Tying It All Together

By Sanya Weathers

Community work is so fluid and reactive that we tend to make a virtue of necessity, and claim that flying by the seat of our pants is the best way to work.

Yes and no. The fact is, the very best pants-flying is only done when you’ve got a lot of solidly laid groundwork. When you feel overwhelmed, it’s a sign that you’re doing it wrong. Fortunately, it’s easy to take control with only a few minutes of planning time.

Start with your main message. What’s the thing you are trying to communicate today? Let’s say it’s an upcoming product improvement. Write the main point – one sentence or less, and if you can’t boil it down like that, you shouldn’t even try to put it on the internet – on your white board to keep you focused. Underneath the message, write a checklist. One of my typical checklists looks like this:

–    Company intranet/mailing list/bathroom wall
–    Site
–    Blog
–    Facebook
–    Twitter
–    Message board
–    Reporter/Editor 1, 2, 3
–    Fansite Editor 1, 2, 3

These are your outlets. Why trust to memory or luck? What if there’s a fire drill after you update the blog and before you get to Facebook? What if there’s a meeting? What if someone replaced the usual coffee with decaf? Use a checklist every time and you won’t ever be embarrassed.

Notice the company’s own internal news medium is first on the list. Experienced community pros know you can never, ever assume that everyone in the company has signed off on, or is even aware of, the thing you are about to say. The community director’s job is to facilitate communication, and that includes the company itself. I cannot count the number of times I’ve informed my own company of something and had some poor production person scream an alarm right before I went public.

Okay, you’ve gone down your checklist. This is where things will evolve. Someone on Twitter will have a great question, and you’ll answer it there. Now, if you’re not using your whiteboard, you’re going to remember answering the question…but not where you answered it. You might not have time to propagate the new information across all sources at once. So make a mark on your white board. Dump the link in a tickle file. When you have a moment, go back and spread the new information around. (You can skip the media contacts – first of all, they probably made the update already, and second of all, keeping up with you is what separates the pros from the tyros.)

So for example, someone asks a good question on Twitter. You answer, you drop a cut and paste of your answer into a notepad file with the date and time, and you tick a red X on your whiteboard checklist next to Twitter. When you have time, spread the information and mark the other sites the same way. When they’re all marked, wipe the X’s.

Alternatively – answer the question, and immediately update your website. Cut and paste the message “Site updated! 3:30 PM 1/25/11” across all your other channels and threads.

You’ve lost nothing in tone, spontaneity, and your pants are still in flight. But you’ve also covered all your bases.

Worried about repeating your message and boring people who follow all of your channels? Don’t. First of all, many people will miss at least one of your channels. The customers aren’t checking the channels all at the same time, the way you’re updating them! And second, repetition of message is the foundation to all effective communication.