Social media is a public platform. More specifically, all of your Facebook updates, Twitter updates, Flickr photo tags, Slideshare comments, blog comments, and just about any other social media commentary can be found using Google or other search engines. And as of last week, Google now indexes much of our conversation nearly in real time.  I think of these public conversations as social media’s virtual “front yard.”  (Hat tip to Hildy Gottlieb for beautifully expressing this idea in her blog post.)

But for every front yard, there is a back yard. And the back yard is where relationships are made.

Where are the back yards? These are the private spaces where conversations continue, out of the public eye. Some examples: In Facebook, it’s the inbox.  On Twitter, it’s the Direct Message (DM). On Linkedin, it’s “reply privately” to a group discussion. On Friendfeed, it’s the private conversation. On blogs, it’s when the blog owner writes back to the the commenter via email.

Getting invited into the back yard is kind of a big deal, and that should also be a goal if you want to deepen engagement with some of your ties. It’s both a leap of faith and an extension of trust. The back yard invitation moves a very weak personal tie – someone you’ve just met online but never in person – to become a stronger personal tie.Over time, I’ve experienced this general progression from the front yard, to the back yard, to inside the kitchen.

I’ve diagrammed the “strength progression of social media ties” below – and I would also love your thoughts about this diagram:

After talking via Skype, or VOIP, or in person, what’s next? Besides creating personal friendships, we may also be able utilize a person’s “whuffle” (social influence, as coined by Tara Hunt) if need be, on behalf of our causes.

It’s worth repeating that social media builds relationships, and that relationships build brands and organizations. (Which is why we talk about how the number of followers doesn’t matter, but Dunbar’s number does.)  A related post on this subject is Beth Kanter’s post on measuring impact, not influence and social influence reach versus affinity. Backyard conversations build relationships. After all, the best ideas do happen over a good meal and (sometimes) a few beers out on the back deck.

Here are a few questions for you:

• How have you seen the progression from weak tie to stronger tie to personal tie in your social media travels?
• How can organizations capture this for their good as well?
• What trends do you see in the progression from weak to stronger interpersonal ties?

I’m looking forward to this blog conversation!

image by roadsidepictures

There is no such thing as a local business anymore. Nor a local organization.

Consider the local mini mart, the most local of all types of stores. In general, people won’t walk more than 10 minutes or 1/2 mile to their local food mart. Why does the mini mart owner need to interact with his customers via social media? If people want something, they’ll just go there. It’s a fair question, easily answered by another:

What is Local?

I respond: Local is a Mindset. So is Social.

Local is You Talking. Social is Engagement and Conversation.

The local mini mart owner/manager is thinking old-school: bricks and mortar, customers searching for twinkies, chips and coffee, and lottery players seeking millions.Re-think your mindset out of Local and into Social about the same customer.

This time, the customer is sitting at home, wishing she had a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Does the local mini mart have it? Send an email or a Tweet. Can she swing by in her car, illegally park on the sidewalk (hey, they do it all the time in my neighborhood) and get out in 2 minutes? You betcha – IF – she could submit her order via Twitter with an approximate purchase time, and could be sure it would be ready when she arrives. What if she told her friends via Facebook that she was heading down to the local mini-mart for ice cream? She could take orders from them if they were also coming over to her house later. The Facebook update is free publicity for the online or email ordering feature at the local market. That is Social. Not Local.

A great example of a local shop using a Social mindset is Houston’s CoffeeGroundz, which created a Twitter account (@coffeegroundz) and unexpectedly realized that they could do a brisk business with Twitter takeout orders. You can read the whole story, in detail on Pistachio Consulting’s blog, here. CoffeeGroundz is a great example of Social, not Local.

Consider the PTO, the local Parent-Teacher Organization of the local elementary school, the most local of local organizations.  A tired parent receives a note about his child, or an email from his child’s school, about the meeting. He goes. The typical meeting consists of parents talking about why the school isn’t doing something or that it should do something better. The PTO wants new ideas, wants to use them, and hopes to involve parents in school improvements. Maybe you attended, maybe not. Either way, you get an email update about what happened. Are you engaged? Are you ready to act? Nope, you’re happy eating mint chocolate chip ice cream and can’t be bothered. The PTO is too Local.

Now consider the Social PTO. The Social PTO is all about making it easier for  you to engage, act and motivate others to create real changes in the school.

You receive the next PTO meeting invitation via one or more of these methods:  email, a group text message on your mobile phone, a Facebook Event invitation, and/or a listing on the PTO’s chat group (such as a Yahoo or Google group). You are asked to contribute ideas to the agenda ahead of time via an online site. You are asked to invite others to the meeting through the Facebook share application, and you proudly display the meeting as a Facebook Event on your profile.  If you can’t go, you can follow the meeting either via live web video, updates on the group site, a #hashtag on Twitter, or real time Facebook group updates. You are able to text your questions to the the vice-chair during the meeting with an assurance that they will be addressed. The meetings are more efficient with the use of pre-sent questions and agenda submissions. The PTO has created easy, potentially viral methods to further engage and recruit people and their ideas. You are engaged and ready to act. The PTO is Social, not Local.

