 I want to talk about technical issues just in time. So I'm Mary Dieber. I'm in the DC headquarters for DAV, assistant national communications director. And I help out with social media as needed, our social media manager is in our Cold Spring office, but he's not able to be a convention this year, so I'm gonna give you the presentation. I'm gonna throw a lot of content at you, a lot of information, but really what I want you to take from this presentation is what you are capable of doing. So if you see something interesting or feel like you're getting lost or overwhelmed, my contact information is gonna be at the end of this and I feel free to follow up, okay? So social networking is obviously a social tool that involves many platforms outside of just social media on the internet. According to Facebook, social networking, people spend more time on social networking than they spend eating, socializing, or grooming. Just a little bit more about what social networking is, how it works, and the most popular ones, and that is a fluid term as far as for popularity. They change constantly. So how many people in here are on Facebook? What about Twitter, keep your hand up. Instagram, keep your hand up. LinkedIn, keep your hand up. Pinterest. See, so there's a lot of different ones in there. What? Telegram. Telegram? No. So we'll talk about those tips and tricks and things to remember. So like I mentioned earlier, I've been a person who's spent five years of the life on social media. Do you think that's believable? Yes. It can be a time suck for sure. And it's only gonna get more, more and more and more time. So get used to it, it's here, it's here to stay, and if you use it appropriately and effectively, you can really use it to your benefit for your local chapters, for your departments, for whatever you are desiring to get done. So what is it? Well, it's free, right? Yes. No, it's not free. No. Well, you don't have to pay with credit card. So there's that. But it's communication that's between you and your audience. So your audience could be one person, your audience could be five, your audience could be 15, or 500 people. But it's that open communication. One of the biggest things to remember whenever you're on the end of the page monitor and the administration is they need to be heard, they need to feel heard. How annoying is it sometimes like if you reach out to an organization or even like a market or something and you don't hear anything back, that makes you feel like nobody's hearing you, right? Well, so if you are running your page, the most important thing is to get back to those that are reaching out to you because they need information and you're the person there that can give it to them. So it's pretty easy. Kids these days, everybody's getting on social media and it's increasingly more accessible because of Wi-Fi hotspots and things like that. Has anybody, is anybody still having problems with maybe people digging in their heels and not being open to using social networking? So what, if you're in the seminar, I see that you would think it's important. So what are some of the things that they ask you? Why don't they want to get into social networking? Afraid of getting hacked, confusing? I would say they don't want to learn new technology. They don't learn that. Well, that's one thing that you can take back with you to this. For one thing I mentioned earlier, it's not going anywhere. Afraid of getting hacked, that is legitimate but if you follow the appropriate security procedures, it lightens that plus as long as you're on it constantly, so you always have an idea of where you are and what's going out so that you, what I'm trying to say there is so you don't go a month and then come back and see that all this activity has happened that you hadn't noticed because you had been hacked. It's better to just stay on top of it but we can talk a little bit more about that. One of the things that social networking in our veterans space is that's how we're reaching veterans, that's how we're reaching the younger ones or transitioning service members, families. Whenever you're in the military, you get up and move every three years and so these families, maybe they don't have these resources. So social networking, for those that are still kind of digging in their heels and don't want to go with it, it doesn't have to be as complicated as some people might think and security as I mentioned is an issue but we really need to get our chapters and departments, our members comfortable with this new way of reaching veterans, families and making sure that they know we're there for them at every level. So how does it work? So if you align DAV, if you make it like a, if we were marketing for a company, marketers use social networking to increase brand recognition and encourage brand loyalty. So what would that, how would that translate for DAV? Anybody? Getting our information out there. Keep them up to date. Well, an awareness. You know, if you see the logo, if you see the DAV, if you see articles, if you see these things on your social networking, you're more likely to, when the need arises, they come, salesman or veterans, DAV, my organization and you're able to get that audience base, that client base and bring on, like I mentioned earlier, if you're quick to respond, then you get that loyalty back from the people who are reaching out to you on social networking. It helps promote DAV's voice. Yes. Yes, you will. So after convention, it will go up on our website. Social networking helps promote DAV's voice and content. So some of those videos that you've seen around prevention or some of the photos, some of the photos that you're taking, you can promote those through your own personal channels and by personal, I mean your chapter department level channels. And so what I've shown here is an example is for our Twitter feed, we have a list between, what did I put up here, we have legislative, we have updates for veterans, we have job fairs, we have basically every aspect of what DAV touches that could be interesting to one of our members or an audience who doesn't even know about DAV, it goes up there. So we're able to promote what DAV does frequently, consistently and accurately. So these are some of the most popular ones. These are the ones that we've really been focused on. Again, you can get this afterwards, but these are all of our handles to get to our social, for the national. The eight before Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. We're really pushing those right now. And there's a lot of good, each of them have a lot of good that the others do not. So there is a reason to have multiple platforms. That was one of my first questions while I started doing this. So why do we need more than this? So Facebook, Facebook is probably the most popular, right, almost everybody you know has a Facebook page. Even my father who doesn't even have a cell phone has a Facebook page. So today it has approximately 1.59 billion users worldwide. Very significant. Again, even if it goes away, something is gonna come back in its place. So this is definitely how we wanna reach our audience. Has anybody tried a Facebook Live? How's that works? Wow, that's incredible. Well, one of the benefits of the Facebook Live feature is it sends a notification as long as they haven't changed their settings. It will send a notification to everybody who follows your page. So why is that beneficial? Why would you even wanna mess with that? Well, for instance, if we're here at convention and we decided to do a Facebook Live video, every 1.5 million followers we have on Facebook is gonna get a notification that we're live right now. So break that down to your department or your chapter. If your chapter goes live, all the people that are following will say, oh, hey, they're out doing this or they're helping another veteran do this or whatever it is that you're doing that's important, it immediately goes to your followers. It has grown from a novelty to a serious broadcasting marketing tool and according to Facebook, there's been more than 3.5 billion live broadcasts and it started in 2016. So things to remember with it is always access to your connection. One thing that I do is I will test it in private mode just to make sure that the internet's working, the data's working, the audio's working and then nobody sees it and then I'll watch it, make sure it looks good and then I'll go live. Is that clear on how I, okay. I should have taken a screenshot of that one but I just thought of it earlier today to add that in here because it's just something I do especially from, I have a broadcast background and we never went live so it's a little nerve-wracking to just turn on the camera and say, hey everybody, this is what we're gonna say now so I always like to check it in private mode first. Compiling the description of the video, I mentioned the notifications but how many people get annoyed with notifications if you get too many? Yeah, it gets annoying, right? Well, so you don't want your audience to turn off the notifications. You want that notification to stay in place so the best way to do that is to have a compelling description of the video because when they see that notification that you're going live, it's gonna tell them what it is and if it just says, the idea is live, why am I gonna watch that, why do I care? So a compelling description like whether it be, let's see, what would you go Facebook Live for one of your chapters? Any ideas? Golden Corral Function. The Golden Corral Function. So you go Facebook Live, Military Appreciation Night, Helping Veterans, Veterans Every Meal, Working with Golden Corral. Something to be telling the people that want to actually turn, watch that video and not turn off the notifications. Tag your location, if you're doing a Golden Corral, tag Golden Corral. I'll get into that a little bit more on some of the other platforms but tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, yes. Only the people that are in the group and the only people that are following. So it wouldn't go out on your personal page unless you shared it on your personal page but for instance, if I did it from DAV National, it would notify everybody who follows DAV National. Did that answer your question? Okay. And then engage before, during, and after. This is another tip as far as making sure that your audience knows that you're with them because again, this is a two-way communication. This is not just throwing communication at them. This is a two-way conversation or more. So tell them beforehand, hey, later today we're gonna be at Golden Corral some of those are appreciating tonight. Or during, have somebody, one thing that our team does is we'll say, hey, I'm gonna go Facebook Live. Can you keep an eye on it? Answer questions as they come up in comments or things like that. Work on it together to make sure that people are being heard and answered. And that's also another way to tell if you are having any technical difficulties, if they can't hear you or if the video flipped up or whatever it is. If you're monitoring those comments, kind of tag from them. And then after. I always want to get in Facebook Live videos with, you know, ask us anything in the comments. You know, we'll be sure to get back to you. Or something like there's more about the military appreciation night in the comments. That way people have somewhere to go to get more answers. Any questions about Facebook Live before I move on? Has anybody tried it? It's a little nerve wracking. Is your question? Yes. So when it's going, you can see how many are watching and then after the fact that we'll post it and then you can go in there and see how many have watched it. And you can also click on real time and see how many were watching it in real time. Yes, ma'am. So she's saying that they've had some successful Facebook Live's when they go out and they're more of a Washington DC. So I'll try to break my habit of asking crowd questions. Oh, there we go. They left too soon. Who has heard of the Facebook 20% rule? Anybody? Some people have. Okay, so Facebook is a company and companies go by profits. Well, the 20% rule for Facebook is that they prefer you have less text in your graphics before it starts looking like advertisements. So what does that mean for you? All right. What it means is the more text your photo has the least likely it's gonna show up in your audience's feed. Is that clear how that works? Okay, so if I posted a photo to Facebook and here's a, I have some examples on here. Okay, so if I posted this face, this photo and it's probably 90% text. Volunteer, joining, donating. And when I put it into Facebook's, which I'm gonna give you guys a link to, their text overlay tool, it's telling me that it's high. High text, which means it's less likely going to show up on other people's feed. Or did I just say the same thing twice? Where are you checking that at? That's where I'm going next. So, this website right here, if you wanna write it down or you can get it from me later, it's Facebook.com, add, post, text, underscore. That's an underscore, you can't see it between text and overlay. That is a fantastic feature that Facebook has that you can plug your graphic, plug your photo and make sure that it is at a high risk or a low risk of being hidden. You all just wanna give me a nod when we get the barbecue or something like that. And so you have a photo that you have text on. Text on graphics is more and more popular as we have all those apps on our homes that help edit. And you see a lot of text on photos that are trying to recruit people into coming to things or, I see a lot of sales stuff, maybe they write all over what it is. And so if you have too much of that, that's when Facebook is kind of buried underneath. Does that answer your question? On the department or the chapters? No, no, no, no, okay. So if you're an admin for your chapter and you post a photo with too much text on it, then your members are less likely to see it. That's what that means in Facebook. Because