The first step in the social media process is to engage in listening. But soon listening gives way to joining the conversations that relate to your organization or issue area. This is not about blasting out your message, creating content, or building an online community. It is about about engaging in a dialog with your current and potential supporters on blogs or social network sites. It's about commenting on blog posts, responding to people on Twitter, setting up a Facebook profile and "friending" some people. Participating means turning the spotlight on your audience and handing them the microphone, as often as you can engage them.
Participating, engaging people in conversations, is the next logical step after listening. By making a human connection with people online, you can influence their perception of your organization and your issues. You can help them find meaningful, relevant ways to support your mission. You can also get started with some easy experiments that take about 5 hours per week. There are Web 2.0 tools that let you initiate without requiring frequent content updates or community building. These are great ways to get started and learn what works and what doesn't and begin to integrate social media into your organization's marketing strategy.
When listening, you may find that some people are talking about your brand and work in a positive manner. Other times, their commentary may not be supportive and may inflame your passions or bring about a strong defense mechanism within you or others in your organization to vigorously defend your brand. Remember that you don't always have to respond. Some organizations choose to never respond to negative comments, instead choosing to share tools with the community that can be used to defend them. Other organizations choose to only respond to factual errors in negative commentary, but do not take on the feelings of commenters.
It's important to find a philosophy of response that works for you and your organization. Your goal should be to have a plan in place in case negative comments occur so that you can choose to respond to them (or not) while keeping your cool rather than inventing a response policy while you're also trying to respond.
There are some really easy ways to participate that don't take a lot of time.
Whether your organization intends to set up its own blog or not, "comment blogging," leaving thoughtful comments on blogs that are talking about your organization or issue can help you better understand your stakeholder's point of view and test ideas. You can also do the same on photos and videos. If you have a blog, website, Twitter or Facebook (or other social networking site) profile you can include it in your signature when commenting so that the blogger or others involved in the discussions can continue to further connect with you.
Be aware that some bloggers use a technology called CAPTCHA to make sure that real human beings, not computer bots, are commenting on their blogs. The problem with CAPTCHA is that it requires a commenter to re-type a series of graphical letters and/or numbers before they can post a comment, which is an obvious impediment to individuals with visual impairments. Some blog platforms allow for an audio alternative, but it depends on the platform being used by the blogger.
The most time-consuming part of Twitter is not posting content (it doesn't take that much time to post content that is only 140 characters long) but attracting followers who will read your content and engage in a conversation with you. Search for people or institutions of interest to follow, and the followers will come.
This is a good prelude to setting up an organizational presence. It will give you an opportunity to see who else is interested in your issue on social network sites and connect with people with influence in your topic area.
If you want honest feedback, make it super easy for people to give it to you. Don’t make anyone jump through hoops or dig through tons of pages to find your contact info.
If you want to encourage participation, consider using Creative Commons licensing for your blog and other online materials. Unlike restrictive "All Rights Reserved" copyrights, CC licenses encourage people to "share, remix and reuse." (If it weren't for CC licensing, we wouldn' have such an awesome wiki for this course!) Make sure you are explicit about how you want to see your work used or shared by others.