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INTRODUCTION 3

SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN PRELUDE 5

SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIC PLAN 8

BASE EVALUATION CRITERIA 11 ON THE EFFICACY OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS IMPLEMENTED BY SPMU-ICZM SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN 12 IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

CONCLUSION 13

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SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN – SPMU-ICZM, WEST BENGAL

INTRODUCTION

Social media can be defined as user-generated content on the internet. It’s created with

free or inexpensive technology, is easy to update, retrieved and can reach a niche audience

or millions in an interactive manner. One of the striking features of the content that is

available in the realm of social media will be user-generated videos, photos, animated clips

and audio. The content sharing and dissemination mechanism should be acclimatized and

open towards in accepting unfiltered comments from visitors. And as user-generated

content, it does away with controls associated with traditional media – and most of all, it

removes the need for big media. Using of social media tools has become an effective way to

expand reach, foster engagement, and increase public awareness pertaining to

environmental issues. Social media and other emerging communication technologies can

connect millions of voices with respect to Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project:

Increase the timely dissemination and potential impact of coastal hazards on people

living on the edges

Influence community networks to facilitate information sharing

Expand the reach to include broader, more diverse heterogeneous audiences residing

on the outlier areas of the state of West Bengal

Personalize and reinforce messages that can be more easily tailored or targeted to

particular stakeholders that are operating within the Integrated Coastal Zone

Management Project.

Facilitate interactive communication, linkages, and public engagement

Empower people to make decisions related to risk mitigation

The explosive growth over the past few years of online knowledge dissemination systems in

general and social media in particular has attracted the attention of specialists working in

the domain of developmental communication. Developmental communication considered to

be an important thread linking to a number of initiatives taken by SPMU-ICZM aimed at

eradicating socio-economic drawbacks of the coastal regions of West Bengal. It would be

imperative upon the SPMU-ICZM that through the usage of social media to establish

conducive environments for disseminating information; inducing behavior and social change

for cleaner and hygienic ways of living. Social media can be construed as an effective tool

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for supporting sustainable change in developmental operations by engaging key

stakeholders. A digitized world habited by digital humanities actually subscribes to the idea

of using social media as a component of developmental communication.

The exponential growth in social media that has been witnessed in recent times as people

increasingly got involved within it with the convergence of ICT. The crux of any social media

plan will be to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it and why. Without a social media

roadmap based on a logical series of steps it would not be possible to create a worthwhile

social media presence and community. Social media can be considered to be an ideal way in

supplementing the traditional methods of information dissemination where communities

establish associations, allegiances around content and ideas to be deliberated and debated

at extenso.

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Social Media Plan Prelude

SPMU-ICZM intends to have its own social media plan which is premised on the

following salient points:

Step 1: Drawing attention, participation and collaboration of the stakeholders

The objective here is to establish a mechanism through which attention of the major

stakeholders of the ICZM project can be drawn. Receiving attention of the netizens can only

be done by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for

free: a YouTube video, a blog, a research report, photos, a Twitter stream, an ebook, a

Facebook page etc.

This explanation makes it clear that social media is much more than mere participation in

social networking sites but it is more of a collaborative approach. It requires a publisher of

written, audio and/or video content to be distributed in the web media. The focus will be to

build a community around that content. SPMU-ICZM is of the view that even though we are

operating mainly to cater to the needs of the people living at the subsistence level but

penetration of social media can’t be relegated to a non-consequential stage - thanks to the

revolution in the mobile technology where every single bit of information is disseminated

without any constrictions or restrictions in a cost effective and hassle –free manner.

Step 2: Consociation with social media tools

The second step is to become consociate with the essentials of each social media element.

That requires the stakeholders to know, understand and experience all of the following:

Social networking; publishing; photo sharing; audio; video; micro-blogging; live-casting;

virtual worlds; interpersonal communication technologies and an ever-growing array of

productivity applications.

Once the stake holders become familiar with each element in the social media ecosystem,

it’s worth taking time to consider the possible applications for each element in their

respective domain.

Step 3: Hands-on exploration and assessment of the social media tools

Hands-on training on the available social media tools of the stakeholders should be done

and also assessed to determine which of the social media tools cater to the maximalist point

with regards to knowledge dissemination and sensitization of the people residing in and

around of the coastal zones.