Facebook prioritizes what is shown. Yes. So this one I use, text is okay. Will run normally. So if I, that's better. Thank you. Thank you. That hurts, that hurts. Okay, here's what I'll say. Okay, when you have too much text on a photo, Facebook is gonna think that it's an advertisement and it's not going to show it when people who are following your page can't let you pay for it. So if you have too much text where there's a graphic photoshop writing and it's not gonna show up like the blue one or two. Yes. No. Well, that's because if you look at the ratings here, so what this gentleman said is he posts a lot with text and they go right up. Yeah, don't relax at all. So the gentleman said that he does have photos that he posts with text and they show up just fine. You don't necessarily always know how they're showing up to the people who are following your page though. That's the difference. So if I'm following your page and it has a lot of text on it and Facebook says that it has too much text, I might not see it. So I'm following you but I can't see it. Oh, that's fine, that's fine. That's fine, that's fine. So she said that he's asking more about like the text underneath the photo. If it's not on the photo, this rule doesn't apply. At the beginning, that explains it a lot as well, okay? So that's where you can also upload what you wanna post and see if it fits the rules or not. Okay, so advantage is the Facebook creates a central page. Easy to check, simple layout. Pretty easy to change pictures around things like that. Even though they do like to change things upon every once in a while, it's pretty intuitive once you get in the platform and start creating your pages. You can share a lot of information. You can share need to know. You can share news, you can share funny things. You can talk about events. You can create events to have people come to your meetings. You can create events to have people come to maybe like a barbecue day or a picnic or something like that. And people, again with their phones, it pops up and reminds you come to the event. And you can do a variety of photos, videos, links, Facebook Live. You have a large mental audience and a lot of different ways to post. So there's a lot of advantages there. And so if you still have people digging in your heels, make sure that they understand that this is a fantastic way to reach your community. And we're not talking about just the veteran community. We're talking about your entire community because if your city or town knows what you're out there doing, they're more than likely to help you or help fundraisers for you or volunteer for you, volunteer drivers helping out the transportation number. So if you have an engaging Facebook page that you can get out and then people search, you know, maybe they search, I'm from Vanita, Oklahoma, small town, little dot on the map. So if someone searched Vanita, Oklahoma, they're gonna see if I had a DIV chapter page. So it's just something to keep in mind. But disadvantage, very limited control over comments. You don't wanna go to them and delete comments you don't like. Some people like to do that because it's easier, but that's not really what you do. Because again, it's your back and forth communication with your audience. So if somebody posts a comment that you don't like, and I'm not talking about something vulgar, I'm not talking about something completely inappropriate, I just mean like a disagreement or even even a little argumentative, okay? Like as long as they're not, you know, throwing out cuss words or things like that. But you don't wanna delete the disagreement is what I'm trying to say. Because that's what it's towards, open communication. But because of that, it can be very time consuming to stay on top of it. Because you don't want vulgar and inappropriate comments. So you have to check it frequently and say daily, at least daily. So if you take this on, it's really important to check those messages, those comments, those reviews daily. And then if you have something negative, how good does it feel if you put yourself in the position of the consumer, right? So say you had a problem, I just had a problem with Spirit Airlines, worst flight down here ever. So what did I do? I tweeted Spirit Airlines and they reached out to me. So if you put yourself in the mind of a consumer and you think about that with DAV and our potential audience, if they reach out to DAV and nobody answers them, they're gonna feel, they're gonna feel that. If they reach out with a complaint and we don't answer them, if somebody else comes along and sees that complaint or that critique and they don't see that DAV answered, they're less likely to think that they wanna get involved with us. So it's always good to answer positive and negative. Just remember that, don't just delete the negative stuff. But it's very time consuming. Twitter. Twitter is great for real time updates. I highly encourage all departments and chapters to have Twitter. It's a little bit, it's a little more streamlined than Facebook as far as posting information. And I'll talk about this in disadvantages, but how Twitter does a Twitter, how Twitter does a Twitter, how Twitter feeds work is as it comes, it gets sort of, it's kind of like a queue, right? So every time there's a tweet, yours gets bumped down a little bit more. So if you're tweeting on behalf of your organization, you wanna keep them coming, keep them coming. But there's a less of a lift than say with a Facebook post or something like that because it can really just be, hey, we're here at the AAB National Commission in Loyola. It's great to see my friends. I mean, it really can just be that simple. So Twitter's a great platform to use, especially like on the days of events or if somebody's coming to speak, like if you have somebody, okay, guest speaker at one of your chapter meetings or something, and you can tweet what they're saying, tweet quotes, take a picture, tweet it up there. It's a really great tool to use. Currently there's 974 million users of Twitter. There's actually an old video of me, probably almost 10 years ago now, of interviewing somebody about social media and I say, what is Twitter? And I just look so dumbfounded and my colleagues like to bring that up every once in a while because now I'm all about Twitter, but. So hashtags, this is where Twitter can get fusing. Hashtags, user names, mentions and handles, okay? A hashtag is going to allow you to search some things, very specific, very quickly. So if you hashtag veterans, and somebody in Utah clicks on the hashtag veterans, every post that has come up, and you can sort it by most recent and things like that, is going to show up for them. So if you're a hashtag new veteran, hashtag VA, hashtag disabled American veterans, hashtag benefit, hashtag keep the promise, all those things are gonna pop up for anybody who's looking for it. So hashtag is also important. People tend to get carried away with hashtag, myself included, nobody's gonna look for hashtag, I fear airlines lost my luggage. You know what I mean? So you want to keep it simple and it also counts for character count, but hashtag is important. And as an organization, if you run it from your chapter in an apartment page, one of the things that we like to do is we have a list of hashtags to use. So if it's legislative related, we like to even keep the promise. If it's any time I can hashtag veterans or do, any time, women veterans. And there's just all these things because you don't know who's going to click on the hashtag. And the hashtags are pretty much across all platforms for the most personal Twitter. Can it be streamed? Yes, Dave. So Dave asks if a hashtag for online for Twitter or if you can put it on Facebook, if you can put it on any platform. No, Twitter won't get a pop. If you hashtag it on Facebook, Facebook is going to show you who helps us hashtag it on Facebook. If you hashtag it in Twitter, same thing, Instagram, same thing, LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually has a really cool way to recommend hashtags that other people are already using, which is kind of nice. So if you're making a LinkedIn post, it will recommend, like someone else is posting about veterans and they use this hashtag. And so that's helpful. But to answer your question, it will allow you to track them in that button. Yes? Is there a plugin to post across platforms as I was making a Facebook post? Could I also have it posted Twitter and Instagram and other places automatically? That's a good question. What she asked in the back is, she asked if there was like a plugin that you could post it on one, it would go across all. There's paid services. You do not know of any that are free. Okay, so she said that there are some free apps for that. And I would be hesitant just because it can kind of get up. A service that we use is called Sprout. And then there's other, if you go with me after, I'll think of the names of some of the other ones. But what that allows you to do is have one login for all of them and then you can decide what goes where. So it is beneficial if you want to invest that money, really, free apps. I'm sure they do a good job. I haven't come across any that I've heard good things about. Yes, sir. Okay, so you have to have it in Twitter. So if you're online, www.quitter.com, you can also download the app on your Android or iPhone. And usually once you're logged in, it keeps you logged in if you decide to do that. Yes, sir. For like the posting that she was talking about? Okay. No, you're never charged for any of that. Yeah, and then they make it on app. The more followers you get, the more ads that show up in between your posts. Yes. So the more followers you get, the more Facebook will push ads on your page. But you don't have to pay. It's not like after somebody tweets, you start paying. Does that answer your question? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Ma'am. That's very true. You're at the good point. So she brought up about the, well, in Facebook, on Instagram as well. But there's often the time, the opportunity to say also post to Twitter, post to Instagram, share to that. That's a very good point that I didn't even think about because I never use it for DAB. So what she pointed out was when we were talking about the Sprout earlier, as far as the platform that we can share across different Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all at the same time. She's pointing out that if you make a post, it gives you the option to share to Twitter or share to Instagram or share to another platform. Just on Instagram, Twitter will say you can post it to Facebook. I think there's more, I don't know. Yeah, Twitter. Yeah, Twitter too, yeah, yeah. So what she's saying is that it goes between Twitter and Instagram, or Facebook and Instagram. Well, there's two different platforms so you would have two different audiences. She's asking the difference between Twitter and Facebook. And then the content is usually different because it's not a word limit on Facebook, but there's a character limit on Twitter. Also, as far as, the other thing that I want to be is on this slide is tagging and mentions and handles of other people's Twitter, but the right way, maybe you tag your city's mayor or something like that, or the manager of the Golden Corral before Military Appreciation Night. So there's a lot more interactivity on Twitter than there is necessarily on Facebook. So Facebook, you have a lot more to work with, but Twitter is faster. Not to be, they can follow you, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you don't have to make this. Mm-hmm. Twitter's most more public. Don't put anything private on Twitter. It shouldn't be anywhere, but. And then, so from, does everybody understand what I was trying to say about hashtags? Any questions about hashtags? I'm always, you can tag somebody, tag somebody. So Chairman Takano up here the other day, we were tagging him, tagging the committee, tagging the buggy, just tag, tag, tag, yes. Okay, so tagging is, tagging is basically hyperlinking through another person's page. So if I were to tag the AD, then it would show to the AD's followers. So if Mary got on and wrote, hey, I'm at the AD National Convention, tag the AD, then it would show up on the AD's page. So that gets more people to see what you're posting. And that's the ad symbol. Yes. Bold blue, depending on the platform. So his question is, what is tagging? Was it what that answer is? So tagging is really just, it's linking your post to another entity's post. And then their audience can see it, yeah. One of the things to keep in, I run my own Facebook page at home for a small business. And one of the things that I've noticed is when reaching out to specific communities within Facebook, like Facebook pages, you have to be a member of that page in order to tag other people or nobody's gonna see it. So if you're looking for specific, like for example, disgruntled vets or for the vets to get bent or any of those veteran communities, they close their pages and keep them private so that they can vet the people that go in them to make sure they're actually veterans. In order for you to be able to tag them, you have to be in that page. That's true. So if somebody else is paid, what he's talking about is if you have, if their privacy settings are set not to be tagged unless you follow them so that they know who can tag them, you might not be able to do it. It's less likely on Twitter, but Facebook, yeah, it depends on the privacy settings. You can't tag them if you're not already followed them. It's that, I think that helps. If you have your settings set up too, you can. Yeah, like for instance, we have cross events with recruit military for job fairs and recruit military will tag us and my phone will constantly be going because it always tells the beginning of the month because they're setting them up for the rest of the month. So my phone will just be going off to recruit military, tag deity, recruit military, tag deity. So