Who speaks for you online?

Everyone in a social organization or a community has a role in contributing to its social success. 

I am not saying that ALL of your employees or volunteers must become your official spokespeople. You can't mandate it. However, it can be powerful if everyone knew their role and how to share online appropriately. 

As there is so much 'noise' online, people are filtering out what they listen to. They are choosing to listen to posts from a selected few. We're giving our online trust to a select list of friends and organizations. Therefore, social organizations have empowered their staff and volunteers to share their organization's posts appropriately to the people who trust them.  

Organizations' posts become both an extension of their staff's online personal brand and one of their most engaging and trusted post distribution channels.  

For example, suppliers “mentioning” their clients’ Twitter handles, when appropriate, can strengthen their clients’ credibility and increase their clients’ followers. Imagine taking a photo of your product and client then attaching it to a tweet. 

For example, if you were a cheese shop selling to a local restaurant, a fun and effective tweet might be:  “Our @CheeseNymphs Smoked Blue Haze will be featured @RareGrill Cheese Desire Platter next week - out of this world!” Attach a photo of course! 

Or local entrepreneurs sharing their love for each other's products. "@BriGosselin "Having a studio downtown and being able to visit @CheeseNymphs for treats is bliss!..."

Clients love seeing what is involved in the preparation of an event, food, product, brand and so on. Staff and suppliers sharing in the moment of the excitement are very effective. 

Other examples include welcoming new companies to your community or tweeting live from events. A fashion retailer, choosing which lines will be a part of their spring selection can take photos and upload them to Facebook or Pinterest. Genuine passion is catchy.  You can't fake it online.

With a social company, everyone associated with your organization needs to know what your strategy is in order to feel a part of the plan, in order to participate, and to keep the engagement building.

However, before you'll feel comfortable flipping the switch for yourself, staff and partners to become an extension of your online marketing, you'll need to clearly understand what your online purpose is. This then becomes the lens you view all your actions; guiding you so you can share consistently and appropriately through your voice, images, online emotion, and online actions supporting your chosen community.

Here are the 9 questions you need to answer when creating your community's or organization's social strategy.  Answering these questions will help you enable yourself and your staff to become a social organization. 

1.   State your online purpose.


2.   Who do you want following you and why will they want to follow you?


3.    Which platforms are your followers on, therefore,which social platforms will you use?


4.    How will you measure online success?


5.    Which Keywords and Social Media Platform URLs or handles do you want everyone using?


6.      Where will your posts come from? (Clients, Staff, Suppliers, Industry Experts, Media, Yourself.. Taking photos, videos or writing blogs..)


7.      Who will be accountable for measuring and coordinating efforts?


8.      VERY IMPORTANT.. Identify your possible giants – i.e. Those friendly social giants with a large number of social  followers who will welcome and retweet or share your posts.


9.      Create your schedule – how often can you post? Twice a day, three times a week?

I have stepped all sizes of organizations through these 9 steps. Of course, each step takes a different length of time depending on the organization's complexity. Trust me, it really works!