Photo credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Daniel Lee
“Love” sounds too scary, perhaps? I ask because plenty of social impact and climate action nonprofits still discount how critical the act of exchanging Twitter “love” can be for developing social engagement that reaches influencers. This missed opportunity seems most “Twitter-evident” when organizations approach big events or announcements. It’s as if the world should all turn their way because they have this incredible news, even though they never gave any attention to what others were up to in the months before. Hmmm.
I can certainly get on my soap box about it. But instead, I’ll offer up two choices for using Twitter (and LinkedIn to some extent) for milestone or event communications:
- Gear up all around day-of emphasis. Fine tune your messaging, create and share social media toolkits with partners, plan memes and get ready to flood the platform streams with your well-crafted copy and images, the day of. Your Twitter account looks like it’s fallen to sleep, basically, until the next moment.
- Start with advance “loving up” emphasis. Though the above may well still be a part of the event-focused effort, the week-of/day-of frantic-ness can usually be toned down – with results that are even more strategically effective – when you give the cause advance preparation. Using this “loving up” approach, you’ve long since identified and engaged (for at least three months), so you know the conversations, topics and words to bridge to your cause. You’ve also long since studied up, understood and mapped out the real influencers (be they media or industry leaders etc.) and how they tend to use the platform. You have reason to stay engaged, find great links and celebrate your whole industry’s progress between events, so your platform for the next “day of” is even stronger.
The former is more common, for sure. But, it’s the latter, or a strategic combination of the two, that will win the day… as well as the year. My point: when you do this advance work well, that focused attention you’ve given to building a strong engagement foundation will SUSTAIN, if not compound, far into the future.
When you invest in this sort of front-end due diligence, your most important influencers have the time to come to trust your Twitter curation, and are more likely to stay tuned in to your future messaging. They’ll also, again, be there for your next milestone.
Stop the frantic-ness. Be realistic about whether your organization has been “loving up” it’s Twitter influencers and broader community as well as it could.
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My clients’ LinkedIn recommendations seem to well describe how my passion for working in this way produces for them, so take a look if you think I might be a fit to give your organization an influencer relations jumpstart.
