How to engage people through social media

Adiska Fardani Hayadi, Co-Founder and Chief Operation Officer, NoLimit Indonesia, Indonesia, talks during the World Economic Forum on East Asia in Metro Manila, Philippines. Photo by Sikarin Thanachaiary, World Economic Forum

MANILA – The use of social media has a lot of benefits, but it also requires a lot of risk management and monitoring to be effective, according to a panelist at the World Economic Forum on East Asia.

Adiska Fardani Haryadi, co-founder and chief operating officer of NoLimit Indonesia which specializes in social media monitoring and analytics, offered some tips on how to use social media responsibly.

During the session on “Connect Beyond Borders with the New Champions,” she enumerated three steps every institution that uses social media should take note of.

1. Awareness

Haryadi said awareness is itself a two-pronged factor.

It includes the prerequisites, enabling people to have access to education and an ecosystem that has properly set-up infrastructure and environment.

Among the basic things needed for awareness include having access to social media, the Internet, and electricity.

“What is needed before awareness, make sure to have education and ecosystem with environment and infrastructure…[They] need to have access [to social media], Internet, and electricity.”

When all these have been fulfilled, that’s when awareness of social media can be achieved.

2. Collaboration and trust

Next comes collaboration, which entails engaging people to the published material.

Haryadi said that along with this, trust must be earned from these users.

“After being interested, then we can start to engage them….This is the critical point where we have to have their trust.”

She added it is critical to let them hear and believe the voice of the content in order to solidify this trust-building.

3. Contribution and competitiveness

Lastly, after getting readers interested, the focus shall be on how to get them to interact and post content through networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

“Finally after they earn the trust, most likely [users] would engage more in social media.”

Haryadi said that social media is important in how society is shaped today. It is now both an enabler and a tool.

However, she said that along with these benefits and effects, there are a lot of factors that social media managers have to look out for.

One example cited is how fast bad news spread on social networking sites.

Haryadi said that to avoid such news spreading or at least lessen its impact, solutions like building an SOP or having an influential person speak about the situation could help.

“Like TV and radio, it also has a risk… [We] have to keep in mind that there is risk to come…[like how] bad news spread faster than good news," she said.

“When dealing with bad news on social media, there can be several things to be done…When trying to set up an account [you] have to build an SOP… If [the issue is] not connected to someone, [we can] approach [those] who are influential.”

Aside from all aforementioned, she pointed out that education and moral values should go hand-in-hand.

Making ways to prevent misuse and overcrowding of media platforms with incorrect information is crucial in managing social media accounts and leading users to proper content.