How many of your social media friends would come to your funeral? 5 tips for building community and careers

How many Twitter (insert preferred social network here) followers do you have? Truth be told, it’s not a vanity metric to which I pay much attention.

What I do pay attention to are the great projects and ideas that I’ve seen come to life. 

I’ve been active on Twitter since 2009. And I’ve been connecting with new colleagues and friends from day one.

5 Tips for Building Community and Careers

I have been fortunate enough to be part of many Twitter groups, loosely organized around a few hashtags, including: 

#HITMC
#HealthITChicks
#HTReads

If you get on Twitter simply to push out your content, you’re missing the point. What’s most powerful about Twitter and other social media platforms is the opportunity to engage in conversation and build relationships with people you may never meet in real life. 

Here’s what I’ve learned from more than ten years on Twitter about building virtual relationships: 

1. Connect like-minded people and organizations. This is what most people are online to do – make connections. Be selective yet generous with your network. 
2. Acknowledge the people who inspire you and the work that’s important to you. #MotivationMonday and #FollowFriday are great opportunities to show your friends love.
3. Participate in Tweet chats, answer their polls, retweet messages when they’re looking for advice or input. 
4. Share their success stories and, yes, their content, too. This is a big one. A great blog post is a great blog post, even if you (or your company) didn’t write it.
5. Support your friends’ ventures and projects. Give to their charities, become a podcast patron, sign-up for their newsletters.

Customer experience is about relationships

These five tips aren’t just for individuals looking to build their personal brands.

As marketers take a more prominent role in helping companies define, create and measure customer experience, brands must adopt a relationship-building mindset. Social media is the only marketing channel that enables real-time two-way communication. 

Connecting with your clients and customers like they were friends has the potential to transform the customer experience. Is your social media strategy ready to rise to the challenge? 

I’d like to believe that at least a few of my Twitter friends might miss my witty banter when I’m gone. And yes, that they may even shed a tear at my funeral. 

You can follow me on Twitter @social_melanie