Maryland Social Media

Social Media Monday (Vol. 6, No. 1)

October 26, 2015

The Department of Information Technology is excited to resume Social Media Mondays. Our goal is to provide useful tips and strategies to best utilize social media within the scope of state government. Each week the blog will be broken down into the three sections explained below.

This blog should help nurture our community of social media experts and open lines of communication between us all. To make the blog as useful as possible we will address all skill levels within our community. Some weeks might seem a bit too basic, or too advanced, but never hesitate to ask questions, add thoughts, or offer clarification based on your own experiences.

As always, please let us know your comments, concerns, and suggestions. Moving ahead let’s make this blog a tool from which we can all benefit!

Top Story

Over the next couple of weeks we will be breaking down social media platforms to provide tips and strategies on how to get the most out of your account. We will start this series next week with a deeper look into Twitter for agencies.

We appreciate that not every social media tool will work for every agency. In this series we want to take a look at the different applications and offer suggestions on how we can leverage them within state government to better serve our constituents. Throughout this series we will offer pros and cons for why you might want to use each application and discuss demographics of the user base, pitfalls others have found in its usage, and ways to encourage engagement.

If there are specific social media applications you would like for us to cover please let us know.

Tips for Leveraging Social Media

While many of you are pros at managing social media, it is always helpful to go back to the basics. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or tips that could benefit the group.

Timing is everything: Try different times of the day and week to ensure the largest percentage of your audience sees your post. Depending on your audience you may get more eyes on your copy at different times. For some response is better between 9 am – 5 pm while for others response is stronger if scheduled after dinner when people are surfing the web. Mix it up and track results on views, shares, and comments.

What times have you found received the best results?