yeah, if you have your settings set to that, you can set them to not get a notification, but the best way to have it is to have them that way you know who's tagging you. Was there another question? I'm like, he said he turns his notifications off and then he just goes and checks them, but check them frequently. Gotta move along. Handles are user names. So when you tag, you tag them with their handles. So like, DAB's Twitter handle is at DAB and HQ. That answer, I didn't see where it came from, okay. So it's easy to follow trending topics integrated very easily with cell phones. Yes, yes. On the national Twitter, mm-hmm, yep. And then again, so the reason why this matters, let me break away from the PowerPoint, we just have like a hard part. The reason why this matters is because social networking is essential to getting more members and getting more people aware of our organization. So if I tagged Golden Corral, then anybody who's following Golden Corral is going to see that DAB tagged them. Oh, what's DAB? Now they click on our page. Now they go to our page and they see our videos and our posts and our posts and our updates and the information about us. Now we have possibly one more follower. We have that one more follower. Oh, my brother-in-law's wife is a veteran. She might be interested in this organization. Now we have a veteran that can use our services that didn't know about us. So that's what it all comes down to. So I'm sorry if I'm talking too much in the weeds, but what it all comes down to is the way social networking works. If you use it and you use it well, you can make sure that every veteran and their family who needs help has awareness about DAB. And if they want to be a member, they have that too at the palm of their hand, okay? All right, so again, this is Twitter. Really easy with cell phones, especially if you use the Twitter app, with real-time updates linked to other profiles like we mentioned with tagging. And it's easy to communicate with your audience and attract new followers. Retweeting is so fast, especially if you get on and you retweet like a news story from a publication. And then somebody else retweets that. It just keeps going. So retweeting is retweeting again. But it's sharing a different tweet, okay? So if you are on there as your page and you retweet the information, then that's, again, you're getting more attention to your particular page. Disadvantages, sure. Anybody who knows Twitter knows that there is a character limit. 280 characters, and that includes links, handles, and hashtags. So if you share a link on Twitter and you don't have a link shortener, all those characters in that link count against that 280 character limit. So I used to be, I'm still, it's hard not to be, but very particular about grammar and the punctuation and things like that. And when you go on Twitter, you just kind of have to let some of that go. Maybe shorten or use numbers and letters, yes. The tagging, yes. Yes. So if you tag Jeremy Tocano at Ret Tocano, those characters count against a 280. So that's one of the disadvantages. But you can always just keep tweeting, yes. I don't want to get too much into the weasel, but we can talk about that afterwards if you'd like. Must update frequently, because like I said earlier, it's a rack and stack movement on Twitter. So the more you tweet, the more likely someone's gonna see it. But it's also very easy to spread misinformation. That can be said about every platform, but Twitter is especially easy, because it's easy to just see it, read it, retweet it, and move on. And then before you know it, it's taken us back when it was an opinion or something like that. So yes, stay on top and stay speedy and things like that with Twitter, but also make sure what you're sharing is factual and within our guidelines. Any other questions about Twitter? I'm gonna quickly go over LinkedIn and the others. LinkedIn, I will be perfectly honest. I'm just now getting into LinkedIn from what I hear I should have done a long time ago. So it's already up to 414 million users. It's very similar as far as tagging other people and using hashtags to find information. It's a great place to promote volunteer opportunities, employment opportunities, and more, like in your community. It's a great place to get on with other entrepreneurs. We do a lot of our employment initiatives on LinkedIn, and it's growing. It's doing a pretty great job. But if you see over here, like LinkedIn, it gives you these options of these hashtags, which I was talking about earlier. So it says, hey, veterans, keep the promise, DAVHQ, these are things that you've hashtagged before. You want to keep that going. So I mean, it's a little bit easy in that aspect. Advantage is networking opportunities. Who are you here again on LinkedIn? A good number on LinkedIn. The news updates are frequent. The answer questions area, let's see if I can't. It's not showing up on here. And profile updates. If you update something about your chapter, it's a pretty easy fix. Disadvantage, first time profile setup. When you first create that setup, it can seem easy, but there's a lot of requirements, especially if you're creating, if you cross in the line of a business page, which for chapters you don't, once you get to the department level, you might. So then it, you have more front work to do to get your patience appropriately. And content overload. Circus can get lost a lot easier on LinkedIn. That doesn't necessarily happen the same way it doesn't face different Twitter. So if somebody's looking for some information for disabled veteran employment and they don't see our stuff, they're gonna go somewhere else and we're gonna lose them. So that's one of the disadvantages because there can be too much out there. Did you have a question? Yes, this is the LinkedIn guy. Do you mind if I start? Please. All right, hi everyone, my name is Rich Pardona, great for a veteran and I'm a star of the media company. So LinkedIn is what I know well and this is a very big point I wanna make about LinkedIn, which is there's over 60 million ultimate decision makers on LinkedIn which is very, very important for you and your chapters and the people within your chapter's meeting. These are the people who are gonna donate. These are the people who are gonna sponsor. These are the people who are gonna support you at a different level than the interactivity that you're gonna have on Facebook and Twitter, which are great, great resources but that's more kind of community-based. If you are looking for the kind of financial support you need or take it to the next level, LinkedIn is absolutely where you need to go and I'm gonna get with Mary we're gonna put together something awesome for LinkedIn because it is absolutely like a great platform right now that you need to be on. It's a little bit, when you go to LinkedIn, you kind of know it's more about business. You might see a couple posts about cats running around and it's really cute and whatever but not really, it's more business and visibility and you all have a lot of value to bring and that value is only gonna be given to people if you're visible and that's why this platform is, in my opinion, like the number one platform and that means that I wanna at least give value to all of your talk about it so if you have LinkedIn, please go on your phone right now and I will teach you how you can all connect with each other right now in less than 60 seconds and you can connect with everyone. Now at least you know you just added a bunch of connections that have mutual interests as you. So if you wanna do this, please take part. If not, then that's fine too but I will show you a very quick trick that will blow everyone away if you ever in public and do this at your next event. So you go to LinkedIn and this is on the app. I think we're good. So we're on the app and then if you go to the bottom left you see a little house, that's a home button. Right next to it there's an icon a figure of two people. Okay, does anyone not see that icon? Fine, you don't have an app, like just don't worry about it and if you email later, see me later. But okay, so there's a button on the bottom with people, two icons, up, middle says find, near, by, hit that. Just so everybody knows, we can't find grades on social media. We're not fundraising anything. No, I'm just, like just, it came up earlier so just let y'all know, don't Facebook on your chat, or don't fundraise on your chapter social platform. This is just connecting individuals. Okay, well it's just no one's on there right now. All right. If you go ahead and move on, if you wanna see me after all of you have been connected, it's just a fantasy, but please look at it and we'll talk about it and we'll get you to help you need it. Thank you. Instagram, Instagram is my name. I love Instagram. It's a lot of fun. Anybody have chapter Instagram pages? Keep trying to push it. People keep digging in their heels. So Instagram, what makes it different? It's primarily a photo sharing platform. In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram. So, all right, why do I want one if I don't want the other? Again, it all goes back to that audience. It goes back to those people that you're trying to get to know about DAP, get involved with DAP, and get help from DAP. So the audience on Instagram is usually a lot younger, a lot more active, and we've gone, I took it over, we had 21,000 followers, we now have 35.3,000 followers. It's like any other platform as far as reaching that new audience. So I encourage you, if you haven't already, to get into the Instagram realm for sure. On Instagram too, they have options for Instagram stories, which are 24 hour posts. They just stay at 24 hours, but your followers get to see them and interact with them and things like that. A way around that 24 hour rule is called highlights. So if we go back and see these green dots at the top, anybody can do that through their Facebook page. All those are our pictures that we posted. Those are not anything other than that. And so if you create a highlight, it gives you that option when you post an Instagram story. If you create a highlight and you file everything under that topic, under that highlight, it can live there forever. So that's the way around kind of the 24 hour thing is Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a lot of fun, same thing as far as reaching out to other people. One thing I like to do, and I use this in this example from the winter sports lane, tag, hashtag, fun, and location finder. So if somebody hits Snowmass Village, Colorado, have nothing to do with the veterans at all, but they find Snowmass, Colorado, and they see our national disabled veterans learn sports funding, now they know what we're doing. Okay, it's just another way to reach people. So the one at the top is a handle, and then a hashtag, and then the location. The Snowmass Village is kind of white here. I just took a screenshot. One of the reasons I love Instagram is because of the growing audience. We probably get new followers every day at least, and sometimes like 50 at a time, if we're very active. So the audience is there, we just have to reach them. So that's one of the things I like the best about Instagram, and it's creative. You can post a photo, you can post a story, you can post a video, you can post the, in this example, you got stickers, you got locations, you can do a poll, like you like chicken or fish, have everybody vote on it. There's that engagement factor there, and engagement's the most important part of social media. Engagement is your likes, your shares, your comments, the engagement with your audience. So there's a lot of opportunity on Instagram to be creative and to show the audience and the potential audience that you're fun too. That DAV is fun, we're not just all business all the time. We're gonna do an Instagram live from Fun Night with Gary Sneaks. So I mean, these are fun ways to reach a new audience that might have the wrong perception of what we do. So it's great if you can get away with it, if you can get out there and use it. People are nervous, but just do it. If it doesn't work, delete it. I mean, don't break any of the rules, but I mean, try it. You're not gonna know if you don't try it. Disadvantage without visually compelling content, and this is the mark. If you have a thumb over the photo, it's not gonna go anywhere. No live links and posts, it's really annoying to me. And by what I mean by that is if I make an Instagram post, I can't say click here for more information. There's no live links. So there's ways around that, but that's one of the disadvantages. And then it can be tricky. If you're posting a story or a photo or videos, you wanna highlight things like that. Yes. Well, I have a permission. