FIRST Tech Challenge Social Media tips, tricks, and guidelines

You’d be hard pressed to find someone these days who is NOT using at least one social media channel some of the time. It is one of the ways that modern humans are connecting with each other and sharing information. Businesses and organizations have also found it useful in sharing news and/or tips or tricks. 

At FIRST Tech Challenge, we use social media to share information and resources, but most importantly to keep our community connected. We know lots of teams are using it, too, to share what they’re doing, to spread the word about FIRST, and to help promote their team. 
 

To that end, we’ve pulled together a few recommendations to help you use your social media to achieve your team’s goals. This document, FTC Social Media Guidelines and Recommendations, is on the FTC Team Resources webpage under "Outreach and Marketing." In the guide, we briefly walk you through the process of planning out how you would like to use social media and also discuss ways to ensure success. 

We also included some tips on using Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and blogging to achieve greater results. Each section looks like this:

 

Website Recommendations
A website is a great way to share information with the public. A website, once created, only requires a little maintenance as people expect the information to be pretty static.
Tips:
Make the webpage easy to navigate: people should be able to tell what the pieces of the page are and how to get around.
Update your page 3-4 times a year. You can upload new photos, change the dates or season logos, etc to keep it a little fresh and up-to-date.

So whether you use social media for fun, to stay connected, or to promote your program and thank supporters and sponsors, we hope this resource will give you the confidence and tools you need to make the internet work for you.