I’m continuing to read and re-read Brian Solis’ new book Engage! - ”complete guide for brands and businesses to brand, cultivate, and measure success in the new web”.  This Part 3 book summary is for pages 196 – 240.  For previous summaries see Part 1 and Part 2.

• Top 10 guidelines for social media participation (developed by SHIFT Communications). These are very useful guidelines to modify for your organization http://www.shiftcomm.com/downloads/socialmediaguidelines.pdf
• Conversation Prism which is about active listening online to develop relationships and engagement.
  • “It’s not what you say about your brand that reverberates and resonates as much as it is what your audience hears, how they share the story, and how you weave that insight into fuure conversations” (page 220)
• Community starts within
  • “Before a company can collaborate with its extended community, businesses must first learn to collaborate internally. The greatest social network is the one that perpetuates and exemplifies the values, experies, and capabilities of the organization.” (page 220)
  • Listening
    • search keywords and assess volume, frequency and tone of conversations
  • Documentation
    • use tools such as BuzzGain, PeopleBrowser, Radian6 to capture activities and have it reported in easy-to-read formats for presentations and deeper analysis
  • Presentation
    • present to decision makers and include relevant information such as active networks, perception, sentiments, perception, reach, share of voice
  • Observation
    • once we find targeted networks it is important to understand cultures, personalities and behaviours
    • find similarities and interests
    • develop profiles of the people involved using demographic and psychographic tools
  • Adapt
    • “Influence s the ability to listen, learn, engage and inspire measurable actions.” (page 227)
•  Building a bridge between brands and markets
  • shifting from monitoring to action
  • it takes resources to do this well
    • need infrastructure with communication channels, feedback processes, monitoring, analysis
    • some organizations have community managers as the central hub
  • as spokesperson, consumer, influencer what do you want to communicate
    • improve products and services
    • analyze competitive advantages and disadvantages
    • customer service
    • processes
  • Example
    • “Whole Foods uses a tool from CoTweetto manage, track and respond to th 300-500 tweets that are posted eachday to the company’s Twitter page. The tool tracks which tweets have been responded to, and which are still awaiting recognition and response.” (page 235)

This is such a fascinating book and there are so many great social media ideas, processes and tips.  More to follow this summer.