Chapter 5: Listening, Engaging and Building Relationships

The purpose of using social media and other outlets on the Internet is to build relationships.  This is the ultimate goal.  Online relationship building begins with listening, then moves to engagement and finally action.

The key to building any relationship is good listening.  Organizations should listen to what people are talking about, what their interests or concerns are, and most importantly how they view your organization.  Listing also helps organizations who are new to social media orient themselves.  It can help the organization to become more comfortable with using these new tools.  There are some tools that can help organizations listen.  Some include Google Alerts, RSS readers, Twitter search, Delicious tags and Technorati blog mentions.  I personally like Google Alerts and Good Reader.  These two applications help to organize all the things you want to listen to and put them in one place.  Google Alerts can be sent directly to your email.  Google reader allows you to monitor and organize all the blogs and websites you like to keep up on.

Engagement is the next step in building a relationship.  This can be thought of as “being human through your computer.”  Engagement means getting involved online.  You are not only listening, but also are participating in conversations.  Organizations can share information, enter or initiate conversations, thank people, educate and raise awareness or ask people to do something.  Currently our class is engaging with potential audience members of Safe Harbor by asking them to vote online for our Pepsi Refresh Project.

Lastly, relationship building calls for action by the organization and the audience member with whom the organization is engaging.  Organizations need to be intentional about their efforts online and need to expect that online people will march to their own drummers.  Building relationships takes consistency and practice.