I’ve been thinking about two things this week:  further contemplation of  the Personal Branding post and learning about Lifestreaming, a tool which compiles social media usage into real time streams in one place. Together, they inspired me to reconsider the Site Map.

Why not update the standard website site map? Site maps are useful, of course, both for SEO optimization with Google and for your visitors who want to navigate your site, buy items, etc.  But where is your organization’s “social media map?” How do you communicate how your corporation/organization interfaces socially on web? The Employee Bio might elaborate how your employees interface with the web while at work, but what about the corporate interface? Here are some thoughts:

The Old Way

You work at a non-profit (or a for-profit corporation, for that matter) and you’ve decided on a communications strategy that includes social media.  Great! How might you inform your customers that you are engaged in social media? You can:

• Link to your blog, feature recent blog posts on your site’s home page, or create a page on your website for the blog.
  
• Place icons on the home page indicating that staff can be found on Twitter, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., or place the icons on the staff pages.
• Post interesting articles or video onto your website.
  
• Link to online communities under a “resources” header, or just as a “link” on the website.

I have to admit that I checked out the websites of several corporations and non-profit organizations whose CEOs and Executive Directors use Twitter. I found no Twitter links or promotions of this valuable social media tool. I have seen social media affiliations featured prominently on a number of consultants’ blogs, however, which makes sense given their profession. But why aren’t corporate staff’s social media activities more visible?

The New Way: Create a Social Media Map on Your Website

You work at a non-profit (or a for-profit corporation, for that matter) and you’ve decided on a communications strategy that includes social media.  Great! What about creating a Social Media Map on your website? There are many ways to set up the page, but I envision it similar to the “Press/News” page on many websites. In that spirit, you could create a website page entitled “Our Social Media Map.” The Map would list the interactive communications activities of the staff and organization, by social media application. Here are a few examples of how one might word it on the page:

• FLICKR: go the the our organization’s Flickr photos for photos of recent events. Photos include…
  
• TWITTER: correspond with and follow our CEO on Twitter, username@our organization. Also, these other staff tweet… We look forward to the conversation!
  
• SLIDESHARE: look through our slide show presentations on Slideshare. We just posted a slide show presenting our 5-year strategic plan. Our username is “TBA for Good” — feel free to mark your favorites, share, and invite us to connect with you.
• YOU TUBE: here  will find clips from our annual meeting; feel free to tag, share and comment. Were you there? What did you think?
• LINKEDIN: links to every staff member’s LinkedIn profile and relevant LinkedIn groups.
• BLOGS: Organizational blog (link) and blogs of other staff as well. Also, here are links to blogs of note in the industry.
  

Additionally, with the advent of Lifestreaming, you could add a Lifestreaming-type page. For those new to Lifestreaming (like me), it’s a place where all your social media activities are streamed in real time and added to the site as they occur. You could combine all the social media usage of your employees and corporation into one STREAM page that readers can view. This is a totally new concept for a corporate site, but the streaming page might create some visual confusion for those website visitors unfamiliar with Lifestreaming. But…it could also add real excitement to a website. In any case, this concept could be adapted and utilized to give your customers a real-time view of your organization’s social media activity. (There is also a blog about Lifestreaming that appears to cover all the related technology, as well as an interesting new post on new Lifestreaming developments here.)

The goal of the Social Media Map is, of course, to further your communications strategy. Consider your goals, of course, such as: do you want to recruit more volunteers or deepen relationships through your social media activities? I’d love to hear how/if visitors to the Social Media Map page are converted to subscribers/followers/contacts in the various media streams listed on the page.

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I read that Caroline Kennedy is going on a “listening tour” of New York in preparation for her run for Senator of that fair state. By doing so, she nods her head at Hillary Clinton. Most political pundits believe that it was Clinton’s months of listening that gave her the credibility and support for her Senate race. However, Kennedy is also lending credence to a basic tenet of community organizing: the importance of listening.

Before any campaign launches, the skilled organizer hosts “house parties” and community forums to listen to his community. What are the issues in the neighborhood? Who speaks up? Who do people listen to? What are they saying about the organization and its record? How can the organization best respond to pressing issues? The ideas come from the grass roots (and the connection to this blog’s image header.) A good organizer doesn’t have any agenda other than to listen. The ideas should bubble up from the community and direct the organization to its next campaign.

This is true for stakeholder engagement. Your organization needs to listen to what its people are saying before you do anything. How are you doing that? How will you know what to change and where to act next? And importantly, do you know how to listen without advancing your own agenda? You can “listen” on the web to what people are already saying about your organization, cause or leaders. If no one is talking about you, that’s a whole other issue that can be rectified with a good social media strategy.

What tools can you use to listen?

1. Find out what people are saying about your company with twitter. Create as many searches as you want.

2. Sign up for Google alerts that will alert you any time your company/organization appears online.

3. Search blogs for mention of your company: use Google blog search. Go to www.google.com. Then look in the upper left for “more” and click on that. You’ll find “search blogs” in the drop-down menu. Type in your company’s names or any related search words to find out what people are saying about your organization or industry. You can even add a blog search gadget to your google home page.

4. Search blogs on technorati as well. I find their searches to be more thorough than Googles, but it’s worthwhile to do both.

5. Find out who is listening in on you. Check out who is linking to your website or blog. Go to SEOPro. Thanks to Chris Brogan for this great idea!

6. Don’t forget to do your basic Google search as well using your organization’s name, staff names and key words.

7. Once you’ve implemented your social media strategy, you might want to consider more advanced listening tools. Radian 6 is one that captures and analyzes all the chatter on the web of the selected key words. Bill Ives gives a good explanation of the potential of Radian 6 here. It’s pretty cool technology that lets you uncover the people behind the posts, “share of voice” of buzz of your company on the internet, and selected analysis such as countries where you want to know about the web chatter. It’s a subscription application.

Now that you know which technology to consider using, what are you listening for?

• who is talking about your organization? Do you need to respond? Are they influencers, potential stakeholders, or leaders?
• what are they saying? Are they praising or condemning? Are they demanding your response?
• where are they?
• who else do they influence?

If I were taking a listening tour, I’d start with those questions. I’d track the main “chatterers,” and contact them. Can you turn them from enemies into friends? Can you turn friends into stakeholders? I’d think about which issues generated the most chatter, and continue to track this for my analysis. I’d look at who their followers are (on twitter, on their blog, on facebook, etc.) to find out if major stakeholders (or funders!) follow them. All of these questions can assist your organization to use social media, plan activities and engage your stakeholders.

You might be new to social media, or not. Either way, it’s a smart idea to insitute your own “listening tour.”

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