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Probably. Yeah. Yeah, if I wouldn't play on that. And you'd ask me if you can get sued. I'm not sure what the laws are on all that though, because the live opportunity is, I'm sure if we live from like a concert that you pay for, I'm sure there's laws against that. So like that would fall under that. I'm just not sure of all the waters around that as far as like shooting a live video. And if somebody walks with the frame or something like that. Expectation of privacy. Is there a public place where there's more arena than anything? Okay, so she said that it's not explicitly posted then you can go live from a concert. Yeah, if somebody sees you and they ask you not to, I mean common respect is don't. You know, one of the things like in the National Mall where we try to shoot is they just don't want tripods because it holds up the crowds. So I mean, it's common respect and indecency, but if I was leading in that, I just admit, we have permission with Gary Sneese's scheme to do a Facebook live. So it's a little bit different. Yes. Oh, they're gonna take it down. Oh, they're gonna need the video. They're gonna need the video. Yeah, because of copyrighted music for sure, for sure. Not gonna go 2D here, but I do wish to all to be aware that DAB is really taking a focus on Pinterest this year. We're trying to reach more families, more people that maybe their loved ones are getting out of the service. And it's a lifestyle platform. And again, I saw the program right in here, but it's about reaching a whole new audience. This is reaching people that may not know that there are these resources available for them and their families. And so just a quick overview, it's a social network that allows users to visually share and discover interests by posting pins as what they're known for Pinterest. And they can browse what others have pinned. So, it is, and I was surprised myself, honestly. I don't know what, because I hadn't used Pinterest since I was planning my baby shower and my son's almost five years old. So, when we started talking about this, what can we do now from the veteran organization standpoint? Why would we wanna do that? And I mean, what we discussed, and it makes sense, and is what we're trying to do, is it's reaching people who are, you know, maybe it's the Carolina Country Music Festival, maybe it's the Winter Sports Clinic again. These things that they're pinning and sharing, as soon as they pin and share it, somebody else sees that they pin and share it. So, Ruvir Float Day, PTSD resources, employment resources. And then there's fun things too, you know, like maybe DAB's like, hey, you know, here's some care package ideas if you have a loved one who's deployed. Here's some things you can bring to the VA hospital. Things like that, it's a lifestyle kind of platform that it's just another avenue to reach people that might not follow us in other places. So, just keep your eye out on that. In YouTube, so we have DAB's National and YouTube channel. It is one of the most popular video sharing platforms and it's the second largest search engine only behind Google. So, YouTube is not going anywhere for a very long time. Bless you. So, how can you use YouTube to spread awareness about DAB? Anybody? I said it's being posted. I said it's being posted. Well, you're actually kind of right. Well, I was gonna say, there we go, long fade. Direct to our YouTube channel and we have all the videos that you see outside. We have all the videos that we cover for different topics for how to become a member, how to videos, resource videos, the videos you see during presentations. So, if you share that on your site, bam, you have that video and now your followers are watching DAB content and learning more about DAB in a very succinct way. Which is how we're absorbing our information usage very quickly and very succinctly. So, direct to our YouTube channel which is youtube.com slash user slash disabled veterans. All right, and for everybody that needs it, here's the website for our YouTube channel. Yes. Yes. YouTube. Yes, so what he asks is if you can set up a link from your own page to the headquartered YouTube and that is absolutely correct. So, you can go to one of our videos, take that link which is just a copy and paste from your browser and then post it in your status and it directs them right back to the YouTube video. Really quick way that way you're not downloading, you're not, you know, there's all these things and you just take it right back to YouTube. Yes. Yep. And if anybody wants to talk about link shortners because that's where you get in the weeds a little bit because if you do it to Twitter then those characters count against your 280 but you can shorten the link. Yes. He has a very, very good point. What he said is when they were meeting their member conference I was filming with their congressman and they brought up points. They were able to direct them to our YouTube channel and show videos that explain our position on things. A, you're not gonna get it wrong. B, it's easy to absorb and C, I mean, just keep, if I have my own chat and a page I probably just have like a weekly video update not even, didn't even have to be new. Just like, oh hey, just a reminder, this is, you know, this is why membership matters or this is why this matters or this is, you know, this is a video of our employment fairs. Things like that because people love videos and that's what you're gonna watch. And so if you share it from your own it's that much easier to get the message across and not get too far into the weeds and it's easily absorbed information. So thank you for that. Okay, tips and tricks. Message on time. Engaging with followers, I mentioned earlier, engagement is the most important part of social media because the platform itself, whether it's Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, they care about your engagement. So the more engagement you have the more credit they're gonna give you as far as where they show your stuff, okay? So engagement is liking, disliking, commenting, sharing. When somebody takes an action on your post it's engagement that matters. Don't be a robot. And I fall into this sometimes, especially if there's like a lot going on I'll come back with, you know, maybe a standard line in BAB, you know, we empower veterans and their families. But answer them, these people are reaching out because they have a question or an issue. So answer them, come back to them, don't be a robot. Don't engage with just your followers. We talked a little bit earlier about Twitter and about how people can find you even if they're not looking for you. If you see them engage back. They'd say a comment or they make a light. Reach out, try to get more of that audience. Tag, tag, tag. I beat that to death this time but I think you guys know what I mean as far as tagging, right? Like just let people know you're there. And then find the most used and relevant hashtags to attract more viewers. You know, veterans, it's a good too. But you know, maybe they don't go on Twitter or Instagram and search for hashtags and see if anybody else is using them. You know, that's how we came up with. What's the hashtag for convention? DADCon. DADCon. Well, what do we do? We spend about half a day going through the interwebs looking at ideas and seeing if they had any traction anywhere else or if they had potential and things like this. So a lot were not found because maybe they had a lot of traction with the dipsh something though that we had no idea about. So, you know, take the time to do that. Get on, kind of think, hmm, I wonder if this hashtag would be relevant to our cause. Search it, see if anybody else is using it. And it helps you. It'll help. Check your social accounts at least daily. Set reminders if you need to, it's very important. Again, and we, all those of us in the comms you have to remind yourselves of this too. Remember what it's like for you if you have a question or if you need something and you reach out and don't hear anything. So just put yourself in their shoes. So if they reach out, even if you can't help them, let them know you've heard them, you know? Because okay, so maybe you can't help them. Maybe it's something way out of our area. I'm sorry that happened to you having called VA or, you know, maybe you can go to this, something like that, just let them know that they've been heard, it's very important. Try to respond within 24 hours. Finally, I bring this up because it's very important whenever I push tagging for you to know who you're tagging. Keep an eye out for the blue check mark. Does everybody know what the blue check mark means? Anybody? Verified. It's a verified account, okay? So if you're tagging a corporation, an individual, a celebrity, make sure that they have the blue profile, the blue check mark. For instance, if we're on Capitol Hill and we're tweeting about like testimony or something like that, not to call, I'm not gonna call any individual congressperson out, but if you just type their name, there could be five different ones that aren't them at all. So check for that blue check mark. So the blue check mark always means, and honestly here, I'm gonna go about that for a minute. There's a lot of DAB pages without the blue check mark that are not DAB pages. Every time you see them with a rock bar intentionally file a complaint, but I mean, that's just the way of the internet. So if you're trying to tag DAB headquarters, make sure there's a blue check mark, okay? Don't just throw that out there. And also that's why I do see one of those fake pages. Please just let one of us know. I have two questions. Him first, and then I'll come back to you. Yes. Over the pictures in my chapter, when I started talking about these things, I can't get there. I don't have a computer. I don't use it. So I have a DA to put that in the calendar, and I just don't have a computer. Well, so what do you have to use as far as our members or our veterans who aren't in the social networking arena and don't have computers and don't want to learn? And honestly, that's just, it's an education thing, but it's also that's why we still have a print magazine and that's why we still have newsletters and things like that, because we don't want to leave anybody out. But what I'm gonna encourage you new as leaders in your chapters and departments is to try to get everybody on board, because it's just a faster way to disseminate information and awareness. So without being lucked out, I would hate for them to even feel that way. So something to encourage, but also even point them to things that we do still have, like the magazine and so on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, we do have an online version of the magazine. We do have our websites. We do have, we're constantly posting updates on social, but as far as like things, physical things outside of the computer, we can use all the magazine. We have our offices and things like that, but yeah, it's beneficial to get more into the social networking realm and reach more people. And this late over here, she asked that the three tweets have check marks. So I think what you're asking, if you retweet from a check marked account, it will be, it'll be fine. So the one who is check marked is the actual profile. It's not what they're posting. So you're not gonna see a blue check mark next to what they posted. You're gonna see it next to their name. That help? Yes. Right. And we can get into that a little bit later. See, there's numbers, like you have to have a certain number as verification and things like that. So I mentioned that more for if you are tagging other people, make sure that it's who you are intending to tag. Yeah, yeah. I was surprised I saw my brother in law had a blue check mark next to his name on Instagram. And I was like, what? He was a promotional baseball player. He's been out of it for a while, but he said the PR people put it on there and leave it on there because at one point he was a professional baseball player. Like that's incredible. Anyway, yes, question, gentlemen. And then ma'am, you were at five, yeah. That's my next. You cannot fundraise on a neighbor's social networks. Also, you are always a representative of DAV. That means we are non-partisan and non-political. I'm going to say that again. We are non-partisan and non-political, okay? Do not post from a DAV platform anything that can be construed political either way or the other. So for those of you that came here, what he asked, he asked, if you're looking at a department level or a state level and you see a chapter that does something like that, like what do you do? I would say just like in the military, start with the chain of command, like say something if they don't do something about it, then pick it up the chain. That's what I would recommend. Yes. You can have a comment. You want us to, we go off on a meeting. Then we can have a chat with you. No, you can't. You can't put money on it. I'm sorry, he asked about fundraising an event. And like if you had an event on social and it's a fundraising event, no, like it's, no, you can't get out. Yes. So if you're having a barbecue, you can have it because you're having a barbecue. No, that gets to, you know, no, yeah, no. He can't join us at the fundraising event. You have a better answer. The IT's seminar will answer those questions. Okay, thank you. Yeah, the IT's and I feel that those questions better than I can and I apologize. Not have all that of a good call, but I don't want to mislead anybody. They're sending you in the wrong direction. It's the next seminar. Okay, it's the next seminar, just take a look. Gentlemen, in the back of the t-shirt, you had a question? No, that's what I'm talking about. Oh, by the way. Yes, absolutely. She's asking if there's top photos or low ones that we should use. And yes, there absolutely are. Come up to me out here and I'll give you the website. They're on our website, DAB.org. Look at our remodels and then I'm also going to show you again, you are a representative of DAB. This is what you do not do on social media as a representative of a Veterans Service Organization. This was the American Union. I don't desire to see anyone's boobs and I'm a veteran. It's this type of seemingly funny innocent post that has women veterans staring clear of the Legion and its posts. And they said, that's fine. You do you, American Legion said this, but thank you for your service. You can probably steer clear of other VSOs as well that can throw jokes around. So not only is it inappropriate content, but then you were basically telling the people that are saying it's inappropriate content that they can go somewhere else. So that's just an example. Are there any questions before we have to go? He's our cultural office. He just started in June. He has taken all these platforms and he's running with them. That information. I'm going to give you mine next, but he's going to be your primary. I'm in the DC office, so mine's mostly like the legislative things, but he's running it all and he does have that awesome beard. Yes, all this, the entire presentation. Everything I said, even if I messed it up, so I'm giving it to you. All right, does everybody have it? Because next is me. My primary job is on the communication