Everything you wanted to know about social media tool kits

Nearly everyone is on social media, but not everyone knows the best way to use it. Like every form of communication, we all have our own ideas on how to use it for business.

Sometimes it’s appropriate to enlist the help of your team, stakeholders, and partners—let’s call them collectively your fans— to reach more people with important messages about your work. Some call that creating a social media army. We call it a grassroots campaign that begins with internal communications.

How you deliver a request to activate fans is perhaps the most important aspect of the campaign. Make it easy and you win.

That’s where social media tool kits can be helpful.

What is a social media tool kit?

A social media took kit is a communication that’s sent to a select audience to encourage them to post messages that help a campaign for your brand. It could be for board members to help them participate in a non-profit’s fundraising campaign, for vendors to share information about an upcoming event where they’ll be hosting a booth, or for employees to help them stay on-message in promoting a sale or special offer.

Effective tool kits have instructions, sample or suggested messages, and visuals that make it easy for recipients to participate in your campaign. The goal is to encourage the sharing of accurate and on-brand social media messages, bringing audiences not directly connected to your brand into a dialog via the effective use of third-party endorsements.

What should a social media tool kit include?

Formats may vary, but every toolkit should have a few essentials:

The purpose: Describe why you’re asking for help and the campaign’s ultimate goal—whether that’s raising funds, getting more followers or generating more awareness about an event.

The basics:  Start the social media tool kits with some set-up items like instructing users to “follow” and “like” of all the organization’s pages. If there’s a Facebook Event, encourage them to select “going” and invite as many of their friends as possible.

The action: Be explicit regarding action items. The easier you make these action items, the more likely people are to use them. Tell your audience where, when, and how to post messages using language they understand.

The visuals: Provide images, videos, or infographics to accompany each post. Social media works best when the visuals effectively illustrate the story you’re trying to tell.

How to create messaging for a social media tool kit?

To give you a better understanding, let’s use a ridiculous example of an event that will (probably) never happen. The Balloons for Clowns charity—yes, I made this charity up— is holding its annual Give a Balloon to a Clown donation drive. While donations have been great, the organization wants to push the event on social media. So, Balloons for Clowns have decided to utilize board members, local clowns, and its own organization to share messages with a call to action.

Tailor social media tool kits to whom will be receiving them, keeping in mind how the messages will appear on their social media channels.

For our charity above, it’s best to create three social media tool kits to account for the consumer groups—think marketing personas—that would use them. Our strategy would start with tool kits for:

• Balloons for Clowns charity

• Board members

• Local clown recipients

The general message and calls-to-action won’t change drastically from tool kit to tool kit. We are, at the end of the day, encouraging one thing: that people support the Give a Balloon to a Clown donation drive. What changes is the language of how the message is delivered.

The Balloons for Clowns charity may fare better with more institutional language. We may use language that may be less personal, but more overarching to different audiences.

Here’s an example: “Since 1899, Balloons for Clowns has donated more than 5 million balloons to encourage clowns to bring laughter to all ages. Consider a donation to Give a Balloon to a Clown: giveaballoontoaclown.com.” 

The same message may come off as sanctimonious if posted by a board member or a local clown. For them, we would tweak the message to better address their audiences, using language that echoes their roles with the organization and the impact the organization has made on an individual level.

For a board member: “Balloons for Clowns has been a crucial part of my life for 5+ years. Since joining as a board member over 25 years ago, it has brought me immense joy to see faces light up when audiences see a clown perform a balloon trick. Please consider a donation to Give a Balloon to a Clown: giveaballoontoaclown.com.” 

For a clown: “I’ve been a local clown for over 10 years. While my career has been fulfilling, it goes without mention that I struggle with getting my hands on enough balloons. Balloons for Clowns has always been there to support me, providing me with much-needed balloons. Please consider a donation to Give a Balloon to a Clown: giveaballoontoaclown.com.” 

The tool kits should be tweaked to match the actual social media users’ language. Social media strives on genuine, authentic content. Messages that sound like they actually came directly from the social media user tends to generate more reactions.

What if my stakeholders aren’t on social media?

Provide suggested text for communicating beyond social media. This may include newsletters or emails, text messages, voice messages, and a script for phone calls.

What results should I expect?

After creating social media tool kits for myriad organizations, we’ve witnessed amazing results. When social media tool kits are used at the business level, it encourages proper social media use, driving up engagement, views, and increasing followers.

When organizations extend these tool kits to their team, we’ve noticed an increased awareness of the brand’s mission, vision, and goals. How great is it to know that your team has a clear idea of what the organization is all about? You can also expect an increase in dialogue and conversation that has the potential to increase conversions.