When it comes to creating relationships with other companies, take a long-term approach.
By Ivan Misner

I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who’s a partner in an international consulting and training company when we discovered we had a mutual acquaintance–a bestselling author and fairly well-known speaker.

In our discussion, we found out he’d contacted each of us individually to see if there were any possibilities for some type of strategic alliance with his company and each of our own, individually. We were both open to the possibility but couldn’t see an immediate and dramatic way our companies could link with his and undertake any specific projects at that time. We were both a bit amused to then discover that we were summarily “dropped” from his radar after that.

We sensed he was looking for that one big alliance that would help his company soar to the next level. Ironically, we’d had the same type of phone call with each other just 18 months earlier. We had come basically to the same conclusion: There was nothing on a grand scale that we could do together at that moment. The difference, however, was the rest of the story.

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by Marinel Mones

Twitter, the popular micro-blogging site, publishes online messages with a maximum of 140 characters. Currently, Twitter has an estimated 4.1 million visits to the site and climbing per month in the U.S. alone. It is considered to be the fastest growing social network, and is one of the most viral social media tools freely available. Many brands attempt to use the tool to market their services and products, but the successful brands use Twitter to listen and engage with their stakeholders. (img from seyDoggy’s photostream)

Brian Solis, a Principal at FutureWorks, said, “Of all of the social tools and services that are pervasive throughout our digital society, only a select few communities can boast the pseudo fanatical conviction that Twitter’s users unanimously possess.”

Twitter can be compared to skimming the headlines, only viral with links, tweets and conversation moving at the speed of 140 characters. At the same time, it lacks the depth of other forms of social media, like content rich blogs or a contact manager like LinkedIn.

Similar to other social networks, organizations should not just jump onto the Twitter bandwagon. Before engaging companies and organizations need to assess their purpose and potential benefits of using Twitter. Below are key questions to consider:

• What can Twitter do for my organization? Twitter connects organizations to their target audiences and allows them to build trust and relationships. This micro-blogging site is excellent for nonprofits and social good advocates to raise awareness for their efforts and a good place for micro-campaigns.
• What can we do for our Twitter community? Can we add to the conversation? What value do we bring to potential followers on Twitter? Are we ready to be present the other 90-95% of the time when we don’t have a need to communicate with the marketplace? Are we ready for an ongoing conversation?
• One account or multiple accounts? One account per organization is recommended. Multiple accounts create confusion. It’s OK for employees of an organization to have their own personal account as long as employees are being transparent of who they are and who they work for, i.e. “@Richard from Dell”. Organizations can elect a person to manage the account and engage with stakeholders. All Twitter correspondence regarding the organization’s information can be addressed with the main account. Employees could provide the Twitter handle (username) of the organization’s main Twitter profile on their own profiles (crosslinking is important for consistency and unification).
• How do I use Twitter? The opportunities for organziations to use Twitter are incessant. Twitter is a tool meant for engaging, not just following people and vice versa. The Dosh Dosh blog shares different ways beginners, professionals and organizations can you use Twitter. The list includes:
  • Networking – There are many ways to network on Twitter. Organizations should use Twitter search to find fellow industry organizations, professionals, and potential stakeholders to follow. If organizations can effectively build relationships on Twitter, the potential for leveraging Twitter in promotional efforts is endless.
  • Receiving feedback – As with every social media tool, listening and engaging with fellow Twitterers are fundamental. Network Solutions is a prime example of this. Network Solutions monitors the “Twittersphere” for conversations about the company – from customer service to providing potential stakeholders with coupon offers. Network Solutions responds to Tweets (the post/entry made on Twitter), often asking for feedback, and in turn learns how to better serve their clients.
  • Direct traffic – Crosslinking blog posts, new campaign information, etc. about your organization will help drive traffic to your site. Synchronize updates with your website. Micro-blogging sites offer badges (an image, usually squared and displayed on a blog, which signifies the blogger’s participation in an event, contest, or social movement) and widgets (mini applications that performs a specific function and connects to the Internet) to embed on web pages such home sites or blogs.
  • Provide information – Share information about organization on your profile and in your Tweets. This information should be relevant to your stakeholders. Information about local events, conferences, etc. are all appropriate. Providing information does not mean pitch your organization.
  • Read News – Twitter users tend to share information using tiny URLs. This can be blog posts or online news article URLs. In addition to following and engaging with industry professionals, the organizations should read the content – including the links – of those they follow and their followers, if the Tweet deems relevant.
  • Branding – An organization’s brand should permeate on and offline. Remember, brands are perceptions of organizations in the minds of their consumers. Be consistent by using established logos, colors, etc. Consistency signifies a united front for organizations.