staff, but I like to think of myself like the safety net. So if anything needs to be done, I like to take care of it on social. So if you need anything and pay no more Jeremy or if it's legislations specific or if you just want to get me involved, this is my information. Should be an email, so be questions. Happy to help, however. Did you have a question? Yep. Yes, lady in the back. That's, do you know what they thought about creating like Snapchat stickers that kind of thing? Yes. Yeah. That's on our horizon. We've actually tried to get a sticker for, who mentioned before. So, someday we've got what social networking is, how it works, and the most popular ones, and that is a fluid term as far as for popularity. They change constantly. So how many people in here on Facebook? What about Twitter? Keep your hand up. Instagram, keep your hand up. LinkedIn, keep your hand up. Pinterest. What about those tips and tricks and things to remember? So, like I mentioned earlier, I'm a person who's been five years of the life on social media. Do you think that's believable? Yes. Yeah, it can be a time suck for sure. And it's only gonna get more, more and more, more time. So, get used to it, it's here, it's here to stay, and if you use it appropriately and effectively, you can, you can really use it to your benefit for your local chapters, for your apartments, for whatever you are desiring to get done. So, what is it? Well, it's free, right? Yes. Well, you don't have to pay with a credit card. So, there's that. But it's communication that's between you and your audience. So, your audience could be one person, your audience could be five, your audience could be 15, or 500 people. But it's that open communication. One of the biggest things to remember whenever you're on the end of the page monitor and the administration is they need to be heard. They need to feel heard. How annoying is it sometimes? Like, if you reach out to an organization or even like a market or something and you don't hear anything back, that makes you feel like nobody's hearing you, right? Well, so if you are running your page, the most important thing is to get back to those that are reaching out to you. Because they need information and you're the person there that can give it to them. So, it's pretty easy. Kids these days, everybody's getting on social media. And it's increasingly more accessible because of wifi hotspots and things like that. Has anybody, is anybody still having problems with maybe people digging in their heels and not being open to using social networking? So, what, if you're in the seminar, see that you think it's important. So, what are some of the things that they ask you? Why don't they want to get into social networking? Afraid of getting hacked, confusing? They don't want to learn new technology? They don't learn that? Well, that's one thing that you can take back with these of this. For one thing I mentioned earlier, it's not going anywhere. Afraid of getting hacked, that is legitimate. But if you follow the appropriate security procedures, it lightens that, plus as long as you're on it constantly, so you always have an idea of where you are and what's going out. So, what I'm trying to say there is, so you don't go a month and then come back and see that all this activity has happened that you hadn't noticed because you hadn't been hacked. It's better to just stay on top of it. But we can talk a little bit more about that. One of the things about social networking in our veteran space is that's how we're reaching veterans. That's how we're reaching the younger ones or transitioning service members, families. Whenever you're in the military, you get up and move every three years. And so these families, maybe they don't have these resources. So, social networking, for those that are still kind of digging in their heels and don't want to go with it, it doesn't have to be as complicated as some people might think. And security, as I mentioned, is an issue, but we really need to get our chapters of departments, our members, comfortable with this new way of reaching veterans, families, and making sure that they know we're there for them at every level. So, how does it work? So, if you align D&D, if you make it like a, if we were marketing for a company, marketers use social networking to increase brand recognition and encourage brand loyalty. So what would that, how would that translate for DAV? Anybody? The information out there. Keep them up to date. Well, an awareness. You know, if you see the logo, if you see the DAV, if you see articles, if you see these things on your social networking, you're more likely to, when the need arises, say, come, sale of American veterans, DAV, my organization, and you're able to get that audience base, that client base, and bring on, like I mentioned earlier, if you're quick to respond, then you get that loyalty back from the people who are reaching out to you on social networking. It helps promote DAV's voice. Yes, you will. So, after convention, it will go up on our website. Social Networking helps promote DAV's voice and content. So, some of those videos that you've seen around prevention, or some of the photos, some of the photos that you're taking, you can promote those through your own personal channels, and by personal, I mean your chapter department level channels. And so, what I've shown here is an example, is for our Twitter feed, we have a list between, what did I put up here? The, we have legislative, we have updates for veterans, we have dog fairs, we have basically every aspect of what DAV touches, that can be interesting to one of our members, or an audience who doesn't even know about DAV, it goes up there. So, we're able to promote what DAV does frequently, consistently, and accurately. So, these are some of the most popular ones, these are the ones that we've really been focused on. Again, you can get this afterwards, but these are all of our handles to get to our social for the national. DAV for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest. We're really pushing those right now. There's a lot of good, each of them have a lot of good that the others do not. So, there is a reason to have multiple platforms. That was one of my first questions while I started doing this. So, why do we need more than this? So, Facebook is probably the most popular, right? Almost everybody you know has a Facebook page. Even my father who doesn't even have a cell phone has a Facebook page. So, today it has approximately 1.59 billion users worldwide. Very significant, again, even if it goes away, something is gonna come back in its place. So, this is definitely how we wanna reach our audience. Has anybody tried a Facebook Live? How's that works? Wow, that's incredible. Well, one of the benefits of the Facebook Live feature is it sends a notification, as long as they haven't changed their settings, it will send a notification to everybody who follows your page. So, why is that beneficial? Why would you even wanna mess with that? Well, for instance, you know, if we're here at convention and we decided to do a Facebook Live video, every 1.5 million followers we have on Facebook is gonna go notification that we're live right now. So, break that down to your department or your chapter. If your chapter goes live, all the people that are following will say, oh, hey, they're out doing this, or they're helping another veteran do this, or whatever it is that you're doing that's important, it immediately goes to your followers. It has grown from a novelty to a serious broadcasting and marketing tool, and according to Facebook, there's been more than 3.5 billion live broadcasts since it started in 2016. So, thanks for remembering with it, it's always thanks to your connection. One thing that I do is I will test it in private mode, just to make sure that the internet's working, the data's working, the audio's working, and then nobody sees it. And then I'll watch it, make sure it looks good, and then I'll go live. Is that clear on how I, okay. I should have taken a screenshot of that one, but I just thought of it earlier today, I'll add that in here, because it's just something I do, especially from, I have a broadcast background and we never went live, so it's a little nerve-wracking to just turn on the camera and say, hey, everybody, this is what we're gonna say now. So, I always like to check it in private mode first. Component description of the video, I mentioned the notifications, but how many people get annoyed with notifications if you get too many? Yeah, it gets annoying, right? Well, and so you don't want, you don't want your audience to turn off the notifications. You want that notification to stay in place. So, the best way to do that is have a compelling description of the video, because when they see that notification that you're going live, it's gonna tell them what it is. And if it just says, DA is live, why am I gonna watch that, why do I care? So, a compelling description, like whether it be, let's see, what would you go Facebook Live for one of your chapters? Any ideas? Golden Corral function. The Golden Corral function. So, you go Facebook Live, Military Appreciation Night, helping veterans, veterans get a free meal, working with Golden Corral. Something you're telling the people that want to actually watch that video and not turn off the notifications. Tag your location. You're doing a Golden Corral, tag Golden Corral. I'll get into that a little bit more in some of the other platforms, but tag, tag, tag, tag, tag, yes. Only the people that are in the group and the only people that are following. So, it wouldn't go out on your personal page unless you shared it on your personal page, but for instance, if I did it from DAV National, it would notify everybody who follows DAV National. Did that answer your question? Okay. And then engage before, during, and after. This is another tip as far as getting, to making sure that your audience knows that you're with them, because again, this is a two-way communication. This is not just throwing communication at them. This is a two-way conversation or more. So, tell them beforehand, hey, later today, we're gonna be at Golden Corral for Military Appreciation Night. Or, you know, during, have somebody, one thing that our team does is we'll say, hey, I'm gonna go Facebook Live, can you keep an eye on it? You know, answer questions as they come up in comments or things like that. Work on it together to make sure that people are being heard and answered. And that's also another way to tell if you are having any technical difficulties, if they can't hear you or if the video flipped up, or whatever it is, if you're monitoring those comments, you know, kind of tag them. And then after. I always look into Facebook Live videos with, you know, ask us anything in the comments. You know, we'll be sure to get back to you. Or something like there's more about military appreciation night in the comments. That way people have somewhere to go to get more answers. Any questions about Facebook Live before I move on? Has anybody tried it? It's a little nerve-wracking. Did you have a question? Mm-hmm, yes. So, when it's going, you can see how many are watching. And then after the fact that we'll post it, and then you could go in there and see how many have watched it. And you could also click on Real Time and see how many were watching it in real time. Yes, ma'am. So, she's saying that they've had some successful Facebook Live so they go out and clean them more of the Washington DC. So, I'll try to break my habit of asking crowd questions. Oh. They left too soon. Who has heard of the Facebook 20% rule? Anybody? Some people have. Okay, so Facebook is a company. And companies go by profits. Well, the 20% rule for Facebook is that they prefer you have less text in your graphics before it starts looking like advertisements. So, what does that mean for you? All right? What it means is the more text your photo has, the least likely it's gonna show up in your audience's feed. Is that clear how that works? Okay, so if I posted a photo of Facebook, and here's a, I have some examples on here. Okay, so if I posted this photo, and it's probably 90% text. Volunteer, joining, donating. And when I put it into Facebook's, which I'm gonna give you guys a link to, they're text overlay tool. It tells me that it's high. High text, which means it's less likely going to show up on other people's feed. Or did I just say the same thing twice? Where are you checking that out? That's where I'm going next. So, this website right here, if you wanna write it down or if you wanna throw it from me later, it's Facebook.com, ads, tools, text, underscore. That's an underscore. You can't see it between text and overlaying. That is a fantastic feature that Facebook has that you can plug your graphic, plug your photo, and make sure that it is at a high risk or a low risk of being hidden. Y'all just wanna give me a nod when we get there. Oh, this is a lot of ads. So, you might have a barbecue or something like that, and so you have a photo that you have text on. Text on graphics is more and more popular as we have all those apps on our phones that help edit. And you see a lot of text on photos that are trying to recruit people into coming to things or I see a lot of sales stuff, maybe they write all over what it is. And so, if you have too much of that, that's when Facebook kind of buries it underneath. Does that answer your question? On the department or the staffers? Hmm? No, no, no, no, okay. So, if you're an admin for your chapter and you post a photo with too much text on it, then your members are less likely to see it. That's what that means, in Facebook. Because Facebook prioritizes what is shown. Yes. So this one I use, text is okay, will run normally. So, if I, that's better. Thank you. Thank you. That hurts, that hurts. Okay, when you have too much text on a photo, Facebook is gonna think that it's an advertisement and it's not going to show it or following your page unless you're paying for