If you’ve taken a read through our social media monitoring and engagement playbook, you’ll notice that it’s almost exclusively focused on our community interaction on Twitter. Twitter is one of the key online channels customers, prospects, and fans use to connect with us, giving us great reason to maintain a framework for our participation.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have reason to venture outside Twitter, though — there’s a fair share of mentions on blogs, forums, and other online outposts that need our attention. We also strive to participate in a number of industry/vertical conversations where mentions of Radian6 are nowhere to be found.

Seeing as there’s much more to the engagement equation than Twitter, how about we chat over some of those additional points here? If there are any questions left unanswered, please feel free to leave them in the comments and we’ll be sure to address them.

Blogs/Forums

Radian6 receives a good number of shout-outs in blogs and on forums. Most often those mentions are embedded in posts lauding the value of social media monitoring, reviews of multiple social media monitoring platforms, and content of that nature. While many of those are passing mentions, it’s imperative that we say thank you for each and every one.

Acknowledging those references to us is part of the Radian6 company culture, so we’ve set guidelines for response that directly accommodate that. This “rule” covers mentions big and small, positive and negative, blogged, forum’d, or otherwise. Who a comment or post is assigned to for response is based on a few factors including depth of post topic and type of mention.

In general, we will not respond to mentions that are posted on forums or sites that require someone to sign up for an account to comment. We will, however, sign up for those accounts and respond if the mention is a complaint or customer support issue.

Facebook

We treat mentions on Facebook similar to those on privacy/account-protected sites. If a comment that pops into our feed is a complaint or obvious need for support, we will jump in.

On our own Facebook page, we get involved in conversation to drive engagement and leave all comments alone unless they’re defamatory, inflammatory, or attacking of others. Pretty simple.

Proactive Industry Outreach

Reactive outreach has been a huge part of the Radian6 engagement strategy for as long as we’ve been, well, engaging. But the company has hit a level of maturity that demands we start seeking out industry conversations and identifying new communities that could be valuable for us to get involved in.

This proactive outreach initiative is tied into our engagement processes. Members of the Community Team have individual profiles set up in the Radian6 dashboard around our niche areas of interest and expertise, to hone in on meaty conversations that we want to dig into. We also monitor a general “social media” feed that picks up a variety of posts that don’t mention Radian6 but are valuable to read through and comment on. We have individual and team goals set around this proactive outreach and have incorporated search and response into our online engagement activities.

Note that these processes truly are a part of our daily work routine. Engagement isn’t optional here at Radian6; it’s part of the company’s mission, and we’re working regularly on expanding engagement past the bounds of traditional thinking, not just for our external community but for our own purposes, as well.

You’ll also see that there’s no place for canned responses in our engagement playbook or guidelines. Say ‘thank you’, say ‘how can we help?’, but say it in your own words — this caveat is invaluable to note and stay aware of. While response and engagement are part of the Radian6 brand promise, so is our human tone and emphasis on individuality among employees. That tone and individuality cross the bounds of social networks and extend offline, too (which you’ll notice when you meet any of us at an event).

For Radian6, engagement process framing was a natural progression because of how deeply steeped we are in the online space. How about you? We strongly encourage you to review your engagement processes and expectations and lay them down on paper. How do you want to see your employees handling online engagement? Do you think you need to set expectations? If so, how detailed do you believe your expectations and processes need to be?