The number one question I get asked is "How do i make my boss understand the importance of social media and Twitter?"
this is usually followed up by a comment about controlling the message or fears about supporters talking about your NFP without your control. First off as many of you will know that's the entire point! Twitter and real time services like Facebook and FriendFeed allow anyone at any time to speak about your brand and say what they like when they like to whom they like.
Funnily enough just like the REAL world! You and your bosses can't be in every supermarket, hairdressers, pub or family home to ensure every mention of your organisation is on brand and on message.
Ok so you now might be thinking "Blimey we never really had control of the message in the first place" and you would be right all we ever are is shepherd's of the message it is our supporters who will make of it what they want and recite it to friends and colleagues based on their experiences & interactions with us.
I know their talking about us, Prove it!
So just like in the real world people are talking to each other on Twitter, they may also just be musing to themselves about an interaction with your charity in a supermarket or at a public event or even that TV advert that just popped up.
What you won't know is that you can know about every one of these interactions by using Search.twitter or the search option in applications like TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop.
You can also use the search bar built into the right hand side of your Twitter.com page. These searches are persistent meaning they will update every few minutes with new mentions of the keywords you choose the advanced search options are very powerful and can allow you to filter out the Signal from Noise.
Using these searches you can see every mention of your brand both positive and negative, now here is where you get to do your job and shepherd the message if you spot a negative tweet or a tweet that is inaccurate let the person know, send them a message offering to help with the problem or offering corrected information.
Do this using the @TwitterID or you could send them a direct D TwitterID (private message) but really we want others to see the interaction so an @reply is best.
Even if the person never responds guess what? Your message will appear in that search term for everyone else searching on your brand (New supporters, Google Search) not only did you have a chance to turn a negative experience of your charity into a positive but you made sure that future supporters will see your interaction and not just a human screaming at the void for attention.
You can't please everyone
Now you really are in every hairdressers, pub and shopping center seeing the real impact of your other communication channels, so what if a focus group tells you 9/10 people love your new advert that still means 10% of the population thinks it sucks and will probably be telling their friends / followers that fact.
{jb_bluebox}Be proactive make sure you have search.twitter terms setup to monitor for the campaign and have a strategy in place to talk to the 10% who won't react well to your new advert or campaign.{/jb_bluebox}
Alternatively you can not get involved and the general public will talk about you anyway (in fact they are right now) and you will never have the opportunity to correct miss information or help some one who had a negative experience of your services or core message.
So if it's your Job to be on top of communications, if you demand the best from your staff in terms of message delivery stop getting in their way and let them get on with crafting your message across the Social Media spectrum.
Feedback to @johncarnell or leave a comment below:
