Top tips for building a community via social media

“The future of storytelling lies in social and mobile,” says journalist and academic, Julie Posetti Australia’s “Twitter Queen”. Posetti achieved notoriety as the subject of Australia’s first threatened Twitter lawsuit, although no papers have been served to date.

At this year’s Digital Citizen’s Indaba in Cape Town, South Africa, Posetti highlighted 10 tips to building a community via social media while telling stories. The tips she highlights work for brands, individuals and journalists using Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

Join a conversation
Posetti highlights the importance of listening and paying attention to a conversation before joining it. She recommends that listening to what people are saying online places your brand/organisation/person in a better place when engaging.

Start a conversation
It’s good to join a conversation but Posetti reckons that people should also lead the conversations providing their followers with well thought out pithy questions. Posetti recommends using hastags to monitor the conversation and track how people are discussing the question and where the debate is headed. “Use social media to facilitate audience engagement — amplifying the benefits of talkback,” says Posetti.

Crowdsource it
Getting the audience to help you do the best job through questions. “Don’t just ask questions to illicit a response, ask the right questions, questions that get the right answers and encourage logical discussion,” she adds. This means contextualising and creating content out of the process of conversation with your followers. She uses the example of Nicholas D. Kristof, American journalist and Pulitzer winner, to illustrate her point.

Get connected
Posetti also recommends that people should care about their status but don’t be an “uptweeter” — social climbing via Twitter — through only tweeting people with high Klout scores to improve your own. Don’t just engage where there is “evidence of big tweetback topic” also “curate an audience and good content”.

Share and care
Share key personal moments, great achievements and personal triumphs.

Personality
Posetti recommended to the audience that a bit of personality in a Twitter stream makes for more interesting read than a series of information tweets. She uses the example of Australia’s recent census, referring to @census2011 as a great Twitter stream that took a pretty dull topic and got the whole of Australia tweeting about the process of filling out a census form by simply adding some cheek to its tweets.

Curate
Identify content curators and audiences.

Value add
Don’t just tell your followers something, tell them why they should care that you are saying it. Posetti recommends adding value to your social posts through links, images and contextualising with your own thoughts as well. Here she uses Al Jazeera as an example.

Strategise
Don’t just go social because everyone is doing it. This tip is for journalists especially. “Every story needs a social media strategy, identify your idea and devise strategy [for it],” says Posetti.

Pick the right tools for the job
By identifying and using the right tools, you can manage your social presence better. By using tools like Twtpoll you “can identify, which platform, which audience and what topic”.