At .ORG, we are big fans of using and managing multiple social media vehicles to promote engagement and interactivity within our global community. In our experience, there are many advantages to this approach:

• The ability to promote and track interest, comments and the support of our goals and thought leadership positions—through dialogue on several levels via links, pictures, and comments;
• Enhanced visibility for our organization;
• Flexibility of our followers to select their preferred vehicle to follow us on;
• Allows us to be a key player in the conversation through a variety of different platforms and channels;
• The multiple social media vehicles link and work together—giving us a broad spectrum with which to engage with the community.
• The ability to meet our constituents in their favorite places online and gain their engagement in the goals and messages from our company

We’re currently using Twitter, Flickr, our Blog, YouTube, and Facebook as the major ways to reach out to and engage our .ORG community on an ongoing basis.

• Twitter – on-the-move news, real-time dialogue, allows followers to be in touch with the team when they are traveling, attending industry conferences, and general quick tidbits of news about our industry.
• Facebook – a centralized ‘home’ for .ORG resources and latest events, access to broad user audience. Users can show support and make comments.
• Flickr – integrated with our blog, we post images from travels and events the .ORG team attends to allow the community to follow our news and whereabouts.
• The .ORG Blog – provides insight on industry issues and brands our team as experts in respective subject areas. Includes links to other social media tools being used, encourages comments and track-backs.
• YouTube – provides an opportunity for our sales channel and also the .ORG community to view and embed videos of past events, educational videos about the use .ORGs all over the globe, and multi-language materials

An example of how .ORG applies these practices is well demonstrated through our first annual .ORG Ambassador Awards Program. This initiative seeks to recognize an outstanding .ORG that is using technology and social media to increase visibility, membership/participation, and reach of their organization. The Awards themselves were announced to the community via partnered blogs, tweets, and our Facebook page. We will be able to post the winner of the award on YouTube when announced at the end of this month. We received a lot of interest from our community to this, so this really showed us how powerful the social media landscape is for generating interest and engagement among your audience!

Written by Crystal Peterson, Marketing & Communications Manager, .ORG, The Public Interest Registry