Next time you are about to go to your neighborhood meeting, send a Tweet on Twitter asking if anyone wants anything from the local mini mart. I’ll take some mint choco chip ice cream, please.

It’s all Social now.

Two-way communication, photo by Jacob Botter

In my last post, I spoke about assessing your current communications strategy before you begin your social media strategy. I’d like to expand on that by sharing with you my own questionnaire that I use at the initial client meeting. I use this questionnaire to consider how the organization currently engages, listens and respects its stakeholders. I also look at the overall communications strategy that the organization uses (or lack thereof). My initial questionnaire is as follows:

1. Who are your stakeholders? Please describe each stakeholder group including their relationship to the organization, total numbers, demographics and activities with your organization.

2. What is your current communication strategy with each group? How do you communicate with them (by email, newsletters, reports, general meetings, proprietary closed online network discussion, surveys, etc)? How often?

3. What are the methods/tools that your stakeholders can use to easily communicate with you?

4. How do you integrate feedback from your stakeholder groups?

What I am looking for are the answers to these specific considerations:

• does the organization communicate regularly with its stakeholders groups (all of them!)?
• does the organization make it easy for the stakeholders to communicate with it?
• does the organization invite critique and ideas?
• does the organization integrate stakeholder feedback?
• does the organization have a communication strategy for each stakeholder group?

I then divide each organization into the following categories:

• Limited Communicators: those who do not engage in routine stakeholder communications and do not have an existing communication strategy.

• Hyper-focused Communicators: those who communicate regularly with just one or two stakeholder groups, but not all of them. This is usually the case of an organization that prioritizes communicating with funders or a membership base, but ignores regular communication with other stakeholder groups.

• Passive Communicators: those who create rote, one-way, regular, informative communications. Examples of these would include an annual report, announcements in the newspaper of the general meeting, email alerts in times of need, or publicity events.

• Tactical Communicators: these organizations have implementing many dynamic communication tools (blogs, yahoo member groups, facebook groups, etc) but have not elaborated their goals for the communication strategy.

Often, organizations are a combination of two types.  Categorizing organizations helps me to understand how they currently view their stakeholders and currently communicate, and whether or not they have a communication strategy.

Once I’ve assessed an organization, I work with them to elaborate specific strategic goals they they want to achieve with each stakeholder group. Once these realistic goals are set, then we create a cohesive communication strategy that integrates improving current communications and defining what (if any) social media strategies would meaningfully move the organization towards achieving its benchmarking goals for each stakeholder group.

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If you are not already engaging in meaningful, regular two-way communication now, before you institute web 2.0 tools, then your stakeholders probably won’t be quick to use your web 2.0 applications. Why?

I remember the building that I tried to organize into a tenant union that just wouldn’t organize.  Only one or two tenants would ever show up for organizing meetings, and even then, they defended the lousy landlord to me saying that he “would never sell us out.” (But oh, how he did!)

Why didn’t they care? Why didn’t they even want to listen? Because my organization, the “outside agitator” showed up in without any prior relationship and asked for a relationship. Why should they trust us? Had we seeded the ground for this organizing drive with informal conversations with leaders, hosted “house parties” to start the conversation about the landlord, or shown respect for their opinions and incorporated those into our organizing drive? No. Absolutely not. I went in, as the organizer, and told them that the landlord was planning to take advantage of a legal loophole to raise their stabilized rents and threaten their stability.  I made all the wrong moves, and it was no wonder that the tenants roundly refused to listen to me or even give me the time of day.

It’s not, as repeated in the movie Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come.” Rather, “if you engage already, then they will come (online).”

What do I mean?

You must be currently engaged with your stakeholders before implementing any web 2.o engagement strategy, or your social media strategy will fall short of expectations. Your stakeholders will only participate if they feel listened to, respected, and considered important. And they will feel this way if you create (or have) a communication strategy that currently fosters these feelings. If you’re not sure, here’s a communication checklist:

Questions to Ask Before You Implement Social Media

Thinking about it another way, how do you engage dynamically with your stakeholders and incorporate their ideas into your organizational development. If you don’t, create a chart (or list) of the ways in which you can begin to move your stakeholders from passive supporters to eager enthusiasts that can become your online Joiners, Critics, Collectors or Spectators. Once you implement a social media strategy, you want your stakeholders to participate, “evangelize” about your organization, and fully engage with your organization and others about your organization online. Remember my last post that profiles who is online?  The way you can motivate your stakeholders to become part of the small percentage of Joiners Collectors, Critics and Spectators is by creating a real relationship with them prior to implementing your social media strategy. When you do implement it, you’ll offer them a natural transition and outlet for continuing your conversations with web 2.0 applications.

Here’s a sample chart I’ve created to  jump start your efforts developing a dynamic communication strategy:

Beginning the Conversation with Your Stakeholders

Don’t expect them to show up at the organizing meeting when they haven’t been asked what they think. Take the time to build a real, two-way communication strategy before you begin to use web 2.0 applications. Once you’ve created that communication in your offline or web 1.0 world, then you can easily continue the conversation online, in your organization’s web 2.0 world.

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