Mashable Launches Hub for Twitter Resources

For those of you who follow Mashable you understand the great social resource they and for those of you who don’t follow Mashable it’s time you started to tune in. In a recent post by Pete Cashmore, he announces the release of the Twitter Guide Book. A hub for all things Twitter from teh 101 level to the advanced community building level.

I let you read for yourself, but I’m guessing this will be an attractive offering from Mashable to anyone who uses Twitter. Thanks Mashable for the great tool.

The NBA, Your Enterprise, and Social Media

The other day Mashableposted a great post on how the NBA is utilizing social media and what teams are “getting it” with success. The post points out teams that are engaging fans and bringing the inter-workings of the organization to social media for fan interaction and consumption. Fans of athletic teams become so personally engrossed in the organizations and players a social channel seems like a given for communication success. I can’t count all the people I know on Facebook that have friended their favorite teams or send me daily updates on how well or poorly their teams are performing. It soon becomes a personality trait that you learn to love or hate.

No apply what was just said their to your enterprise. People don’t live and die by your products or performance, but they become attached to it and talk about it as if they were apart of the corporate work force. These are the people you need to reach. They are want to tell people about big news, achievements, and opportunities happening in your environment they just need an easy way to consume and propagate your news. Enter social media strategy.  The original post listed out why NBA teams are using social media as part of their overall strategy and the list is very similar to an enterprise list of why they should engage fans. So, let’s turn away from sports and apply what you do to the list in the original post.

- Generate fan participation and discussion; (Does your Enterprise have fans/customers?)
- Establish control over team messages and news; (Do you want to control your message/news?)
- Announce signings, injury updates, or other breaking news; (Do you have breaking news and corporate updates?)
- Create relationships among fans, athletes, and coaches; (Do you want a relationship with your fans/customers?)
- Provide fans with “inside” information and product promotions; (Do you have the insider opportunities to offer?)
- Boost traffic to the official team website; (Do you want more people to visit you website?)
- Sell more tickets! (Do you want to sell more goods and services?)

 Now these may seem like dumb and obvisous questions, but odds are you answered yes to all of the above. Now you have a basic strategy for a social media program. What you have to do is find out how you can interact with customers and build the bond of trust and transparincy to complete the strategy. Of course that is the hard part, this Q&A shows how a plan from the NBA can be twisted into something viable to your program.