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Step 4: Discover the social media niche through SWOT analysis of the stakeholders

A SWOT analysis has to be done to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the potential

social media tool vis-à-vis the stakeholders in order to identify the right social media niche

for the ICZM Project. Effort should be on start building a community around the people who

share the same interests and having the same didactic inclinations. The community may be

local, regional or national or it may be global.

Step 5: Ensuring social media success

The successful operationalization of the social media ecosystem depends heavily on the

publisher of content relating to the areas of interest or expertise. These can be done once

the undernoted components are deliberated and calibrated with the objective of the ICZM

Project:-

a>Audience: The target audience plays a critical role in buzzing the social media site.

Identification of the target audience and connecting with them through an interactive mode

will have to be stressed upon. This requires in delineating the behavioural manner; cultural

lineages, attitudes; values; beliefs; needs and preferences of the target audience.

The objective would be in establishing a select group of dedicated people proficient or

inclined to use social media tools for building community networks for the purpose of

dissemination of knowledge related to coastal habitats and hazards too.

b>Competition: The measurement of success in social media circles is the number of hits

per second and hence a realistic assessment should be done about the state of the

competitive social networking communities. The comparative analysis will focus on how the

said social media tool has been explored and to what extent.

c>Concept: Conceptualization and visualization of the content should propel around the

perspective of the prospective users and not something impressed upon from outside. In

the initial phase it is the quality of content that someway influences the commensuration of

the process of community building.

Step 6: Creating social media strategic plan

There should not be any gung-ho approach in implementing the social media tools because

it would not be prudent to implement a host of social media tools and then keep track of

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them. However the following points should be considered before implementing any social

media plan:-

Are the stakeholders likely to be online? It may be noted that even though a sizeable

number of people visited the web but that doesn’t correlates anything with public

awareness. Hence the entire social media strategy should be devised in such a way that

fructifies the objective of ICZM – West Bengal.

The SPMU-ICZM has to cogitate to what extent it will allow adverse comments posted by the

users. Platforms like blogs and videos generally provide the space that allow for negative

comments and opinions.

Are there any yard sticks to measure the results or some kind of quantification of the

results?

Whether there will be any mechanism to alter and modify the social media plan?

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Social Media Strategic Plan for ICZM Project West Bengal Goals

Build awareness

Strengthen relationships with stakeholders

Better understanding of the ultimate beneficiaries

Improve quick response system

Identify new concepts and ideas for capacity building

Increase web site traffic

Drive traffic to the events organized by ICZM- West Bengal

Audience Analysis

Demographic Analysis

Is the target audience homogeneous or heterogeneous? What are subtle

points of differences among the target audience?

What is the average age of the target audience?

What is the socio –economic status of the target audience? Whether the

nature of audience is cosmopolitan, rural, semi-rural etc.?

What are the occupational patterns that are represented in my reading

audience?

What ethic, racial and cultural groups are represented in my reading

audience?

Personality Analysis

What kind of content that the target audience desired to navigate through the

social media sites dealing with ICZM – West Bengal?

What will be the stakeholder’s attitude while they browse the social media

sites developed by the ICZM project?

What will motivate the potential users to glue over the content published by

ICZM – West Bengal?

What biases or preconceived ideas might the target audience will have about

ICZM Project?

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Knowledge Analysis

How much does the target audience know about the broad objectives of the

ICZM Project?

What kind of new information would be shared with the target audience

without any kind of cognitive overload?

SPMU –ICZM has identified initially the following list of stakeholders who can come

under the ambit of ICZM social media community:

SPMU-ICZM staff

Members of other SPMU’s , NPMU and World Bank

PEA’s staff

Elected representatives

Government functionaries working in that area

Community leaders, social workers, students, community mobilizers operating

in and around the project area

Community Building

Building a community for the ICZM Project –West Bengal component is of paramount

importance. The ICZM Project will have dedicated staff for maintaining a community,

creating content, and tracking the audience responses to a particular issues pertain to ICZM

Project. The entrusted staff will maintain a log book and a reporting structure to entire

sequence of information that is being created and collaborated for the ICZM project.

