Social is called ‘social’ because, well…it’s social!

It’s 2015 so I’m sure I don’t need to tell you (or even remind you) that social media is not about broadcasting but about conversations.

I didn’t really need to remind you, right? Good.

Often organisational social media accounts can be conversational but still faceless. You know you’re talking to a person – hey, they may even crack a joke from time to time – but who exactly are these people behind the social media accounts? I bet you don’t know.

But there’s a really easy way to fix this. Use a sign-off.

Big charities often have big social media teams. And by ‘big’, I mean more than one person so they tend to use their name or at least their initials when replying to people. This immediately creates a sense of personalisation – you are talking to a person, not just a charity. When you call up a charity, the person answering the phone would always give their name, so why do we not do the same on social?

Here’s a great example from Save the Children UK. Now, if I have a question I know I can address it to Steve. Isn’t that nice? Better than addressing my question to @SaveChildrenUK…

One of the best examples is Oxfam. They consistently reply with their names and, I have to say, it does make it more special.

I’ve used Oxfam as an example of best practice before in this blog and when I tweeted the post, I had a lovely reply from Stuart:

And of course this works on Facebook too. Here’s how Macmillan responds to comments:

And here’s one from Irene at Anthony Nolan:

Now I’m sure you will agree that this doesn’t cost any money or time, which means that every charity – no matter how small – can do the same. After all, how can we create genuine relationships through social media if we don’t know who we’re talking to?