For example, social media consultant and social media for social good advocate, Beth Kanter, used Twitter to help a young Cambodian woman receive treatments for her health. Kanter challenged people at the Seattle Gnomedex 8.0 Conference in August 2008 to use their Twitter networks to raise money for this woman. In 90 minutes, Kanter raised $2,500 and by the end of the conference $4,000. Kanter was successful because she has a large network, but she also cultivates her relationship with her Twitter followers.

What Twitter Can Do For You

Tracking keywords and conversations is one of the benefits of Twitter. Organizations can follow dialogues and research key issues using Twitter Search and hashtags (#). Following conversations provides the organizations with benchmarks and results.

• The tracking keywords feature is used on your phone or IM. People simply send text messages with “track” in front of the word they’d like followed (i.e. “track nonprofits”). Results are given in real-time.
• There are many tools for performing Twitter searches. The most popular is Twitter Search (formally known as Summize before Twitter acquired it). Twitter searches enable organizations to filter conversations.

If an organization wanted to see what the Twittersphere was saying about them, they could easily use Twitter search to monitor the conversations. Twitter search also provides an RSS Feed (a system that generates frequently updated information from a site) for specific terms. Organizations could really use the search to answer questions and track trends.

• Hashtags make it easier to follower conversations on Twitter. Words or phrases marked with a hash (#) as a prefix signify tracking. People create hashtags in order to view the results and conversations in the Twittersphere. Hashtags are excellent to use for campaigns.

Communicating provides only140 characters to capture your stakeholder’s interest. If organizations continuously build relationships and network on Twitter and the campaigns are thoughtfully executed, then the campaign will be successful. It’s critical for 98% of marketers out there to ensure they don’t just broadcast using a Twitter profile (CNNers, Guy Kawasaki and Shaquille O’Neal aside). Success demands participation and conversation.

Take the Twit2Fit effort as an example. Twit2Fit is an ongoing Twitter movement that supports the health and wellness of people and challenges Twitter users to exercise and create or maintain a healthy lifestyle. When people tweet about exercising, they add the #twit2fit to their post. The movement encourages people to become healthy and allows Twitterers to show their support for better health and wellness.

Another example is Epic Change’s Tweetgiving campaign, an effort to raise money to fund a new classroom for a school in Tanzania. In just 48 hours, Epic Change was able to raise $10,000 through the power of Twitter and social media.

The best benefit organizations get from joining Twitter is the relationships. The Twitter community is continuously growing and thrives on participation and interaction. Think of your Twitter relationships as investments of the organization. To keep a client, you must continue nourishing that relationship and offer assistance as needed. Offer your Twitter community with information by providing answers pertaining to their sector-related questions. Listen and engage with your stakeholders.

Conclusion

Twitter is a helpful tool when effectively used. The dynamics of the Twitter community allows organizations to use connect with their stakeholders and offer information about themselves or their cause. Through this micro-blogging tool, the organizations can meet new people, share information with their stakeholders about organization updates or events, track trends and conversations in the nonprofit industry and even create a micro-campaign. With Twitter, organizations are listening, engaging and building relationships that extend beyond the social network.

What about communities beyond the oft talked about majors – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Delicious, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, etc.?  How does one engage is a very common question, and there are general principles that apply across all social communities major or not. In some ways, Brian Solis and I tried to provide guidance to that effect with Now Is Gone with the Seven Principles of Community Engagement.  But there’s more to that (Image: Community Building Competition by absingla).

First, let’s recap the Seven Principles, which are outline in the closing strategy chapter of Now Is Gone, Think Liquid:

1) Do not try to control the message: Command and control is dead. Though must folks out here get it, organizations are still struggling with relinquishing control. Let’s put it in the context of a relationship — which is the core of traditional PR and again, now with social media marketing.

