Club Toolkit - Social Media for Waka Ama Clubs

There are many benefits of using social media. Social media can be defined as “websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking”

Here are some questions you should answer before you start:

Why do you want to use social media
What do you want to achieve from it
Who are you targeting

Waka Ama New Zealand Social Media Sites:

WEBSITE

Website or site is a set of related web pages typically served from a single web domain

https://www.wakaama.co.nz

Your website should be constantly updated. This is a great place to share success stories, donation news, the volunteer of the month, and more.

Creating your own site doesn’t require the work of an expensive web designer. You can have one up and running using a number of different content management systems such as Wordpress, Squarespace, or Google Sites.

Web design ideas - http://www.nptechforgood.com/2011/10/31/11-website-design-best-practices-for-nonprofits/

FACEBOOK

Facebook is an online social networking service

https://www.facebook.com/wakaama

At Waka Ama New Zealand we utilise Facebook a lot, it allows us to engage with our followers by posting images and photos, posting links from our website and sending updates from events all over the world.

See this case study from Sport New Zealand for more information: Waka AmaNZ as a case study for Strong Organisations (Communication and Marketing)

There are a number of benefits of a Facebook Page (not group or individual person), such as:

Easy to access from anywhere, with multiple people running the page
Easily link Waka Ama Facebook and Website updates
Your updates pop into your followers timelines the second they're posted
Easy to update from races and events
Photos and videos are easy to upload and are awesome for paddlers and their friends and whānau to tag and download the photos
Most paddlers have a Facebook page and can use it very easily
The Facebook page can be moderated
Allows paddlers to directly interact – commenting, sharing photos and web links
Large paddling community on Facebook
Facebook is free and always will be
Can link to other social media sites such as YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, etc.

Click here to set-up a Facebook Page – please note you will need to sign in with your personal Facebook.

INSTAGRAM

Capture and share the world's moments! Instagram is a free photo and video sharing app Profiles can upload photos or videos to our service and share them with their followers

https://www.instagram.com/WAKAAMANZ/

Instagram is a marketing powerhouse that works for brands, companies, and nonprofits. Instagram is a social media platform that specializes in letting users share photos and videos and has become the favorite way to share among teens and young adults, beating out Facebook and Twitter. What makes Instagram different from social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter is the way people use it. Instagrammers frequently check the site, often several times a day, and engage with posts at a much higher rate than with other social networks.

Waka Ama NZ is relatively new to Instagram but we see it as a great tool to interact and communicate with our rangatahi paddlers

TWITTER

Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called "tweets"

Here is a quick overview of Twitter, how to use it and the Story of a Tweet

There are many, many benefits and reasons why Waka Ama Clubs should be using Twitter. Here are ten of them:

Spread news and updates in real-time
Promote sponsors
Reach new paddlers that may have never visited your website or Facebook Page
Increased traffic back to your website or Facebook page
Spectator engagement at events
Excellent and extremely inexpensive marketing
Can be managed by anyone with a log in
Live tweets @ regattas – keep friends, family and paddlers all over the world in the loop
Find members and use HASHTAGS #wakaama #yourclubname
Retweet members tweets

Steps to Creating a Twitter account – Click here

YOUTUBE

YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos

YouTube is an awesome site for Waka Ama Clubs to utilise. Waka Ama is a very visual sport (and is often hard to explain to non-paddlers) so creating mini clips at events, trainings, and fundraising days etc is a great way to promote your club. YouTube videos can be shared on all social media sites and often photos and videos get more interaction than text posts.

Waka Ama New Zealand YouTube Page

Some helpful tips and tricks

There are so many different platforms for Social Media. Once you have evaluated your Clubs objectives, then you can align yourself with the best forms that suit