it. So, if you have too much text and there's a graphic photoshop writing and it's not gonna show up like the blue one or two. Yes? No. Well, that's because if you look at the ratings here, so what this gentleman said is he posts a lot with text and they go right up, it, yeah, don't relax at all. This gentleman said that he does have photos that he posts with text and they show up just fine. You don't necessarily always know how they're showing up to the people who are following your page though. That's the difference. If I'm following your page and it has a lot of text on it and Facebook says that it has too much text, I might not see it. So, I'm following you but I can't see it. Fine, that's fine. That's fine, that's fine. So, she said that he's asking more about the text underneath the photo. If it's not on the photo, this rule doesn't apply. But that website that I gave you at the beginning, that explains it a lot as well, okay? So, and that's where you can also upload what you wanna post and see if it fits the rules or not. So, if it is the Facebook, creates a central page, easy to check, simple layout, pretty easy to change pictures around and things like that, even though they do like to change things upon us every once in a while, it's pretty intuitive once you get in the platform and start creating your pages. You can share a lot of information. You can share need to know. You can share news, you can share funny things. You can talk about events. You can create events to have people come to your meetings. You can create events to have people come to maybe like a barbecue day or a picnic or something like that and people, again with their phones, it pops up and reminds you of this event. And you can do a variety of photos, videos, links. Facebook Live, you have a large mental audience and a lot of different ways to post. So, there's a lot of advantages there and so if you still have people digging in your heels, make sure that they understand that this is a fantastic way to reach your community. And we're not talking about just the veteran community, we're talking about your entire community because if your city, your town knows what you're out there doing, they're more the one way to help you or help fund rates for you or volunteer for you, volunteer drivers helping out the transportation number. So, if you have an engaging Facebook page that you can get out and then people search, you know, maybe they search, I'm from Vanita, Oklahoma, small town, little dot on the map. So, if someone searched Vanita, Oklahoma, they're gonna see if I had a DIV chapter page. So, it's just something to keep in mind. But disadvantage, very limited control over comments. You don't wanna go through and delete comments you don't like. Some people like to do that because it's easier but that's not really what you do because, again, it's your back and forth communication with your audience. So, if somebody posts a comment that you don't like and I'm not talking about something vulgar, I'm not talking about something completely inappropriate, I just mean like a disagreement or even even a little argumentative, okay? As long as you're not throwing out cuss words or things like that. But you don't wanna delete the disagreement is what I'm trying to say because that's what it's for, it's open communication, okay? But because of that, it can be very time consuming to stay on top of it because you don't want vulgar and inappropriate comments. So, you have to check it frequently and say daily, at least daily. So, if you take this on, it's really important to check those messages, those comments, those reviews daily. And then if you have something negative, how good does it feel if you put yourself in the position of the consumer, right? So, say you had a problem, I just had a problem with spirit airlines, worst flight down here ever. So, what did I do? I tweeted spirit airlines and they reached out to me. So, if you put yourself in the mind of a consumer and you think about that with DAV and our potential audience, if they reach out to DAV and nobody answers them, they're gonna feel, they're gonna feel that. If they reach out with a complaint and we don't answer them, if somebody else comes along and sees that complaint or that critique and they don't see that DAV answered, they're less likely to think that they wanna get involved with us. So, it's always good to answer positive and negative. Just remember that, don't just delete the negative stuff. But, it's very time consuming. Twitter. Twitter is great for real time updates. I highly encourage all departments and chapters to have Twitter. It's a little bit, it's a little more string lines in Facebook as far as posting information. And I'll talk about this in disadvantages, but how Twitter does a Twitter, how Twitter does a Twitter, how Twitter feeds work is, as it comes, it gets sort of, it's kind of like a queue, right? So every time there's a tweet, yours gets bumped down a little bit more. So if you're tweeting on behalf of your organization, you wanna keep them coming, keep them coming. But there's a less of a lift than say with a Facebook post or something like that because it can really just be, hey, we're here at the DAV National Commission in Orlando, great to see my friends. I mean, it really can just be that simple. So Twitter's a great platform to use, especially like on the days of events or if somebody's coming to speak, like if you have somebody, okay, guest speaker at one of your chapter meetings or something, and you can tweet what they're saying, tweet quotes, take a picture, tweet it up there. It's a really great tool to use. Currently, there's 974 million users of Twitter. There's actually an old video of me, probably almost 10 years ago now, of interviewing somebody about social media and I say, what is Twitter? I just, it's so dumbfounded and my colleagues like to bring that up every once in a while because now I'm all about Twitter, but. So hashtags, this is where Twitter can get fusing. Hashtags, username, mentions and handles, okay? A hashtag is going to allow you to search something very specific, very quickly. So you hashtag veterans and somebody in Utah clicks on hashtag veterans every post that has come up and you can sort it by most recent and things like that, it's going to show up for them. So if you're a hashtag veteran, hashtag VA, hashtag disabled American veterans, hashtag benefit, hashtag keep the promise, all those things are gonna pop up for anybody who's looking for it. So hashtag is also important. People can kind of get carried away with hashtag, myself included, nobody's gonna look for hashtag, I fear airlines lost my luggage. You know what I mean? So you wanna keep it simple and it also counts for character count, but hashtag is important. And as organizations, if you run it from your chapter in your department page, one of the things that we like to do is we have a list of hashtags to use. So if it's legislative related, we like to keep promise. If it's any time I can hashtag veterans I do, any time, women veterans, I mean there's just all these things because you don't know who's going to click on the hashtag. And the hashtags are pretty much across all platforms, they're most important on Twitter. And Instagram. Yes, Dave. So Dave asked if hashtags were only for Twitter or if you could put them on Facebook, if you could put them on any platform. No, Twitter won't get a lot. If you hashtag it on Facebook, Facebook's gonna show you who helps us hashtag it on Facebook. If you hashtag it on Twitter, same thing, Instagram, same thing, LinkedIn. LinkedIn actually has a really cool way to recommend hashtags that other people are already using, which is kind of nice. So if you're making a LinkedIn post, it will recommend someone else's posting about veterans may use this hashtag. And so that's helpful. But to answer your question, it will allow you to track them in that platform. Thank you. Yes. Is there a plugin to post across platforms if I was making a Facebook post, could I also have it post to Twitter and Instagram and other things, automatically? That's a good question. And what she asked in the back is, she asked that there was like a plugin that if you could post it on one, it would go across all. There's paid services. Okay, so she said that there are some free apps for that. There are, and I would be hesitant just because they can kind of get out. A service that we use is called Sprout. And then there's other, if you go with me after, I think that's the names of some of the other ones. But what that allows you to do is have one login for all of them and then you can decide what goes where. So it is beneficial if you want to invest that money, really. Free apps, I'm sure they do a good job. I haven't come across any that I've heard good things about. Yes, sir. Okay, so you have to go to Twitter. So if you're online, www.quitter.com, you can also download the app on your Droid or iPhone. And usually once you're logged in, it keeps you logged in if you decide to do that. Yes, sir. For like the posting that she was talking about? Okay. No, you're never charged for any of that. Yeah, they make it on that. The more followers you get, the more ads that show up in between your posts. Yes, so the more followers you get, the more Facebook will push ads on your page. But you don't have to pay, it's not like after somebody tweets you start paying. Does that answer your question? Yes, sir, ma'am. That's very true, good point. So she brought up about the, well in Facebook, on Instagram as well, but there's often the opportunity to say also post to Twitter, post to Instagram, share to that. That's a very good point that I didn't even think about because I never use it for DAB. So what she wanted out was when we were talking about the Sprout earlier as far as the platform that we can share across different Twitter, Facebook, Instagram all at the same time. She's pointing out that if you make a post, it gives you the option to share to Twitter or share to Instagram or share to another platform. Just on Instagram, well Twitter will say you can post this to Facebook. I think there's more, I don't know. Yeah, Twitter too. Yeah, Twitter too, yeah, yeah. So what she's saying is that it goes between Twitter and Instagram, or Facebook and Instagram. Well there's two different platforms so you would have two different audiences. She's asking the difference between Twitter and Facebook. And then the content is usually different because it's not a word limit on Facebook but there's a character limit on Twitter. Also as far as, the other thing I want to be on this slide is tagging and mentions and handles of other people's Twitter, but the right way, maybe you tag your city's mayor or something like that or the manager of the Golden Corral before Military Appreciation Night. So there's a lot more interactivity on Twitter than there is necessarily on Facebook. So Facebook you have a lot more to work with but Twitter is faster. You don't have to be, they can follow you, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you don't have to be. Twitter's most more public. Don't put anything private on Twitter. It shouldn't be anywhere, but. And then, so from hashtag, does everybody understand what I was trying to say about hashtags? Any questions about hashtags? And tagging and handles, like I said before, I'm always, you can tag somebody, tag somebody. So Chairman Takano up here the other day, we were tagging him, tagging the committee, tagging everybody. Just tag, tag, tag, yes. Okay, so tagging is, tagging is basically hyperlinking through another person's page. So if I were to tag the AD, then it would show to the AD's followers. So if Mary got on and wrote, hey I'm at the AD National Convention, tag the AD, then it would show up on the AD's page. So that gets more people to see what you're posting. And that's the ad symbol. Yes, bold blue, depending on the platform. So his question is, what is tagging? Was opposed to what that answer is. So tagging is really just, it's linking your post to another entity's post. And then their audience can see it. One of the things to keep in, I run my own Facebook page at home for a small business. And one of the things that I've noticed is when reaching out to specific communities within Facebook, like Facebook pages, you have to be a member of that page in order to tag other people or nobody's gonna see it. So if you're looking for specific, like for example, disgruntled vets or the vets are get bent or any of those veteran communities, they close their pages and keep them private so that they can vet the people that go in them to make sure they're actually veterans. In order for you to be able to tag them, you have to be in that page. That's true. So if somebody else's page, what he's talking about is if you have, if their private percentage are set not to be tagged unless you follow them so that they know who can tag them, you might not be able to do it. It's less likely on Twitter, but Facebook, yeah, it depends on the privacy settings. You can't tag them as you're not already following them. If that helps. If you have your settings set up too, you can. Yeah, like for instance, we have cross events with recruit military for job fairs and recruit military will tag us and my phone will constantly be going because it always tells at the beginning of the month because they're setting them up for the rest of the month. So my phone will just be going off to recruit military, tag deity, recruit military, tag deity. So yeah, if you have your settings set to that, you can set them not to get a notification, but the best way to have them is to have them that way you know who's tagging you. Was there another question? Oh, okay. He said he turns his notifications off and then he just goes and checks them. But check them frequently. Handles are user names. So when you tag, you tag them with their handle. So like the ad's Twitter handle is at the ad HQ. That insert, I didn't see where it came from, okay. So it's easy to follow trending topics integrated very easily with cell phones. Yes. Yes. On the national Twitter. Mm-hmm. Yep. And then again, so the reason why this matters, let me break away from the power point. We just have like a hard drive. The reason why this matters is because social networking is essential to getting more members and getting more people aware of our organization. So if I tag Golden Corral, then anybody who's following Golden Corral is going to see that DAB tagged them. Oh, what's DAB? Now they click on our page. Now they go to our page and they see our videos and our posts and our posts and our updates and the information about us. Now we have possibly one more follower. We have that one more follower. Oh, my brother-in-law's wife is a veteran. She might be interested in this organization. Now we have a veteran that can use our services but didn't know about it. So that's what it all comes down to. So I'm sorry if I'm talking too much in the weeds, but what it all comes down to is the way social networking works. If you use it and you use it well, you can make sure that every veteran and their family who needs help has awareness about the DAB. And if they want to be a member, they have that too at the palm of their hand, okay? All right, so again, this is Twitter. Really easy with cell phones, especially if you use the Twitter app with real-time updates linked to other profiles like we mentioned with tagging. And it's easy to communicate with your audience and attract new followers. Retweeting is so fast, especially if you get on and you retweet like a news story from a publication. And then somebody else retweets that. It just keeps going. So retweeting is retweeting again. But it's sharing a different tweet, okay? So if you are on there as your page and you retweet the information, then that's, again, you're getting more attention to your particular page. Disadvantages, sure. Anybody who knows Twitter knows that there is a character limit. 