2) Honesty, ethics and transparencies are musts:  This isn’t about baring trade secrets or intellectual property. It’s about basic human relations, and creating a strong foundation for long-term, two-way mutually beneficial relationship. Think about the golden rule here.

3) Participation within the community is marketing (Heuer): Get out there into the stakeholder’s realm. Comment and contribute to larger community groups and social networks. Read customer and related blogs (or vlogs and podcasts), and interact with the writers.

4) Communication to audiences is an out-dated 20th century concept (Rosen):  Audiences receive one-way communications — movies, radio broadcasts, speeches, etc. Thanks to social media the audience talks back, forcing organizations to address them in a conversational, two-way manner.

5) Build value for the community: Building value for a community means a core decision to serve them, either with meaningful conversations, links or number 6, content.

6) Inspire your community with real, exciting content, not corporate propaganda: Understand your community has problems, and you have some answers. Creating content for them does not mean give them a press release. It means give them Great Content, fight for their interest, and deliver content on a schedule so readers’ expectations of regular updates are met.

7) Intelligently manage your media forms (RSS, frequency, etc.) to build a stronger, loyal community: When acting in a community, create calls to action, manage your RSS feeds intelligently, make them obvious and accessible.

Now What?

Well, that was a more than a year and a half ago, and much has changed in social media communities since Now Is Gone (image: MacBraynes Bus by conner395).  I think it’s fair to say that there are some basic tactical best practices that have arisen. Some of these are obvious human behaviors that when engaged in a two-way conversation would obviously turn users off. Some are best practices based on mistakes and actions others have taken.

1) Bring People Back to Your Web Site. Be smart, especially if you are building a community within a larger network.  If you want to build relationships with people, give them a way to contact you, and perhaps further engage.  Provide intelligent calls to action.  Post meaningful links and content that your community members may want to see. And then provide calls to action for those who want to develop an even stronger relationship with you.

Many nonprofits do well in branding and awareness on major social networks, but fail to achieve significant relationship development. Getting people to interact with you on your site is the difference maker here. The numbers are less, but the relationships are stronger.

2) Relating versus spamming.  It’s not kosher to auto DM or spam people.  This is basic human relationships, but if you are using your community, either hosted elsewhere or on your own platform as an auto-response and/or pitch mechanism, you will alienate community members.  This should be obvious to people.

I mean who wants to walk into a car deal and snake-oiled?  The same thing goes for online communities.  Talk with – as opposed to at – people.

3)Play within existing communities: It doesn’t make sense most of the time to create your own community. In fact, most organizationally started communities fail. Usually one already exists on Ning, Squidoo, a community board, or yes, one of the majors. See where open APIs, value added content, and groups will let you play withing the larger community.

One of the best examples I’ve seen of this was how HubSpot created Twitter Grader then used the data to produce the State of the Twittersphere report. Oh, by the way they produce inbound marketing software, a natural hit for those who are really into the report data… and how to make a successful app. like Twitter Grader.

4) Don’t dictate to the community. Another somewhat obvious people relations skill, but one that companies like Facebook need to fail before they comprehend that their users are also their partners. On the otherhand, a company like Southwest Airlines has figured out how to use their social community to vet online significant changes.

5) Stay Relevant: Sometimes communities grow stale. Keep updating the technical prowess, features, content and capabilities that are feeding you community. For successes, consider the updates networks like Twitter and Facebook have made over the past year, or lying fallow for too long like Second Life, LinkedIn, Jaiku and MySpace have done over periods of time. Recently, MySpace and LinkedIn made significant progress, but only LinkedIn seems to have benefited from it.

The point is the same though, whether you are on someone else’s platform or your own, the community lives on currentness. Make sure you stay relevant. This in many ways is about the final chapter of Now Is Gone, Think Liquid. Water strategy keeps you moving forward.

Most of these tactical best practices are common sense when you consider them in the context of relationships with other people. You can never go wrong with Golden Rule based actions and principles.

This week’s Georgetown class is being taught by Qui on Now Is Gone.  Students will mercifully miss me pontificating on my own book due to a business trip.