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It’s no secret around these parts (I might have watched too many westerns recently) that our favorite Social Media platform is twitter.

We’ve been involved with twitter since 2007 and heavily invested in it since 2010 as a primary source of information, marketing channels, and chuckles.

I will admit twitter is not for everyone, or every business, but if you are looking for a way to get real-time news about the world or your areas of interest and wanting connections with voices of influence this is the platform for you.

A few things you need to know about twitter to help you ease into your new best friend:

Hashtags: You see these everywhere – on TV, at conferences, I have even seen them on food packaging. When you place a hashtag (#) in front of a word or joined phrase (#hamburger or #icantreadthis) in your tweet it becomes a hyperlink. Clicking that hyperlink will take you to all the real-time conversations about that hamburger, conference or TV show on twitter. The # is an indexing and search tool for the conversations on twitter. It gets abused on a fairly regular basis by users noting the punch lines to their jokes but when used correctly it is one of the most powerful tools on the internet. #OnToTheNextSubject

See also: Breaking Down Hashtags on Facebook

Tweeting: You only have 140 characters to share your wisdom with the world. The previous sentence was 66 characters so that gives you an idea how short these messages are. Now here are two curveballs: 120 > 140 and 80 is really the sweet spot. Messages of 120 characters or less are prime for your followers to retweet (RT) you and still fall under the 140 character limit. When someone RT’s your message your twitter handle (ex: @RocketGroup) is added to the message as an attribution and eats up more characters. Also, studies have shown that messages of around 80 characters are the ones with the most interaction from readers. It takes a little bit but writing short pithy comments will come naturally to you in no time. Promise.

Links: Of course you will want to have links in your tweets that go back to your blog, your website, or interesting content you have found online. Putting a link such as /blog/how-to-successfully-upload-multiple-photos-to-facebook will chew up all of your characters so what are you to do? URL shorteners were invented for just this purpose. Twitter has a tool built into its program, We represent Hootsuite.com which is a great tool for managing twitter, and bit.ly is the original tool on the market. Using one of these tools takes the original link above and creates http://ow.ly/fDN1c which still drives you to the right place. The internet is awesome.

A few other quick tips:
• Fill out your profile completely with a nice photo of yourself, your geographic location, and links to your website or other important pages to you.

• Quickly find subject matter experts to follow or people in your local community with a tool like twellow.com– which advertises itself as the “Yellow Pages of twitter”.

• What to tweet? Just start and you will find your voice very quickly. Not sure you want to tweet? That’s cool too. 1/3 of the twitter audience drives the conversation while 2/3 of the audience has limited or no participation but they are logging in frequently. Kind of like real life.

• When sharing others content either RT them directly or add a citation in your post (via @emarketer) to keep things honest and to show the original author who is sharing their content.

Ready to make the leap? Give us a follow (@RocketGroup is our handle) and tell us you what you thought of this post.

See you in less than 140!
Gus Wagner

Video: Gus Wagner, speaking at #140Conf in Des Moines, Iowa, on engaging public officials on social media.

We live in a time when only 45 out of 435 members of the U.S. House consider themselves ‘rural enough’ to be members of the Rural Caucus. Those numbers aren’t getting better for those of us in most Congressional districts in the states right now, and that covers most of us in the Midwest.

Consider for a moment that in addition to the shrinking representation and influence agribusiness and rural concerns receive in government and in real life, that in the Midwest, we’re lagging in social media, as well.

According to the current HubSpot Twitter Grader, the Midwest is falling well below the national average for use of Twitter (Missouri is 42{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb} below the national average, and Iowa and Wisconsin are both 14{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb} below it).

If, in Missouri, we want to relate to our 390 Congressional City Cousins to engage on our issues, we must impact them with our #AstroNetTurfRoots — using truth and transparency.

This post is inspired by the opportunities I’ve had to do public speaking and marketing training for membership organizations, nonprofits, and advocacy groups along with my public service to the state of Missouri as a Chief of Staff in the State Senate.

I’ve been on both sides of the lobbying and advocacy pitches and I believe I know what can help you.

When working with membership organizations, I try to put things in perspective by asking members if they have ever had a face-to-face lobbying or advocacy meeting with:

· A local official from one of the 19,000 municipal governments in America?
· An elected official from one of the 3,141 county governments in America?
· Someone from one of the 99 House of Representatives or State Senates in America?
· A Governor?
· A United States Congressman or United States Senator?
· A President?

I have met with and addressed issues with all of the above.

I then ask members if they’ve ever had a personal social media conversation with an elected official about an issue — without blasting press releases at them or throwing a stack of talking points their way.

What I’ve discovered is that if membership groups can organize and mobilize their dozens, hundreds, thousands of members as social media advocates, that they can take real world actions using social media tools.

Increasingly, elected officials at the local, state, and federal level are active on Twitter or Facebook (or both). Their staff employees and other government influences are active on social media as well. Membership organizations need to take advantage of this social media presence in order to communicate effectively outside of their membership silos.

I suggest that membership organizations across the Midwest, especially in capital cities like our home base of Jefferson City, aggressively and positively communicate with members and elected officials using social media.

Here are two more of our blog posts written with membership organizations like yours in mind:

17 Ways Membership Organizations Can Practice #AstroNetTurfRoots 

Top 6 Things to Avoid in #AstroNetTurfRoots

Traditional marketing and advertising was based on one-to-many communications. In other words, the handful of big business who had the budgets to make large media buys were able to broadcast their message to huge audiences.

With the development of social media marketing, marketing and advertising strategy have undergone a paradigm shift. Gone are the days when marketing was all about big media buys. Today, businesses and organizations have the unique (and low-cost) opportunity to build authentic, transparent relationships with their customers, members, and advocates.

