The webinar “Social media and communications for workers' organisations” took place from 25th to 26th of June 2020, hosted in Vienna/Austria. The webinar was organized by ÖZA (Österreichisches Zentrum für Arbeitnehmerbildung) in cooperation with EZA and with the support of the European Union.
15 participants from workers’ organisations from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Poland, Spain, Germany, Austria and Denmark participated online.
The seminar started with an address of welcome by the host of the seminar Denis Strieder from ÖZA, representative for ÖZA-President Dr. Norbert Schnedl. After the greetings, Denis Strieder announced a short introduction regarding the goal and the schedule of the webinar in cooperation with Lukas Fleischmann from EZA.
The purpose of this online seminar was the capacity building of representatives of workers’ organisatione in the area of communication and public relations with a special stress to social media in order to enable PR-effective content to be circulated in a relevant way and oriented to target groups and to promote the Social Dialogue at the same time. Therefore, the programme of the seminar obtained the goal of encouraging the understanding of the actual developments and trends of the most important social media platforms, for example Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. In that way a modernised communication should make workers’ organisations more attractive, also to the young generation. For participants already active in that field, the webinar was a capacity building measure to deepen new abilities of storytelling and strengthen the media effectiveness of their own content.
Content of the seminar:
-Presentations of participants: What do we already use, which experiences do we have with that?
- Presentation of the media strategy of FCG/Austria (Denis Strieder)
- Magazine of EZA (Lukas Fleischmann)
- Presentation of the media strategy of CFTC/France (Richard Bonne)
-Social Media: What is trending? Which channel to use? Best practice examples of good strategies. Boris Beker – Content Artists, Social Media Expert
-Mind the details! Why do we need a strategy? How do we reach our target group? Can we define them? Boris Beker – Content Artists, Social Media Expert
-What is storytelling? How do we use that for our social media activities? Best practice examples. Boris Beker – Content Artists, Social Media Expert
-How can we connect each other? How can we plan a common content strategy? Boris Beker – Content Artists, Social Media Expert
-Group-work: Let’s create some Social Media ideas, e.g. new Insta-Channel, Twitter-Campaign, etc. // via. Zoom-rooms // European Content Network: How can we profit from each other? How can we strengthen our Social-Media-Skills?
Conclusions
The key results were straightened to increase the abilities of the participants regarding online communication and social media. The most important insights concerned the following points:
-Social media: there are a lot of different social media platforms, which vary in their functions, members and other qualities and characteristics. The most common platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, WhatsApp, WeChat, Snapchat. The questions are which type of content performs best and, how can the Social Dialogue be promoted on each platform? There are a lot of differences depending on what is the goal of the workers’ organisation and who is your target group? Facebook for example is the most popular social network, with over 2 billion people using it every month.
-Content strategy: creating a content strategy is the starting point of every successful marketing campaign. At the beginning a workers’ organisation must always ask itself:
1. What do I want to accomplish with these measures? How can I use them as a tool for the goals and values of workers’ organisations?
2. Which person do I want for my organisation?
3. How many resources are needed/available to reach that goal?
-Targeting: Professional communication isn't an end in itself: every message should be directed at a specific audience with a specific goal. The process of targeting is an integral part of content creation and content publishing. Which topics are relevant for my target group and which channel would be most effective? Social media channels offer opportunities for professional lead targeting.
-SEO: Search engine optimization amplifies distribution, covers a wider audience, increases content life, speeds up content indexation, increases website traffic, improves the recognition of the organisation, gives insights for content strategies, profiles likely to appear at top of SERP (Search engine results pages).
-Storytelling: this is a marketing tool regarding organisation connection with the audience through meaningful stories, creates loyal following and shows human side of the workers’ organisations. The most important tools for storytelling are videos, articles, photos, graphics etc. The success formula is the understanding and including of the audience - plus sharing informative and intimate content. Subjects concerning workers’ organisations and Social Dialogue can be displayed with a better understanding for the users by using innovative storytelling.
The seminar has shown that there is an urgent need for workers’ organisations to strengthen their appearance on social media in order to promote the Social Dialogue. However, workers’ organisations are obliged to create an insightful Social-Media strategy, if they want to promote values and purposes of workers’ organisations properly. Creating this strategy on a European level doesn’t only deepen the relations between the workers’ organisations in each country but also accelerate practical knowledge. It enables representatives of workers’ organisations to reach young target groups and to modernise their image.