Open Source and Replicable Annual Social Media Strategy Supporting Global Sustainability

This page shares One Community’s open source and replicable annual social media strategy. It shares how to replicate our strategy, how to use it as a template to create your own, and how to contribute your own strategy. We discuss all of these with the following sections:

NOTE: Google Docs and Google Sheets work best with the Google Chrome browser. If something described below isn’t working for you, start your troubleshooting by making sure you are using the Google Chrome browser. If you find you are still having problems, Google Search for the solution to your specific problem or challenge.

CLICK THESE ICONS TO JOIN US THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

WHAT IS AN OPEN SOURCE
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

This open source social media strategy is purposed to provide a tool and content for world-change individuals and groups involved in, desiring an easy way to contribute to, and/or wanting an easy starting place for positive global change. It is open source so it can be used and/or added to by simply copying the existing template (instructions below) and modifying it and/or adding to it as desired. It is also designed to be easily sortable (click for instructions) so people can easily access the types of content they are most interested in. Lastly, it is designed with clear organizational statements at the top for easy review of the values of each organization and the structure of each organization’s strategy to make finding agreeable content as easy as possible.

One Community Open Source Social Media Strategy – Click to open the open source spreadsheet

WHY CREATE AND OPEN SOURCE AN
ANNUAL SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

As an all-volunteer organization working towards a better world for everyone, we spend an immense amount of time vetting and then sharing content we feel is supportive of positive global change. This content is a combination of our own work, positive industry developments, articles by and about other world changing organizations, articles about sustainable products, etc. Some of this content is timely and only shareable once, much of it though is high enough quality (and timeless enough) to share annually.

We created a template to make organizing, sharing and resharing, and management of the complete process simpler and more efficient. Using and sharing this open source strategy we can:

Share a replicable model and all the work we’ve put into its development
Invite others to create and contribute their own content and strategies
Create something that will continuously grow with work we are doing anyway
Evolve our existing strategy indefinitely for our benefit and the benefit of others
Support easy access and sharing of the work of others doing positive things in the world too
Make sure we repeatedly support those ideas and organizations we feel are the most positive and beneficial

Once something is added to our annual strategy, it is there to be shared year after year until we have a reason to remove it. The more we develop it, the more great ideas and organizations we support and the more useful it becomes for us and anyone else interested in using it too. The more others contribute, the better it becomes for everyone. Our hope in creating this is that we’ve made something immediately usable by anyone interested in having a comprehensive, forward-thinking, and immediately ready to launch social media strategy.

OPEN SOURCE AND REPLICABLE
SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY DETAILS

This open source strategy is meant to simplify the process of providing ongoing and quality social media content. It supports forward-thinking ideas and organizations, is replicable in whatever way works best for others, will evolve indefinitely with the work and research we and others are already doing, and should save time for anyone who decides to use it. We discuss how to use it with the following sections:

Accessing the Social Media Template
Using the Social Media Template
Contributing to the Social Media Template
FAQ of “what about…”, “what if…”, and “how do I…” scenarios

ACCESSING THE SOCIAL MEDIA TEMPLATE

Accessing the social media template is easy, just click here for the Google Spreadsheet or use this easy-to-remember tiny url: www.tinyurl.com/oc-os-social

USING THE SOCIAL MEDIA TEMPLATE

Once you’ve accessed the social media template, the following outline and description of sections will help you to understand and use it.

COPYING THE DOCUMENT

The first and most important thing to realize is that you can easily make a copy of the document so you can edit and modify it however you like. To do that, use the “File” dropdown in the top left corner of the page (right under the page title) and choose “Make a copy…”.

The picture (at right) shows what this dropdown looks like, how it can be found right below the title of the Google Sheet, and where you’ll find “Make a copy….” in the dropdown once you’ve clicked on it.

UNDERSTANDING THE CONTENT

Next is understanding how the content is organized. Columns on the left include the dates that items are scheduled. To the right of that are times spread out throughout the day for posting. Then comes the text we’ve written for the post, then the associated link, post-category the post falls into, a column for indicating if the post has been posted or scheduled to post, and last is the post-type the post falls into.

Here’s a summary from left to right:

Dates: Every day of the year is included (additional details below)
Times: At least 7 different times for each date, spread throughout the day
Post Text: The text we’ve written to copy-paste when posting
Associated Link: The link to copy-paste when posting
Post-Category: Video, Article, Picture, OC Article (work by us), etc.
Posted Column: Column to show if it’s been scheduled or posted this year
Post-Type: Society, Housing, Food, Education, etc.

Once you’ve made your own copy, you can sort by any one of these columns.

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Understanding the Spreadsheet – Here are the columns you want to understand

UNDERSTANDING THE STRATEGIES

At the top of any tab is where you can get to know the strategies for an organization. The purpose of sharing the specific strategies used is to help a person understand the organization who created the strategy, their goals, and selection process used when deciding whether or not something should be added to this annual social media strategy.

Understanding the Social Media Strategies: Who created, what is included, and how it evolves

ACCESSING DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

Tabs at the bottom are where you can select and review the different strategies from anyone who has created and submitted on that has been improved. The tabs for making these selections look like this:

See our Contributing to the Social Media Template section for how to add a strategy of your own.

