Getting started with Social Media pt2
I’ve spent the past few days in the company of someone who works for a large Canadian city, one of KANA’s customers. She asked me about my role and keenly probed me about social media and how it could help her and, in turn, her city to connect to people.
So I told her, referred to my recent blog ‘Just get started’ and she asked me to help her set up her presence on Twitter. Now, I’m working with a vivacious and intelligent woman who has considerable influence in her field of expertise but Twitter had her stumped! She found it really difficult to ‘just get started’ and it’s made me reflect on why. And I think it’s this.
For a lot of people, social media means facebook. Somewhere you can connect with your friends, write about things that you enjoy, post your photos and share a little of your life with family, friends and colleagues. If you ‘friend’ someone or ‘like’ a company or a post it’s all in your control. Facebook ‘suggests’ people you might know and learns from previous entries to suggest new connections. Or you can connect with friends of your friends. You decide.
Twitter is somewhat different. When you start, especially on the Twitter.com user interface, you are asked ‘What’s happening?’
You are encouraged to follow people but you’ve no idea how or why. If you’re familiar with facebook you want to write lots and assume that everyone will be reading your missive with rapt attention! Not so with Twitter. If no-one is following you NO-ONE will hear you, no matter what! It’s like being on an empty beach and shouting at the top of your voice. The wind and emptiness will strip away your wise words and you’ll reach no-one. So you need to start following people and hope that they will follow you back – to make connections. You also have to communicate in 140 characters or less!!
There are a few ways you can find people to follow.
- Search for someone you might like to connect with or something that interests you, check out the Twitter profiles and see if they share similar interests to you. Then Follow them. Remember to write out your own Twitter profile but keep it brief. Here’s mine.
- When you find someone you like or admire follow some of the people who they follow. You DON’T have to know them. Here’s Lord Sebastian Coe, Chairman of the London 2012 Olympic Committee. He follows some interesting people – I might learn something if I follow them.
- Check if your favourite websites have social media links (inc Twitter). London 2010 (Olympics) does. Click on the link and get connected.
Once you’ve followed some people (I think 100+ is a good start) you’ll find that most will start following you. Remember. You don’t have to know them. Start by listening to what they have to say. Some will be interesting. Some won’t. Why not follow your local train company who might update on rail delays or your utilities provider. They are all on Twitter these days…
You can’t read everything so think of it like a flowing river. Dip in now and then and let the rest go by. If you want to get someone’s direct attention (or they yours) use the @ symbol at the beginning of their name. So, if you want to say hello to me use @annenwood and I’ll say hello back! If you miss off the @ I won’t know you’ve dropped by.
I shared this and more with my Canadian colleague and her enthusiasm grew by the minute. ‘Now,’ she wondered, ‘how do I make the most of this new skill to enrich my work and how do I know what our citizens need?’. This is quite a complex thing to explain to a social media/networking novice but it is the right question.
It’s about listening, learning and engaging. If you’re listening, you’ll know what your citizens or customers really need. By being social, creating communities and using social media monitoring and text analytics to learn why processes aren’t working etc., Government to citizen/business to customer teams (and visa versa) can use crowd sourcing and sentiment to help define process innovation. Government departments or marketers can actually identify innovative ideas, gleaned from customer sentiment and social comment, rather than leaving it to the traditional customer service centre to react to poor experiences. The possibilities are endless.
KANA can help through its Service Experience Management and Social and text analytics tools and I’d be happy to chat about social with you via comments here or on Twitter. KANA’s Twitter ID is @KANASoftware
(Anne Wood is Social Media and Knowledge Management consultant. KANA)
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September 16th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
This was really helpful Anne, and enjoyably well-written too. I love the analogy of shouting on the beach! I forwarded it to my husband – I’ve been trying to explain Twitter to him all week and not getting very far. I don’t really use Twitter and will try some of your suggestions. Thanks!
September 21st, 2011 at 7:51 pm
“If no-one is following you NO-ONE will hear you, no matter what!”
—
Hashtags (#). If you’re new to twitter and don’t have any followers you can still make your voice heard.
(1)Search for a topic you’re interested in using twitter’s search.
(2)Within some of the tweets you’ll likely see a (or multiple hashtags)in front of a word or phrase (ex: #maplebacon #nomnom)
(3)Clicking a hashtag is like doing a search for that particular reference. It’s a way of grouping a conversation around a particular topic.
(4)When you write a tweet including the same hashtag it becomes a part of this group and can be seen by anyone looking at tweets with that hashtag.
Personally, I like following the hashtags for awards shows…pretty funny stuff
September 21st, 2011 at 8:06 pm
Good point, Denis. I use hashtags a lot but thought it was a stretch too far to mention this to a beginner.