Friends With Benefits

Building and engaging relationships is crucial to any organization; social media can provide the right tools to accomplish this. Perhaps the first spot an organization would want to look at is their website. For instance, Safe Harbor shares information about their organization, explains issues they advocate and provides resources for people in need. Can you guess the next hot spot on the list? You're probably right; social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. Organizations need to engage with their audience through open conversations on these sites, allowing a build up of trust and development of relationships. Also, these are great tools to use when trying to connect with a younger audience. In my class group, we are working with REP to ignite their social media efforts, seeing how they want to relate to teenagers and young adults. There are many outcomes that can come from building these connections on social media.

Listening is an important step to building these trusting relationships and an easy way to become comfortable within the new social scene. Seeing how REP will be new to social media, it will be easier for them to focus on their listening skills first to ease their way in. Listening should include identifying key influencers and finding key leverage points for spreading messages. Many organizations will use social media listening tools, like RSS readers, tags and Google alerts, to name a few. After listening is accomplished, organizations need to be smart about how they engage with the public. Smart ideas for engaging with the public could include online polls, thanking people for their efforts or simply initiate a conversation. Engagement also means dealing with criticism, whether it be a destructive attack or a honest disagreement. You can think of this as a way to let the public know you are actually hearing what they have to say and continuing the relationship building process. Yes, building relationships is great, but building strong relationships is even better. Building relationships that are powerful can be achieved by practicing the following:

• Be willing to lose control, people want to contribute in their own way
• Be authentic with your audience, do not have ulterior motives
• Send good into world without expectation of immediate return
• Believe in people and the good they bring to the table
• Follow and support the social media rhythm, do not create or dictate it (but you can use the model below to help predict!)

The ladder of engagement shows how to strategically increase supporter engagement and better understand their efforts towards this. Take a look at a similar engagement ladder showing additional information, from Bloomberg Businessweek.

• Level 1: Happy bystander-listen to content
• Level 2: Spreaders- share information about a cause
• Level 3: Donors- contribute financially
• Level 4: Evangelists- reach out to personal social networks and influence them towards the cause
• Level 5: Instigators- create their own content on behalf of the cause

People can start anywhere on this ladder, working their way up or down. By understanding these levels of engagement, organizations will better treasure their relationships and discover the value they offer.