Information Architecture and Design

The information architecture and content design with the aid of social media tools should be

done in a calibrated manner. What kind of media assets should be created and digitization

of content would be done in coherence with the interface and interaction pattern of the

respective social media sites. Information architecture and design includes campaign

messaging, visual content design, copywriting, authoring of various media assets and the

seeding of the content on the various social media web sites in a continuous and seamless

manner. The ICZM Project has decided to include the following social media tools:-

Listening Tool – Google Reader

Blogs- eblogger, blogspot, WordPress

Micro-blogging-Twitter, Tumblr

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Mobile Blogging – Utterz

Social Profile- Facebook

Online video –Youtube, Vimeo

Photo-sharing-Flickr, photobucket, Picasa, Zooomr

Presentation sharing- slideshare ,slideboom, slideserve, powershow

Business Profile – LinkedIn

Shared Documents – Google Docs

Wikis - Wikipedia

Document Publishing Sites-Scribd, docstoc, docshare

Discussion Group Services-Google Groups, Yahoo Groups

One-page website- Squidoo

Social networking and personal communication portal - Yahoo 360°

Integration tool - Ping.fm, HootSuite

Analytics/metrics tool of social media - PostRank, Radian6

Computation of Plan of Actions Based on a Sequenced Timeline

The success of Social media plan depend lot on the framework of time dimension that is

being project in a realistic manner. The SPMU –ICZM has compounded the following list of

items which consumes a significant amount of time and hence any forecast should include

the time lags also:-

Opening up of accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube etc.

Search and establish contacts with the existing communities of the potential target

audience on the main social media sites listed above.

What will be the tentative time that will be required to train the stakeholders with

the primary functionalities of the above mentioned social media sites? SPMU–ICZM

has to make a realistic assessment on the pedagogical aspect of information

dissemination considering the fact that this project includes stakeholders

representing varying clusters which hitherto represents different ways of livelihood

for sustaining themselves. Hence the learning curve of the stakeholders vis a vis the

technology, semantics, and culture of the various social media sites.

The sequence of social media sites that will be updated which is highly correlated

with the type of digital assets that will be created and managed

Time needed for communicating with each of the online communities that will be

created

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Base Evaluation Criteria on the Efficacy of Social Media Tools Implemented By SPMU-ICZM

O Videos viewed

O Uploads (e.g. images, videos)

O Poll votes

O Messages sent (e.g. Bulletins, Updates, Emails)

O Invites sent

O Comments posted

O Topics

O Number of Group Members or Fans

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Social Media Campaign Implementation Plan

Social Media Technologies and Platforms

The selection of social media technologies lot depends on the physical infrastructure

that the SPMU_ICZM will afford to have been at the client side or that remote end.

The resources may be licensed or may be in rental mode. Technological constraint

may come heavily if there is a bandwidth limitation then downloading and uploading

of video assets will be full of glitches where even the streaming media can’t serve

the purpose. Usage of open source applications and platforms will be an effective

solution to contain the investment expenditure on technologies and platform.

Content Development

The content development propels on the type of authoring packages that are being

used to integrate and assimilate the various media elements that being generated in

due course of time in order to package the entire content into a self-contained unit.

The content and digital asset generation and production should be sustained in tune

with social listening. SPMU-ICZM will have a dedicated staff for content creation e.g.

copywriter, video and audio editor, animator, graphics designer etc. Intense use of

social media leads to hike in cost component and higher budgetary outlays in

education & training, mass sensitization programs cobbled with administrative costs

related to administration of the various social media sites that will be implemented in

the ICZM Project.

Content Delivery and Evaluation

Content delivery in the realm of social media will be mostly in the cyber world. Hence

all the video, audio graphic assets should be optimized before uploading into the

respective social media sites. Evaluation of the social media sites upon which the

content of ICZM – West Bengal will be hosted will be tracked and monitored through

media metrics in order to measure the market penetration or at least the level of

responsiveness from the stakeholders.

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Conclusion

Emergence of social media and consequent adaptation of it in is actually thawing the

process of evolving an organizational structure which should be more participatory,

conciliatory and conflict resolution oriented.

Social media can’t be a panacea to any kind of communication jitters to an organization

which inherits the legacy structure of any governmental administrative mechanism.

However it can be construed without an iota of doubt that social media entails some kind of

open structure coupled with new cultural initiatives in order to support, collaborate, adopt

integrate for bolstering the capacity building process and transform the ICZM Project into a

developmental model which can be replicated in future. To sum up it can be stated the

usage of social media here in this project come as handy tool to open another

communication channel which may contribute to service improvements or efficiencies,

stakeholder’s advocacy, etc.