280 characters, and that includes links, handles, and hashtags. So if you share a link on Twitter and you don't have a link shortener, all those characters in that link count against that 280 character limit. So I used to be, I'm still, it's hard not to be, but very particular about grammar and punctuation and things like that. And when you get on Twitter, you just kind of have to let some of that go. Maybe shorten or use numbers to set a letter. Yes. The tagging, yes. Yes. So if you tag character in Chicano at reticano, those characters count against a 280. So that's one of the disadvantages. But you can always just keep tweeting. Yes. If you want to get too much into the weeds a little bit, we can talk about that afterwards if you'd like. Most of it frequently, because like I said earlier, it's a rack and stack movement on Twitter. So the more you tweet, the more likely someone's going to see it. But it's also very easy to spread misinformation. That can be said about every platform, but Twitter is especially easy because it's easy to just see it, read it, retweet it, and move on. And then before you know it, it's taken us back when it was an opinion or something like that. So yes, stay on top and stay speedy and things like that with Twitter, but also make sure what you're sharing is factual and within our guidelines. Any other questions about Twitter? I'm gonna quickly go over LinkedIn and the others. LinkedIn, I will be perfectly honest. I'm just now getting into LinkedIn from what I hear I should have done a long time ago. So it's already up to 414 million users. It's very similar as far as tagging other people and using hashtags to find information. It's a great place to promote volunteer opportunities, employment opportunities, and more, like in your community. It's a great place to get on with other entrepreneurs. We do a lot of our political initiatives on LinkedIn. And it's growing, it's doing a pretty great job. But as you see over here, like LinkedIn, it gives you these options of these hashtags that I was talking about earlier. So it says, hey, veteran, keep the promise, DAVHQ, these are things that you've hashtagged before. You wanna keep that going. So it's a little bit easy in that aspect. Advantage is networking opportunities. You wanna hear it again at LinkedIn? We have a good number, a good number on LinkedIn. The news updates are frequent. The answer to questions area. See if I can't, it's not showing up on here. And profile updates. If you update something about your chapter, it's a pretty easy fix. Disadvantage, first time profile setup. When you first create that setup, it can seem easy, but there's a lot of requirements, especially if you're creating, if you cross in the line of a business page, which for chapters you don't, once you get to the department level, you might. So then it, you have more front work to do to get your patience appropriately. And content overload. Circus can get lost a lot easier on LinkedIn. That doesn't necessarily happen the same way it does with Facebook and Twitter. So if somebody's looking for some information for disabled veteran employment and they don't see our stuff, they're gonna go somewhere else and we're gonna lose them. So that's one of the disadvantages because there can be too much out there. Did you have a question? Yes, this is the LinkedIn guy. Do you mind if I share it? Please. All right, hi, everyone, my name is Rich Cardona, great for a veteran and I started the media company. So LinkedIn is what I know well, and this is a very big point I wanna make about LinkedIn, which is there's over 60 million ultimate decision makers on LinkedIn, which is very, very important for you and your chapters and people within your chapter's meeting. These are the people who are gonna donate. These are the people who are gonna sponsor. These are the people who are gonna support you on a different level than the interactivity that you're gonna have on Facebook and Twitter, which are great, great resources, but that's more kind of community-based. If you are looking for the kind of financial support you need or take it to the next level, LinkedIn is absolutely where you need to go. And I'm gonna get with Mary, we're gonna put together something also for LinkedIn because it is absolutely like a great platform right now that you need to be on. It's a little bit, when you go to LinkedIn, you kind of know it's more about business. You might see a couple posts about cats running around and it's really cute and whatever, but not really, it's more business and visibility. And you all have a lot of value to bring and that value is only gonna be given to people if you're visible and that's why this platform is in my opinion like number one platform. And that being said, I wanna at least give value while I'm up here talking about it. So if you have LinkedIn, please go on your phone right now and I will teach you how you can all connect with each other right now in less than 60 seconds and it'll connect with everyone. Now at least you know you just added a bunch of connections that have mutual interest as you. So if you wanna do this, please take part. If not, then that's fine too, but I will show you a very quick trick that will blow everyone away if you ever have a look into this at your next event. So you go to LinkedIn and then there's, and this is on the app, I think we're good. So we're on the app and then if you go to the bottom left you see a little house, that's a phone button. Right next to it there's an icon with the figure of two people, okay? Does anyone not see that icon? Fine, you don't have an app, just don't worry about it and if you- Find this value later. See me later. But okay, so there's a button on the bottom with people, two icons. That you'll see in the top middle says find near by, hit that. Just so everybody knows we can't fundraise on social media. We're not fundraising anything. No, I'm just, it came up earlier, so just let y'all know, don't Facebook on your chat, or don't fundraise on your chapter social platform. This is just connecting individuals. Okay, well it's just no one's on there right now. All right. You go ahead and move on, if you want to see me after, all of you can be connected in this in some fantasy, but please look and talk about it in a way that'll help you need it. Thank you. All right, Instagram is my baby. I love Instagram. It's a lot of fun. Anybody have chapter Instagram pages? Keep trying to push it. People keep digging in their heels. So Instagram, what makes it different? It's primarily a photo sharing platform. In 2012, Facebook bought Instagram. So all right, why do I want one if I don't want the other? Again, it all goes back to that audience. It goes back to those people that you're trying to get to know about DAV, get involved with DAV, and get help from DAV. So the audience on Instagram is usually a lot younger, a lot more active, and we've gone, I took it over, we had 21,000 followers, we now have 35.3,000 followers. It's like any other platform as far as reaching that new audience. So I encourage you, if you haven't already, to get into the Instagram realm for sure. On Instagram too, they have options for Instagram stories, which are 24 hour posts, they just stay at 24 hours, but your followers get to see them and interact with them and things like that. A way around that 24 hour rule is called highlights. So if we go back and see these green dots at the top, anybody can do that through their Facebook page. All those are our pictures that we posted. Those are not anything other than that. And so if you create a highlight, it gives you that option when you post an Instagram story. If you create a highlight and you file everything under that topic, under that highlight, it can live there forever. So that's the way around kind of the 24 hour thing with Instagram stories. Instagram stories are a lot of fun, same thing as far as reaching out to other people. One of the things I like to do, and I use this in this example to know what our source line, tag, hashtag, fun, and location finder. So if somebody hits Snowmass Village, Colorado, have nothing to do with the veterans at all, but they find Snowmass, Colorado, and then they see our national stable veterans learn sports funding, now they know what we're doing. Okay, it's just another way to reach people. So the one at the top is a handle, and then a hashtag, and then the location, the Snowmass Village, it's kind of white here. I just took a screenshot. One of the reasons I love Instagram is because of the growing audience. We probably get new followers every day at least, and sometimes like 50 at a time if we're very active. So the audience is there, we just have to reach them. So that's one of the things I like the best about Instagram is creative. You can post a photo, you can post a story, you can post a video, you can post the, this example, you got stickers, you got locations, you can do a poll, like you like chicken or fish, have everybody vote on it. There's that engagement factor there, and engagement is the most important part of social media. Engagement is your lights, your shares, your comments, the engagement with your audience. So there's a lot of opportunity on Instagram to be creative and to show the audience and potential audience that you're fun too, that DAV is fun. We're not just all business all the time. We're gonna do an Instagram live from Fun Night with Gary Sneets. So I mean, these are fun ways to reach a new audience that might have the wrong perception of what we do. So it's great if you can get away with it, if you can get out there and use it. People are nervous, but just do it. If it doesn't work, delete it. I mean, don't break any of the rules, but I mean, try it. You're not gonna know if you don't try it. Disadvantage without visually compelling content, and this is the mark. If you have a thumb over the photo, it's not gonna go anywhere. No live links and posts, it's really annoying to me. And by what I mean by that is if I make an Instagram post, I can't say click here for more information. There's no live link. So there's ways around that, but that's one of the disadvantages. And then it can be tricky if you're posting a story or a photo or videos if you wanna highlight things like that. Yes? You sue? Well, I have this permission. Yeah, yeah. You're gonna do live comparison. Yes. You get sued? Probably, yeah. Yeah, if I wouldn't play on that. And you've asked me if you can get sued. I'm not sure what the laws are on all that though, because the live opportunity is, I'm sure if you live from a concert that you pay for, I'm sure there's laws against that. So that would fall under that. I'm just not sure of all the laws around that as far as shooting a live video and if somebody walks through the frame or something like that. Expectation of privacy. You're in a welcome place, you're welcome to the public, there's more screenings and things. Okay, so she said that it's not explicitly posted then you can go live from a concert. Yeah, if somebody sees you and they ask you not to, I mean, common respect is don't. You know, one of the things like in the national mall where we try to shoot is they just don't want tripods because it holds up the crowds. So I mean, it's common respect and indecency, but if I was leading in that, I just admit, we have permission with Gary Cease's team to do a live, so it's a little bit different. Yes. Oh, they're gonna take it down. They're gonna be in the video. They're gonna be in the video. Yeah, he's getting conscious of copyrighted music, for sure, for sure. I know 2D here, but I do want you all to be aware that DAB is really taking a focus on Pinterest this year. We're trying to reach more families, more people that maybe their loved ones are getting out of the service. And it's a lifestyle platform. And again, I saw the broken record here, it's about reaching a whole new audience. This is reaching people that may not know that there are these resources available for them and their families. And so just a quick overview, it's a social network that allows users