This paradigm shift means that we can use social media marketing to build authentic, transparent relationships with our elected officials, too. These 17 tips will help your membership organization practice #AstroNetTurfRoots; engaging with elected officials online.

1. Follow elected officials and staff members on Twitter. Here is a good place to start.
2. Like the pages of or ask to Friend elected officials and staff members on Facebook.
3. Observe (“listen to”) how those officials communicate. What is their tone? What topics do they tweet about?
4. Match the tone your elected officials use online when you communicate with them on social media channels.
5. When appropriate, respond to elected officials, retweet their posts, or share their messages with your community.
6. Seek out press and media representatives that cover government affairs (at all levels) so they have a more familiar relationship with you.
7. Create a social media directory or follow list that includes the names and usernames of those elected officials, staff, and press.
8. Share your social media directory (see #7) with your members.
9. Encourage your members to follow, friend, and engage with elected officials as well.
10. Speak to elected officials as yourself (as in individual), rather than as your organization to separate yourself from the white noise the elected official is already inundated by.
11.  Be an expert on your issue, whatever that issue may be.
12.  Know the impact that an issue has on your area, the elected official’s area, and on your own business.
13.  Be able to back your knowledge and expertise with real, factual information.
14. Share upcoming events with elected officials when those events will give them real-world experience in your affairs, industry, or region.
15. When elected officials attend your events, tweet about their attendance and Facebook it to your friends and followers.
16. When you meet elected officials in the real world, gently remind them of your social media relationship.
17.  Be aware that the Internet, like a diamond, is forever. If you put it out there it can help you or come back and bite you in the butt.

One final note: Social media is changing constantly. Your goal shouldn’t be to follow hard-and-fast rules from a “social media expert”, but to apply — and test — best practices with your audiences. And when you think you’ve found what works, test it again! You might be surprised at how frequently social media platforms make changes that impact you.

Need a hand with your social media strategy? Drop us a line.

Thanks for the Time

-Gus Wagner

Gus Wagner of The Rocket Group explains #AstroNetTurfRoots at #SocialIRL in Jefferson City, Missouri (#JCMO) in December of 2012.

Speaking from the state’s capital, Missouri social media strategist Gus Wagner teaches the audience at #SocialIRL about engagement, advocacy, and developing relationships through social media.

This process is one that Gus calls #AstroNetTurfRoots.

Critics refer to organized groups building grassroots organizations as “AstroTurfing”. At The Rocket Group, we think that combining your real-life organized group with your online constituents creates #AstroNetTurfRoots.

Watch the video to learn more.

***

Gus Wagner is a multiple-certified social media strategist who served for more than seven years as a Chief of Staff in the Missouri State Senate, and for more than six years as the State Chairman of the Missouri Young Republicans. He has more than 21 years experience in business and more than 26 years total in political, charitable, and civic volunteerism and involvement.

If you work for a membership organization, a policy group, or a civic organization, you may find yourself working round-the-clock to build — and keep — an engaged membership or constituent base.

Something that’s commonplace on Twitter is live-tweeting events. If you’re a community organizer, elected official, advocate, or membership organization, you could easily begin to use live-tweeting to grow your next meeting or event past the “real life” audience and onto your larger #AstroNetTurfRoots community.

If you’re having a meeting (of any size) you can set up live-tweeting. Here’s how:

Before Your Meeting or Event:

• Get/establish event hashtag, like #MoberlyChamber  or #JeffCityTownHall
• Put the hashtag on your registration website and published materials, and make sure the audience (online and in IRL) know that that’s the hashtag for the event.
• Tell your real-life and Twitter audiences that you’ll be live-tweeting.
• Engage your meeting or event’s speakers online using their Twitter handles
• Create and share a “follow list” IRL and online (include speakers, leaders, guests, and other participants on this list)
• Use a client like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck (3rd party partners) to follow the Twitter conversation about your event more efficiently.

During the Meeting or Event:

You’re in the room during the event, and you have the twitter handles of your speakers. When those speakers share memorable or quote-worthy things, tweet those quotes out to your followers. Be sure to include the speaker’s handle (@name) and the event #. 

• Quote speakers using their handles (I like to call these “tweetable moments”)
• Pick and choose the best content, even if you need to take notes and share the content a few minutes later
• Take and share photos of your audience & your speakers (Having a photo link in your Twitter stream will increase your interaction by 20{628954cb2bad821921117287c23504a7919be1893c483613421612ad8712cddb})
• Watch the conversation around the hashtag that you’ve created, and interact with the people who are saying good (or bad) things about your event. (You’ll guarantee more success, connection with your audience by doing this.)
• Hashtag your geographic location, too (#STL, #JCMO, etc). Hashtagging your location goes a long way toward helping the people in the area learn more about your organization or cause.

After the Meeting or Event:

• Thank new and old followers for support your event. Call individuals out by name (@) for their engagement
• Write a blog post (tools like storify.com are great for this) that puts the tweets about the event in one place, and share it with your followers
• Use hastracking.com to track your traffic & the ripple effect created by your live tweeting of the event.

Live-tweeting your next public meeting or event will help you build — and engage — an #AstroNetTurfRoots audience that is passionate about your cause.

One final point for you to consider: Social media (including Twitter) changes constantly. Your goal shouldn’t be to follow hard-and-fast rules from an alleged “social media expert”, but to apply — and test — best practices with your audiences. And when you think you’ve found what works, test it again! You might be surprised at how frequently social media platforms make changes that impact you.

Need help? We’re here.

Thanks for the time,