How to empower your community with twitter

Shoutem has written a great post about 10 Ways to Empower Your Community with Twitter. Here are their points:
1.    Ask questions to your readers.
2.    Answer questions.
3.    Share the passion and linkup.
4.    Follow the trends and create hashtags.
5.    Monitor the Twittersphere.
6.    Be accessible yet private.
7.    Host contests and offer goodies.
8.    Feature your fans and retweet.
9.    Offer them the world..
10.    Let them speak?

Read the full article.

Media interview survival tips

The most important thing to remember in a media interview is that it is an opportunity for you to get your messages to your audience through the journalist. You are in control of the interview.

It is important not to respond to any questions on the initial call. Ask the journalist what information they are looking for and the format of the interview (if it is over the phone, one-on-one, live or taped).  All journalists work to a deadline, so find out what their deadline is and set a time to call them back. Make sure you call them at the agreed time.

You can’t ask to see the questions or the story in advance. Remember you cannot change your quotes or edit the story after the interview. More often than not, the journalist will be interviewing other people to ensure the story has a balanced view, so do not expect to be the only person interviewed or quoted.

•    Setting your agenda. Before you undertake the interview you will need to write out a game plan. You should prepare one before each and every interview. The game plan covers key issues, possible questions about the key issues and the answers for each possible question. It is important to write these out – don’t do it from memory. If you are doing a phone interview, have the plan and media release in front you for easy reference.

•    Develop compelling messages What are the critical messages that you want to communicate? Key messages are the core messages you want your audience to hear and remember. They create meaning, headline the issue and allow you to control the interview.

Your key messages are what you must say and get across in the interview – irrespective of what questions the journalist asks. With your audience in mind, and focused on your objectives, you should work out in advance of the interview what you must say on the topic concerned.

•    Understand the journalist’s role The journalist’s role is not to try to catch you out, but to establish the facts and report on them objectively. If you focus on waiting for them to ask a tricky question, you will not be in control of the interview.

Journalists are looking for the truth. If you try to get a story by making claims that cannot be substantiated, it will not lead to a story. The article will not be published and they will certainly never ask you for an interview again.

•    Practice, practice, practice After your preparation, you should review your game plan and do a practice interview. Close the door to your office, take the phone of the hook and spend 10 minutes going over your key messages and answering the questions from your game plan. Remember this is your opportunity to get your messages to your audience, so make full use of it.

Start an online buzz

The online world can bring you in to contact with potential customers and create a real sense of community around your business. Websites such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook are among the most popular examples of the social web.

They are all free to use and not only provide an opportunity to create buzz around your business by promoting yourself, but you will be amazed the contacts you start making with people around the world.

Start a Facebook page which can be a personal, fan or group page. Load up images of your products, let people know when your next event or product launch is. This allows you to share information with potentially 1000s of people that are interested in your products or services.

Use tools such as Flickr (which is a free online photo album) to upload images of your products or service that can be linked to the blog and cross linked to other social networks. Flickr also has groups so you can link to other businesses and share your images with people you may never meet have a common interest with.

Use Twitter (micro blogging) to start conversations with other businesses from around the world, or people interested in the type of work you are doing.

B2B's using social media

Forrester surveyed more than 1,200 business technology buyers and found that they exceed all previous benchmarks for social participation. Their research, The Social Technographics® Of Business Buyers highlights:

# 91% of these technology decision-makers were Spectators — the highest number I’ve ever seen in a Social Technographics Profile. This means you can count on the fact that your buyers are reading blogs, watching user generated video, and participating in other social media. Note that 69% of them said they were using this technology for business purposes.
# Only 5% are non-participants (Inactives).
# 55% of these decision-makers were in social networks (Joiners) — despite as mature businesspeople and not college students, you’d think they’d be participating a lot less.
# 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles, etc.) and 58% are Critics, reacting to content they see in social formats. Again the numbers are very high compared to other groups we’ve surveyed, and again the level of participation for business purposes is also very high.