attract more followers? Be interesting! Out of all of the people and
organizations that are online on Twitter and Facebook, why should anyone follow you? Be
outstanding in the content that you push out to your networks! Add value. Share tips, tricks, and
insights. People want to learn something new, so share information that is important to you and
relevant to your followers. Make listening to you worth their time.
• Be genuine. Social media thrives on authenticity. Be passionate about what you’re posting and let
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4. that show through your personality. No one wants to interact with a robot so show that there’s a
person behind the screen!
• Listen and respond. Show that you appreciate the feedback you receive by responding in a timely
fashion, even if it is just a few words. Remember, social media is a dialogue, not a monologue! It’s a
conversation!
• Be generous. The Internet is all about connecting with links, so if you see something interesting,
valuable, or relevant, link to it! Don’t be afraid to share other people’s information. In fact, the more
you link, the more you will facilitate conversation with others and the more you’ll expand your
network.
• Have fun! If it’s your first time on a social networking site or blogging, explore the landscape and
culture. Play around with different posts or tweets and discover what’s best for you. Don’t be afraid
to dive in and just enjoy the adventure of sharing information and interacting with new people!
Creating a Dashboard
Managing a number of social media accounts for both professional and personal use can get pretty
crazy. Luckily, there are tools out there to help make our lives easier – they’re called social media
dashboards and they are a godsend. Dashboards allow you to manage multiple accounts at the same
time on one simple and easy-to-use website.
For example, I currently use Hootsuite to manage four different social media accounts: my Twitter
account, jhr’s Twitter and Facebook account, and another organization’s Twitter account. Here are
some of the great advantages of using a tool like this:
• I don’t have to log in and out of my different accounts because Hootsuite immediately logs me
in to all of them.
• I can schedule my tweets and status updates into the future so I don’t have to spend my life
glued to the computer updating Twitter and Facebook.
• I can see monitor all my mentioned (@) tweets, DMs, lists, home feed, and saved hashtag
searches in one page. No need to click anywhere else!
• I can track statistics (quite possibly the most important part about social media)! Hootsuite has
a feature that aggregates the number of times people clicked on your links. This gives you a
chance to assess how effective your social media efforts are.
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5. Here’s just a small snapshot of what I see on my dashboard.
If you want to set up a Hootsuite account on your own and need a little help getting started, feel free to
contact me at justine@jhr.ca.
Facebook
A large majority of Canadians and Americans between the age of 18-24 are on Facebook so having a
presence on this social networking site is absolutely essential. I spent a lot of time on Facebook when I
was in university (ok, even until now) and I know other students do too. Tap into that and make that
time productive by spreading relevant news items about human rights in general and more specifically,
ways to get involved with jhr at your campus.
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6. Get Creative with your Profile Pic!
Do something different with your Facebook profile picture! It’s the first thing that
anyone sees when browsing so make sure it’s engaging!
Feel free to create your own twist on our official logo. For example, take a look at
Concordia’s profile pic on the left side here. I love it for a number of reasons:
a) It’s got a fun and empowering photo as the backdrop. None of that usual
development pornography
b) There is an immediate call to action (follow us)
c) It tells you right away where to find them online.
d) It’s huge.
e) It’s still in line with jhr’s branding.
In other words, it’s awesome. Quite possibly even better than jhr’s current
profile pic!
Customizing your Facebook page
To make your Facebook page stand out, why not create a custom welcome page to attract new
followers and give them that extra push to click that “like” button! Check out jhr’s custom page:
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7. To create a custom tab, you need the Static HTML app which you can install into your Facebook page
by clicking here.
Once you’ve done, click on the Static HTML Welcome tab on the left hand panel of your page. At this
point, you’ll need to plug in some coding (which looks like gibberish if you haven’t played around with
HTML before).
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8. The Code
To make things easy for you, you can use this custom coding I’ve developed for your chapter. Just plug
in the code where it says “Enter your content here”. It’ll look very similar to our official jhr page…feel
free to change it up and customize it on your own! If you’re struggling, hit me up at justine@jhr.ca.
