Transcript: Meagan’s run-through of her talk
“Monitoring our social media accounts and sharing content is a daily task for me at the Rural Refugee Outreach Centre, or RROC for short. We get a lot of direct messages, sometimes from people wanting to donate or get involved in our work, sometimes from other organisations who want to be partners with us, and sometimes from people who need refugee services themselves. The first thing I do every morning is read through our new messages so that I can help send everyone to whichever part of our organisation can give them the best information or support.
“Next, I meet with my manager, who’s in charge of all RROC communications, to look over any new requests for social media posts that have come through from our colleagues in other departments. Whenever there’s a new event coming up, like a volunteer drive or a fundraising dinner, the organisers submit a communication request with all the details, then we design a campaign for spreading the word. These campaigns always involve a social media component to draw attention to the event. Just last week, we held a clothing drive where people could drop off gently used clothes for newly arrived refugees. Lots of people who came with bags of clothes told us that they’d heard about the drive on social media—so that’s one way I know that my work is making a difference!
“After meeting with my manager, I have a look over the news headlines. Sometimes things will be happening in Australia or around the world that directly connect to the work we do at RROC. Sharing these news stories keeps our community informed and also builds interest in refugee affairs. I only select the most interesting and relevant news to share with our followers, and I always include a little explanation about the connection between the news and what’s happening here in Salty Shire.
“One of the most interesting—but also trickiest—parts of my day is looking through our social media feeds and deciding what’s worthy of re-posting. Other not-for-profit organisations in the area reshare our content to their audiences, so I try to do the same for them, when their content is relevant to our community. I also moderate our online social media community pages, and sometimes our followers share interesting things that I might have missed in the news.
“Sadly, these days there’s so much fake news out there, too. I use the SIFT method to evaluate online information whenever I’m considering sharing something with our community. You can check out my interactive poster to learn more about SIFT. I have to be extremely careful about what I share, because posting content that’s untrue or presents a very biased opinion puts the reputation of RROC at stake!
“Whenever I’m not actively managing our accounts or planning campaigns, I work on data analysis. We have different long-term strategies for engaging volunteers, for communicating with donors, and of course, for making our services known within the refugee community of Salty Shire. I try to understand how people interact with RROC on social media, and I look for trends to see what kind of content our community prefers, and which communication campaigns have been the most successful.”
