Social media

This is a quite individual decision. Maybe you already know your target group and thus know where best to find them online. Alternatively, you have a favourite social media channel with which you feel comfortable.

  Facebook,  LinkedIn,   Twitter,  Youtube,  Instagram,  TikTok,   Snapchat or Reddit

Nevertheless, some target groups tend to use specific social media:

• To reach established families and DINKs, you may create an account on Facebook and/or LinkedIn.
• To reach young families, students, working poor and households with spare time, create an account on Facebook and/or Instagram. You could also consider posting (or placing advertisements if you have the budget) on Reddit.
• To reach grandparents/elderly people, put your focus on Facebook.
• To reach pupils, create a social media account for your energy community on social media platforms where pupils are usually active, e.g. Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat.

To find more details on how to reach specific target groups, have a look at our target group profiles.

Consider the differences between the platforms

 Facebook has a large number of users and small businesses sometimes use it instead of a website. You can post there in a “business-casual” manner if it appears authentic.

 LinkedIn is often used for business, so a professional appearance would be fitting.

  Twitter only allows you to post messages (tweets) of up to 280 characters (the restriction has changed over time), so the trick is to keep your messages short and interesting (though not misleading) and to link frequently to content outside of Twitter.

  YouTube is a complementary channel where you can upload videos and link to them on other social media channels. Keep in mind that it could be time-consuming to prepare these videos.

  Instagram relies on visual mediums. If you have nice photos and infographics, let them shine here.

  TikTok typically hosts short videos; the difficulty lies in presenting your content in an entertaining and professional way at the same time.

 Reddit is made up of “subreddits” (theme-oriented pages). A subreddit may be dedicated to the region you live in, where you could post an invitation to get in touch with you for the project. Before you do, contact the moderators of the community to which you would like to submit to make sure you don’t break any subreddit-specific rules. To ensure you don’t spam, check their website.

Provide your contact information, including the link to your website if available.

If you want to, you could include an etiquette setting out the ground rules for interactions on your site.

If you are active in a specific location you can make a Google Maps entry marking it. That way people who want to join an energy project near them can find you easily.

Be aware that successful social media accounts require regular maintenance. Make sure you always respond to messages, questions and comments to create interaction between you and your potential new members of the energy community. Using the content plan from our toolkit may help to find ideas.

If you think that your target group can only to be reached via social media but you do not have the resources to update the account regularly, you can simply specify the core information on your project with your contact there and post a link to your website if available or just your basic contact information.

Some social media platforms offer the possibility of closed groups. This could be an option to give your members a community feeling and allow them to share information and ideas.

It is important to have insightful and interesting content set-up in your account before you send out invitations. If someone reaches your page and it lacks content of interest, it is unlikely the person will visit it again.

Look for groups/accounts where your target group engages. Start following them or send a request to draw attention to your project. With this, you can invite your target group to follow your own account. Especially, try to create light yet informative content to get the attention of your target group and motivate them to learn more about your project.

Many social media platforms such as twitter, Instagram and Facebook, allow users to search topics/key words, through the use of markers called hashtags. A hashtag consists of a pound sign (“#”) followed by characters (words, a phrase, numbers, etc.) and ends with a space (” “). You can set hashtags in your posts referring to the topic, such as:

• #energycommunity
• #renewables or #renewableenergy
• #collectiveaction
• #energyefficiency
• a hashtag of your town/city
• etc.

You can also create a unique project hashtag that anyone can use when bringing up your project, so that you can track the posts mentioning it. Remember to check if the project hashtag is already taken before first using it.