to visually share and discover interests by posting pins as what they're known for Pinterest. And they can browse what others have pinned. So it is, and I was surprised myself honestly. I kind of went, what, because I hadn't used Pinterest since I was planning my baby shower and my son's almost five years old. So when we started talking about this, what can we do that from a veteran organization standpoint? Why would we want to do that? And what we discussed, it makes sense and that's what we're trying to do is it's reaching people who are, maybe it's the Carolina Country Music Fest, maybe it's the Winter Sports Clinic again. These things that they're pinning and sharing as soon as they pin and share it, somebody else sees that they pin and share it. So Ruvir Float Day, PTSD resources, employment resources. And then there's fun things too. Like maybe DAB is like, hey, here's some care package ideas if you have a loved one who's deployed. Here's some things you can bring to the VA hospital. Things like that is a lifestyle kind of platform that it's just another avenue to reach people that might not follow us in other places. So just keep your eye out on that. In YouTube, so we have DAB's national YouTube channel. It is one of the most popular video sharing platforms and it's the second largest search engine only behind Google. So YouTube is not going anywhere for a very long time. Bless you. So how can you use YouTube to spread awareness about DAB? Anybody? Is that a thing you just said? Is that a thing we both said? Well, you're actually kind of right. Well, I was gonna say, there we go, long fade. Direct to our YouTube channel and we have all the videos that you see outside. We have all the videos that we cover for different topics for how to become a member, how-to videos, resource videos, the videos you see during presentations. So if you share that on your site, bam, you have that video and now your followers are watching DAB content and learning more about DAB in a very succinct way, which is how we're absorbing our information usage very quickly and very succinctly. So direct to our YouTube channel which is youtube.com slash user slash disabled veterans. All right, and for everybody that needs it, here's the website for our YouTube channel. Yes, yes, YouTube. Yes, so what he asks is if you can set up a link from your own page to the headquartered YouTube and that's absolutely correct. So you can go to one of our videos, take that link, which is just a copy and paste from your browser and then post it in your status and it directs them right back to the YouTube video. Really quick way, that way you're not downloading, you're not, you know, there's all these things and you just take it right back to YouTube. Yes, yep. And if anybody wants to talk about link shorteners because that's where you get in the weeds a little bit because if you do it to Twitter then those characters count because they're 280, but you can shorten the link. Yes, he has a very, very good point. What he said is when they were meeting their midwinter conference I was filming with their congressman and they brought up points. They were able to direct them to our YouTube channel and show videos that explain our position on things. A, you're not gonna get it wrong. B, it's easy to absorb. And C, I mean, just keep, if I have my own tap to page I probably just have like a weekly video update not even, didn't even have to be new. Just like, oh hey, just a reminder, this is, you know, this is why membership matters or this is why this matters or this is, you know, this is a video of our employment fairs. Things like that because people love videos and that's what they're gonna watch. And so if you share it from your own it's that much easier to get the message across and not get too far in the weeds and it's easily absorbed information. So thank you for that. Okay, tips and tricks. Message on time. Engaging with followers, I mentioned earlier, engagement is the most important part of social media because the platform itself, whether it's Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, they care about your engagement. So the more engagement you have, the more credit they're gonna give you as far as where they show your stuff, okay? So engagement is liking, disliking, commenting, sharing. When somebody takes an action on your post it's engagement and it matters. Don't be a robot. And I fall into this sometimes especially if there's like a lot going on I'll come back with maybe a standard line in DAV. We empower veterans and their families. But answer them. These people are reaching out because they have a question or an issue. So answer them, come back to them, don't be a robot. Don't engage with just your followers. We talked a little bit earlier about Twitter and about how people can find you even if they're not looking for you. If you see them, engage back. They'd say a comment or they'd make a light. Reach out, try to get more of that audience. Tag, tag, tag. I beat that to death this time but I think you guys know what I mean as far as tagging, right? Like just let people know you're there. And then find the most used and relevant hashtags to attract more viewers. Veterans, it's a go-to. But maybe they'll go on Twitter or Instagram and search for hashtags and see if anybody else is using them. That's how we came up with. What's the hashtag for convention? D-A-V-E, common. Well, what do we do? We spend about half a day going through the interwebs looking at ideas and seeing if they had any traction anywhere else or if they had the central and things like this. So a lot were not found because maybe they had a lot of traction with the dips. Something though that we had no idea about. So you know, take the time to do that. Get on, kind of think, hmm, I wonder if this hashtag would be relevant to our cause. Search it, see if anybody else is using it. It helps you, it'll help. Check your social accounts at least daily. Set reminders if you need to, it's very important. Again, and all those of us in the comms, you have to remind ourselves of this too. Remember what it's like for you if you have a question or if you need something and you reach out and don't hear anything. So just put yourself in their shoes. So if they reach out, even if you can't help them, let them know you've heard them, you know? Because okay, so maybe you can't help them. Maybe it's something way out of our area. I'm sorry that happened to you having called VA or maybe you can go to this, something like that. Just let them know that they've been heard. It's very important. Try to respond within 24 hours. Finally, I bring this up because it's very important whenever I push tagging for you to know who you're tagging. Keep an eye out for the blue check mark. Does everybody know what the blue check mark means? Anybody? Verified. It's a verified account, okay? So if you're tagging a corporation, an individual, a celebrity, make sure that they have the blue profile, the blue check mark. For instance, if we're on Capitol Hill and we're tweeting about like testimony or something like that. Not to call, I'm not gonna call any individual congressperson out, but if you just type their name, there could be five different ones that aren't them at all. So check for that blue check mark. So the blue check mark always means, and honestly, here, I'm going about that for a minute, there's a lot of DAB pages without the blue check mark that are not DAB pages. Every time we see them or they're brought to our attention, we file a complaint, but I mean, that's just the way of the internet. So if you're trying to tag DAB headquarters, make sure there's a blue check mark. Okay, don't just throw that out there. And also, FYI, if you do see one of those fake pages, please just let one of us know. I have two questions. Him first, and then I'll come back to you. Yes. Yeah, I'm sorry, I'm talking about these things. I can't get here, I don't have a computer. I don't use this. So I have a DA to put that in the calendar, and I just don't know who's got the red check mark. Well, so what do you have to use as far as our members or our veterans who aren't in the social networking arena and don't have computers and don't want to learn? And honestly, that's just, it's an education thing, but it's also that's why we still have a print magazine and that's why we still have newsletters and things like that, because we don't want to leave anybody out. But what I'm gonna encourage you new as leaders in your chapters and departments is to try to get everybody on board, because it's just a faster way to disseminate information and awareness. So without being left out, I would hate for anybody to feel that way. So something to encourage, but also even point them to things that we do still have, like the magazine and so on. I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, we do have an online version of the magazine. We do have our websites. We do have, we're constantly posting updates on social, but as far as like things, physical things outside of the computer, and I think we have our offices and things like that, but yeah, it's beneficial to get more into the social networking realm and reach more people. And this late over here. She asks, does a retweet have check marks? So I think what you're asking, if you retweet from a check marked account, it will be, it'll be fine. So the one with check marks is the actual profile. It's not what they're posting. So you're not gonna see a blue check mark next to what they posted. You're gonna see it next to their name. That help? Yes. Right. And we can get into that a little bit later. There's numbers, like you have to have a certain number and verification and things like that. So I mentioned that more for if you are tagging other people, make sure that it's who you are intending to tag. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was like so surprised I saw my brother in law had a blue check mark next to him on Instagram and I was like, what? He was a promotional baseball player. He's been out of it for a while, but he said the PR people put it on there and leave it on there because at one point he was a professional baseball player. That's incredible. Anyway, yes, question, gentlemen. And then ma'am, you were at five, yeah. That's my next. You cannot fundraise on a neighbor's system that works. Also, you are always a representative of DAB. That means we are non-partisan and non-political. I'm going to say that again. We are non-partisan and non-political. Do not post from a DAB platform anything that can be construed political either way or the other. Yes. So for those of you that came here, what he asked, he asked, if you're looking at the department level or state level and you see a chapter that does something like that, what do you do? I would say just like in the military start with the chain of command, like say something if they don't do something about it then pick it up the chain. That's what I would recommend. Yes. You can't. No, you can't. You can't put money on it. Sorry, he asked about fundraising an event. Like if you had an event on social and it's a fundraising event, no, he can't get out. Yes. So if you're having a barbecue, you can have it because you're having a barbecue. No, that gets to the end. No, yeah, no. He can't join us at the fundraising event. You have a better answer. The IT's seminar will answer those questions. Okay, thank you. I need to know fielding those questions better than I can and I apologize to not have all that on my back and call but I don't wanna mislead anybody or send you in the wrong direction. It's the next seminar. Okay, it's the next seminar, just stay put. Gentlemen, in the back of this heel shirt, do you have a question? No, that's my question. Like, do you have any? Okay. Yes, absolutely. She's asking if there's top photos or low ones that we should use and yes, there absolutely are. Come up to me after and I'll give you the website. On our website, dab.org. Finally, I just wanna say don't get argumentative and then I'm also gonna show you again you are a representative of DAB. This is what you do not do on social media as a representative of a veteran service organization. This was the American Union. Woman Veteran who I actually served with said I have no desire to see anyone's boobs and I'm a veteran. It's this side of the seemingly funny innocent post that has women veterans staring clear of the Legion and its posts and they said that's fine. You do you, American Legion said this, but thank you for your service. You can promise you're clear of other reassoes as well that there's no jokes around. So not only is it inappropriate content, but then you were basically telling the people that are saying this is inappropriate content that they can go somewhere else. So let's just give you an example. Are there any questions before we have to go? What's my email? This will be a manager. He's our culture in office. He just started in June. He has taken all these platforms and he's running with them. Take down his contact information. I'm gonna give you mine next. He's gonna be your primary. I'm in the DC office and mine's mostly like the legislative things, but he's running it all and he does have that awesome beard. Yes, all of this will be on the website. Okay, the entire presentation. Even if I messed it up, I'm giving too much. All right, does everybody have that? Because next is me. Okay? So the primary job on the communication staff, but I like to think of myself as like the safety net. So if anything needs to be done, I can take care of it on social. So if you need anything and you think I will share me or if it's legislation specific or if you just wanna give me a call, this is my information. Shoot me an email to be questions. Happy to help, however. Did you have a question? Nope? Yes, lady in the back. Thanks. Do you know what they are gonna say? Yes. Okay, they're right. Yep. That's on our horizon. We've actually tried to get a sticker for, who mentioned before. Okay. So, Sunday, we hope.