If you need a little group the use of individual contacts is effective and efficient. You should use it in the first steps. But this kind of recruitment costs you a lot of effort if you want to build up a community. That is why you need to switch to public relations over the time.

That does not mean, that the use of individual contacts looses it's rasion d'être. You should teach all your community members how to express the vision of Serlo and how to use contacts. If members acquire new members you could call it network-marketing.

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In this course we show you some ingredients you could use in your communication policy. Feel free to use them as you want.

What do we want to communicate?

There are 4 important messages you should consider in your marketing strategy.

Most importantly we want to communicate that we have a positive impact on our enviroment.

• We make education accessible for everyone, especially children at a social disadvantage.

• We ease the search for relevant and interesting learning material. We encourage the children to learn interdisciplinarily.

II. It is also important to communicate that working in Serlo's community is fun and exciting. Our community members are cool, young, talented and interesting.

III. Serlo lives the following values

IV. Serlo is a steady flow of improvement and is a trendsetting website

Who do we want to reach?

The following groups are our most important target groups. The things we want to communicate should primarily reach them.

• Teachers, teacher's associations and unions

• Foundations, the OER scene, other social organizations

• Students

In the following passages, we will present you how to reach your target group effectively!

Sometimes you have a special announcement (e.g. your kick-off). If you want to make this event really big and prominent, you should pursue the subsequent structure:

1. Planning

2. Buildup

3. Announcement

4. Review

Planning

Our old friend, the plan is visiting us again. Again you have to answer some good questions:

You should know your goals, the needed tools, resources and peoples.You know, how to make a work plan… Make it!

Build-Up

"some things are better left to imagination"

• make them care, before they know, what will happen

• tease them… create excitment and anticipation

• be carefull, use a buildup only, if the thing you wanna announce is worth it - don't dissappoint the excitement

Examples:

• Comming soon announcements

Announcement

1. Regardless wether you made a buildup or not, you need to answer in your announcement all the most immediate questions of the speculators.

2. For your announcement you should have a single location where you direct the people to. This location is the new subject start website.

3. This page should be easy to read. That's why the webiste should be

• Succinct: don´t write more than 50% of the text you would write in a hardcopy publication

• Scannable: no long, continous blocks of text

• Splitted: use hypertext to split up information into multiple pages

It is always good to engage in a rhetorical dialog with the reader. Ask questions. Use an inspiring language.

Review

To measure your success and to review everything you made is important to improve your work. It is also important to improve the work of others. We ask you to Review your Kick-Off and to share your findings on this webpage. They will be highly valuable for other community founders.

How should you evaluate your Kick-Off?

Ask the questions from the beginning again

Which criteria should you use?

1. Efficiency identify areas that are inefficient and redundant

2. Gather feedback (from people who consumed and produced the campagne)

3. Gather new ideas with your teammembers

When I talk from our own communication channels I speak about channels, which are in our immediate control. We can exactly determine, what we will post or not. Other channels (like the press) are not that strong into our control.

Btw. Humor always wins. Especially on social networks.

Think, about what you post

• New subject / new country

• New INTERESTING content on the page

• New Partners

• Special Events (Summer Academy / Workshops)

• Reached Goals

• Homestorys (funny or not so funny stories from the team)

• call for proposals

• researches

• news from the scene

Facebook

Facebook is the biggest social network in the world. So it is very important to be present on Facebook. We think, every language should have one and just one facebook page.

How often post something? How long should it be?

At least one time a week 100-250 characters

Must Haves

• a clear goal in mind - What do you want to initiate with your post?

• know your addressee and write to them

• pictures or (better) links

• ask for interaction (ask, propose a photo caption, "tell us what you think", links, shares, comments)

• use inspiring/ compelling/ provocative language

• no shortened links

• questions should be at the end of a post, never at the beginning!

Further Tips

• many shares, comments, likes and clicks (through an ask for interaction) for higher visibility - shares have most weight, then comments, then….

1. linkposts more visible than picture posts with links or albums more visible than picture posts

2. Interaction is best outside of the business hours and on thursday or friday

3. A connection to an recent topic makes them more visible (e.g. we have a refugee crisis and you post something to a refugee crisis)

4. Tags to other Facebook Pages increases visibility for liker of this page

5. Ask always where, when, should, would and never why

6. Use videa statements instead of written statements

Sources/ more detailed inquiries

Hubspot Blog

t3n (deutsch)

first site guide

research results

Twitter

Twitter likes nonprofit organizations. That's why they made an guide us. It's called Using Twitter for social good. You should read this guide and follow him. Don't be afraid. It's a really really short guide with 8 Paragraphs.