POSTING DATES AND TIMES

The posting Dates and Times include every day of the year and at least 7 different post times for each day. These are spread throughout the day, based on research for the best Pacific Standard Time times to post content in the United States, and slightly different for each week.

For creating your own strategy, you can use our times or make up your own.

POSTING CATEGORIES AND TYPES

On the top right of the sheet are 4 columns that indicate the different post Categories and Types. The ones we use are shown here. The two columns on the left are the Categories of the posts we create. The two columns on the right are the Types of posts we add. See the “Sorting” section for how to sort by these Categories or Types.

Categories – 2 columns on the left: What kind of post is this? Is it a One Community Article, Article by someone else, Video, Photo, Endorsement, Solicitation, or something else?
Types of Posts – 2 columns on the right: What is the focus of the post? Is it about Nature, Food, Energy, Education, Society, Housing, Economics, Fulfilled Living, or something else?

SORTING FOR WHAT YOU WANT

Once you understand each column, sort the entire document using whichever column is of interest. You do this by right clicking on the column top and choosing “Sort sheet A–> Z” or “Sort sheet Z–>A.”

From left to right, here’s why you might want to sort by each column:

Column A – Date: Sort by the Time Column and then this column to restore the document to its original Date/Time setup
Column B – Time: Sort by this column to see if you’re spreading your annual posts out evenly throughout the day
Column C – Post Text: Sort by this column if you’d like to make sure all your posts have different text
Column D – Post Link: Sort by this column to find duplicate posts and/or all posts for a specific source
Column E – Post Category: Sort by this column to find all posts in a specific category. These posts can then be group-copied, deleted, changed, etc.
Column F – Posted?: Sort by this column if you’d like to find all the posts you’ve already posted or still need to post
Column G – Type/Focus: Sort by this column to find all posts of a specific Type or Focus. These posts can then be group-copied, deleted, changed, etc.

SEARCHING FOR WHAT YOU WANT

In addition to sorting for what you want. You can also use the “Find” function to find a specific word, URL or part of a URL, Type, Category, etc. To use the “Find” function, just click on any cell in the document and then press Command (Mac) or Control (PC) + F. This will open up the “Find in sheet” option where you can type in whatever you are looking for and then hit “Enter” to bounce through all the instances found on the page for your search term.

CONTRIBUTING TO THE SOCIAL MEDIA TEMPLATE

This open source social media strategy is also meant to be contributed to and expanded with the strategies of others. Through this open source template, our hope is that more and more forward-thinking and progressive world-change organizations will create and add their social media strategies sharing their own work and the work of others. The more it grows, the more we can all support each other by using these strategies to add to and further develop our own.

With this in mind, if you use our Google Spreadsheet as a template to create your own strategy and would like your strategy added to the template, use our Contacts Page to let us know. We’ll then review it to make sure all the sections are filled out and complete. If they are, we’ll copy your tab to the main Google Spreadsheet using the “Copy to…” function shown at right.

Benefits for you doing this are primarily these two:

Setting up the template once should save you time managing and growing your social media strategy from that point forward
Including your social media strategy as part of the template means possible inclusion of your resources in the One Community annual strategy and/or the strategies of others

RESOURCES

Facebook’s Debugging Tool
Use this page (click here) if you have a resource you’d like to suggest be added here

SUMMARY

One Community initially created our social media template to make organizing, sharing and re-sharing, and management of the complete social media process simpler and more efficient. We already spend a lot of time each week managing our social media accounts and we realized many of our posts could be reposted year after year to support our organization and many of the others we share about too. By open sourcing it all, we hope to help and save others time too while also inviting others to contribute their own strategies to further help us, them, and anyone else viewing the template.

FREQUENTLY ANSWERED QUESTIONS

Q: What if I’d like to contribute my own social media strategy to the open source template?

Great! Just follow the instructions in the Contributing to the Social Media Template section.

Q: What if I don’t like something in the existing social media strategy?

You can delete and/or change whatever you want once you make your own copy using the instructions in the Making Your Own Copy section.

Q: How do I understand how One Community’s (or any included organization’s) social media strategy is created?

At the top of each social media strategy is an overview of the person or organization that created it and what they include.

Q: What if I want to take parts from different social media strategies? How do I do that?

To do this, use the instructions in the Making Your Own Copy section of this page. Then follow the instructions for Sorting for What you Want. From there, just copy and paste what you want into your own strategy.

Q: What if I make a copy and then do something wrong?

You can revert a Google Spreadsheet (or Doc) to any past point in time like this:

Open the document, spreadsheet or presentation.
Go to File –> See Revision History.
The Revision History will appear on the right side of the browser screen, with a list of all of the saved revisions and the people who made them.
Select an earlier version to view it onscreen.
Click the Restore This Revision link to revert to that version.
To go back to the most recent version, bring up the Revision History and find the version that you want to use (it should be near the top of the list).

Q: Why are there so many columns in the strategy?

This is so the entire strategy can be sorted by each of those columns. This allows for easy finding of duplicates, certain types of posts, etc.