Social media guide

At the global level, we have found Twitter to be the most efficient way to spread the word about events, as our community seems to be most active there. This document focuses mainly on Twitter for this reason.

Any social media channel, of course, can help you get the word out and we encourage you to promote your celebration wherever you think your target audience may be “gathering” online. We also encourage you to engage with other locations. Our community is very welcoming and supportive; many friendships have been forged this way.

The more traffic we generate, the more awareness we build, the more sponsors we get, the more locations we can host, the more we can all teach, learn, share knowledge and shape the future of information architecture.

Collective Goals to Consider When Promoting

BRING AWARENESS TO INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

• Our target audience includes individuals, companies and organizations within and outside of the IA discipline.

• Create interest to bring awareness to and encourage more people to attend our celebration.

• Help people understand the value of IA - information architecture as a discipline and area of expertise companies can leverage to help better communicate with their customers and employees, as well as understand and find information within various environments.

• Leverage the World IA Day community to create more conversations.

• Inspire people to host a celebration the following year or join an existing team in their community.

REPRESENT WORLD IA DAY AS A KIND AND WELCOMING COMMUNITY

• Make your event accessible to everyone (this includes your content).

• Showcase the progress made by ideas developed in previous celebrations.

• Promote sponsors by communicating their service or product value and extending the reach of their brand.

• Share thought provoking IA content.

• Display gratitude toward speakers.

• Communicate appreciation to volunteers.

• Highlight and cross-promote other WIAD events.

• Post WIAD talks and presentations on the WIAD website and share it out.

Our expectations

• Locations should support each other by:

  • Liking and following other locations

  • Retweeting posts from other locations

  • Creating dialog between locations to start a conversation

• To ensure our content is findable, we ask that you use specific hashtags when posting to social media. Hashtags include:

  • #WIADLocation (example: #WIADTampa)

  • #WIADYY (example: #WIAD18) or #WIADYYYY (example: #WIAD2020)

  • #WIAD

  • #IA

• Try to include World IA Day in your tweets and mentions. We would for love you to follow us too!

  • Official handle for World IA Day: @worldiaday

  • Official hashtags: #IA, #worldiaday

Promotion through Twitter

This section includes guidance on value, tone and gives pre-written examples you are free to make your own.

Tips to Increase Traffic and Engagement

• Mention influencers that have large networks ensuring the content is valuable. Reply to people who respond to a post to encourage continued conversation and make them feel like part of the community.

• Engage or partner with local meetups to attract attendees from related disciplines such as user experience designers, content strategists, developers, business analysts, project managers, etc. Be sure to engage with entrepreneurial and maker communities too. Identify key opinion leaders in IA, UX, in your location and try to engage with them to get involved with World IA Day so they retweet or mention your post.

Some Tips on Accessibility

Helping people keep track of what happens before, during, and after a celebration makes it easier for everyone to take part, to enjoy and be inspired by it.

As the Social Media Director for World IA Day 2016, José René Gutiérrez Álvarez (@josernitos) created a great article for live-posting during a celebration. You can access it on Rosenfeld Media’s website.

Sample Tweets

Consider scheduling social posts as the venue, sponsors and speakers are secured, weekly from December through early February, and daily the week of the celebration. We have included samples below that you can repurpose for your location.

Promoting and thanking speakers

• Join @WIADPhilly on Feb 20th with morning keynote speaker @robtannen as he explores the future of IA and IxD http://ow.ly/XLBlt #WIAD16

• We’re proud to announce that @deni_k77 will join us as Speaker for the first World IA Day in Depok! #WIAD16 @WorldIADay

• Hey @nattchah just wanted to give you a virtual admiration hug for your talk at #wiad16. Really interesting research and insight!

Promoting and thanking volunteers

• Overwhelmed w/ gratitude to our volunteers for all the time, sweat and thought in planning this year’s #WIAD @WIAD_LA You are all amazing!

• @KristaBledsoe @nocuberequired @jlyons_isd @weaselwrks #marthaDeAmbrose @tphau Amazing leaders made our day such a huge success. #WIAD16

Promoting and thanking sponsors

• Loving those free raffle prizes. How about a complete @RosenfeldMedia digital library? http://bit.ly/1mr0hXY #WIAD @WIAD_LA

• High Five to our sponsors! @IntuitInc @Disney @Fandango @undrstndng @GA Thank you for helping the #IA community by supporting #WIAD <3

• .@WorldIADay global sponsor @usertesting is giving away 2 free tests to all #WIADSF attendees! https://www.usertesting.com/ #WIAD16

• Thanks to our in-kind donors! @pulsoviral @oreillymedia @abookapart @uber_la #WIAD_LA hearts you! #LAUX @WorldIADay @iainstitute

Promoting the celebration

• It’s official: @worldiaday will be back in Seattle on February 18, 2017. We can’t wait to start planning the day. Hope you’ll join us.

• @WorldIADay is in a little over a month! Get excited! #WIAD17

• You should really come and join us at #WIAD in Copenhagen! You’ll get a lot of new insights and contacts - for free!

• Mark your calendars: Free conference tickets for WIAD_Zuerich are available on January 5th, 11:00 am. #wiad

Celebration day

• Next up at #wiadsea16: @cristin_carey and @katiestar from the @Avvo content strategy team talking about their “IA Guild” #wiad16

• Join us on the livestream at http://bit.ly/wiadseattlelive #wiadseattle #wiad16

• HUGE thanks to our 11 speakers, 80+ attendees, local and global sponsors for a 2nd fantastic World IA Day in Kent! #WIAD16 #WIADKent16

Post celebration

• Videos of talks from #WIAD16 Jönköping now online. @WorldIADay

• Milwaukee’s first #WIAD16 was great! Check out all the presentations here, thx to organizer and TUGanian @josepilove

• In case you missed it, check out @bizsanford’s post about World IA Day in Ottawa! https://medium.com/shopify-ux/world-information-architecture-day-in-ottawa-c9a5d2383492#.8noqk071x #wiadOTT #WIAD16