How often post something? How long should it be?

Up to 20 times a day max. 140

Important Tips

1. Listen to your followers a. Follow your followers What do they share? What do they like? Are they your target group?  b. Try to build a persona out of that information. c. Use that as inspiration for your own posts.  d. Retweet them from time to time, if you think the picture says follower

2. Always use pictures or gif's a. Use Images with text and they will look some seconds longer at your post. That is important b. Use Gifs (but seldom, just if they really really fit in). One Page with a lot of page is here  c. Image cliches work. People love food, cute animals and funny memes. But use them only if they really fit in!

3. Use Twitter Analytics a. Find your best posts, find your worse posts. b. try to find the reasons, why they were successful or not.

4. Always link to the blog or the website

Sources

I used Hootsuite. Two times. A and B

Blog

Blogs are another relly important instrument to express yourself or your company. We have a blog on the german Serlo webpage. I am sure, we will make one on the english page too, if its used.

How often post something? How long should it be?

Once a week min. 300 words, but not more than 2 minutes to read

Important Tips

1. The headline is really important. Keep your headlines SPUB:

    

   simple powerful useful bold

2. Ask the reader always to subscribe to our newsletter.

    

   a. Play with the words. Never write Subscribe, but Stay in touch or See what you can do by E-Mail.

    

   b. Not the blog is your community, but our newsletter.

3. End all posts with a call to action!

    

   a. e.g. I would also like, to see you on twitter!

    

   b. e.g. Free education with us! Link to the Newsletter

4. Always ask you:

    

   a. Is this post worth to be cited?

    

   b. Would anyone e-mail this blog to a friend?

    

   c. Is it an interesting new finding, that they want to know?

5. Know, what your audience want to hear

    

   a. Ask them

    

   b. Post something to a topic on facebook or twitter to a topic and see, how much attention it becomes

6. Learn about SEO (Search engine optimization)

    

   a. find words, which are often searched (look at google trends)

    

   b. use this words every time (1 every time and another 3 often)

    

   c. have a lot of links to your site from other websites

You can use the Serlo blogs, or you make your own on Wordpress. But then it would be good, if you operate it in your name and not in the Name of Serlo, because people follow people, not sites.

Sources

Wikihow

Bufferapp

Newsletter

There is one newsletter for each language. You should find the responsible and ask him to insert your content in the next newsletter. Subscribe to our newsletter, to see it's structure.

Think before you post

Our own marketing channels are Facebook, Twitter, our Blog and our Newsletter. You should use them wisely and think before you post. We got a really cool infographics from Hootsuite which describes, how you should think in front of each social media post. We are really grateful for that.

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Subsequent I will explain three questions a bit.

1. Does this have value? Does the follower find its valuable for him?

2. Does this fit the network's mission? Which is the right channel to post? Twitter is no place to share a whole story. Facebook is no place to share all the thoughts you have at a day.

3. Is this the best format for the post? Reached the optimal length? Pictures, Gif's, Videos, Links? Did you use the write language for your target group? Is it visible? (Did you used enought Hashtags?)

In this article we talk about the media, which you can not control. You can ask them to post or share or print something, but you do not make it on your own.

Old media

The journalists are glad for new input. First call, than write an E-Mail. Try a lot of magazines, newspapers and so one. The more articles over Serlo where published, the more Newspapers will publish articles. Win them with the first two sentences.

New media

Is even more important because they seldom life from their block, they are volunteers like we are. Furthermore there woun't be advertising conflicts and less limitations on the content.Search for influental bloggers to help you. First make contact, than ask them to help you.

Important for you to expresss your vision, important to make an seminar with other community members, so that they can do the same

Folgt

The first important thing is to make the community members love what they do. When they love what they do, you should give them the power and responsibility to spread the message.

How do you do this?

Buttons for their webistes and blogs

Here you will find a link to the buttons

Posters

Here you will find a link to posters

E-Mail Signatures

Here you will find a link to signatures

Let them share THEIR story

Here you will find a link to a place, where they can share their story.

Share stories, where community participants successfully hired new members

Show them how to speak about the Community

Maybe with a workshop? Elevator pitch, etc….

Merchandizing

Like Erinnerungsguerilla

Examples

1. let them put posters and stickers at interesting places and let them make fotos of that, which they can show on the facebook page

2. a download cunter… each milestone a new picture