**Don’t forget to change the parts in red.
_______________________________________________________________________________
<center><a href="LINK TO YOUR SCHOOL CHAPTER BLOG/JHR WEBSITE GOES HERE"><img
src="http://justineabigail.squarespace.com/storage/joinus.jpg" height="80" width="560" style="border-
style: none"/></a>
<img src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/welcomeheader1.jpg">
<div>
<p><img src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/welcomecut.jpg" style="float:left"
height="250" width="130" /></p><p><font size="2">
Welcome to <b>jhr</b> (Journalists for Human Rights) [YOUR UNIVERSITY/COLLEGE NAME]
Chapter! We are an organization that works towards a world where everyone is fully aware of their
human rights and where every day citizens mobilize to actively fight against human rights violations
and abuses. <br><br>
We believe that awareness is the first and most necessary step towards ending rights abuses.<br><br>
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9. Take those first steps with us. Join the movement. <br><br>
<a href="mailto:YOUR CHAPTER’S EMAIL"><img src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-
content/uploads/2010/09/email.jpg" style="border-style: none"/></a><a href="YOUR TWITTER URL
GOES HERE" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-
content/uploads/2010/09/twitter.jpg" style="border-style: none"/></a><a href="YOUR BLOG’S RSS
FEED/URL GOES HERE" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.jhr.ca/schools/wp-
content/uploads/2010/09/rss.jpg" style="border-style: none"/></a>
</font></p>
</div>
_______________________________________________________________________________
Your custom landing page will looking something like this…
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10. Twitter
It’s the growing beast of social networking sites. You already know what it is – the social networking site
that comes in bite-sized status updates of 140 characters per tweet! It’s a great tool to keep on top of
the news in real time, assess current trends, and connect with like-minded others who are interested in
the same things that you as an individual or as an organization may be. Here are a few quick tips to
help boost your activity and visibility!
Who to Follow
Here’s just a brief list of industry professionals who I think you should follow to get you started on your
Twitter journey! It isn’t the be all and end all of Twitter lists. Feel free to suggest relevant folks that you
think jhr should follow!
Your fellow School Chapters!
Here’s a pretty natural place to start. jhr’s School Chapters all have the same goal of making everyone
in the world fully aware of their rights. So you can bet that their tweets will be relevant and retweetable!
Carleton U - @carletonJHR
Concordia U - @jhrConU
King’s College - @jhrkings
Ryerson U - @ryejhr
Queen’s U - @jhr_queens
Red River College - @jhrRRC
Simon Fraser U - @jhr_SFU
St. Thomas U - @jhrstu
U of Toronto - @jhrUofT
York U - @jhrYork
Rutgers U - @JHRrutgers
Indiana U - @jhriu
Human Rights/Development Organizations
UN - @UN
Human Rights Watch - @hrw
Amnesty International - @amnestyonline
Global Voices - @globalvoices
WITNESS - @witnessorg
UN Women - @UN_Women
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11. UN Development - @UNDP
UNHCR - @refugeewomen
UNICEF - @UNICEF
World Food Programme - @WFP
Transparency Int’l - @anticorruption
Guardian Dev’t @GdnDevelopment
Journalism Organizations/ Figures
Nieman Lab - @NiemanLab
ICFJ - @ICFJ
CAJ - @CdnAssocJourn
CPJ - @pressfreedom
CPJ Africa - @africamedia_CPJ
UT Knight Center - @utknightcenter
IREX Media - @irexmedia
Lauren Wolfe - @Wolfe321
Geoffrey York - @geoffreyyork
Nick Kristof - @nickkristof
jhr Head Office and Overseas Staff
The following is a list of key people working at jhr’s head office and international offices that are doing
social media right! You can view a list of all our current and former staff at
http://twitter.com/#!/jhrnews/jhrfamily/members
Ben Peterson - @jhrben
Rachel Pulfer - @Rachel_Pulfer
Danny Glenwright - @DGlenwright
Nikki Whaites - @nikkiwhaites
Ken Zolotar - @kenzolotar
Travis Lupick - @tlupick
Katie Lin - @katiechlin
Kathryn Sheppard - @sheppo86
Aaron Leaf - @aaronleaf
Jennifer Hollett - @jenniferhollett
Justine Yu - @justineabigail
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12. Create Lists
Twitter lets you clump people together into relevant “lists”. So for example, jhr’s followers have listed us
under “human rights”, “world news”, “journalists”, “activists”, etc, etc. Similarly, we’ve made lists of
people we like to follow too: “jhrfamily”, “journalists”, “development orgs”. It’s a great way to organize
tweets by topics and to manage the content coming in from your Twitter feed.
Use and follow hashtags
WTF are those #s that people keep adding in front of words? They’re called hashtags. And again,
they’re a way to organize tweets around a certain topic. For example, if you’re tweeting about
international development, you’d use the hashtag #globaldev. A quick search of #globaldev will show
you what everyone around the world are saying about the particular topic. It’s a great way not just to
see what everyone else is talking about, but it’ll also boost your visibility online as people who aren’t
following you will see your tweet.
You can even save any hashtag search so that you can easily reference it any time in the future on the
right hand panel of you Twitter page. No need to type it in again!
Here are some hashtags that jhr keeps an eye on:
#rightsmedia
#humanrights
#globaldev
#journalism
#media
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13. Troubleshooting
If you ever need any help on the social media front, I’m your girl. You can contact me, jhr’s Social
Media Coordinator, at justine@jhr.ca or shoot me a tweet at @justineabigail.
Peace, love, and social media.
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