You can teach anyone to use a social media platform like Twitter, but if she doesn’t connect with real people immediately and at every log in, then I don’t expect her to continue using it for very long.

Moses Ma wrote about this for Psychology Today in March 2009:

Twitter aims primarily at social needs, like those for belonging, love, and affection. Relationships such as friendships, romantic attachments and families help fulfill this need for companionship and acceptance, as does involvement in social, community or religious groups. Clearly, feeling connected to people via Twitter helps to fulfill some of this need to belong and feel cared about.

As I posted a few months ago, nobody goes online to get pounded with ads.  There is that desire to connect with us, and I will add a need to stay informed that drive us back to a social media site. We don’t want to talk to brands. We want to talk to people, but doing so can blur lines between “brand” and “individual,” or “professional” and “personal.” Some people or organizations are very uncomfortable combining these worlds. Sometimes a strictly personal approach doesn’t seem to fit the issue. 

At a panel called Beyond the Tweet at last week’s Netroots Nation, new media operative Tracy Viselli argued for the importance of implementing an element of the personal on campaign and advocacy Twitter streams:

People respond to candidates that are personable. It’s good to give out bits of personality because that is what people respond to. Claire McCaskill on Twitter feels very personal. For issue initiatives, you still need a personality or a group of personalities. Identify the people that are going to be tweeting for an organization or effort.  People identify the personality or voice that comes through that account. That’s what people respond to.

Amongst the attendees, Cynthia Samuels, a blogger and Managing Editor at Care2 Causes whose previous career was in broadcast TV, compared this kind of relationship to the world of broadcast news. “The broadcast anchor determines the audience,” she said during the question and answer period. “It’s the person the audience builds a relationship with,” not, I would add, with the broadcasting entity or the program.

What can you do if you are hesitant to personalize the Twitter stream of your organization but still want to build a following? Viselli and her fellow speakers Jim Gilliam and Nate Thomas discussed a few tactics at their session. I’ve added a few of my own.

• Before you begin, decide who will tweet, what kind of voice to use, and how much that person can interact with other users on Twitter.
• Consider possible “human” voices for your organization or issue, like the main spokesperson, campaign manager, or other personalities.
• Set realistic expectations about results for your Twitter profile. For example, you can’t measure who reads a tweet, but you can use some Twitter clients, like Hootsuite, to get a sense of who has clicked on a link in your tweet.
• Listen to what people are saying about your issue or organization. Then target people who are influencers and can help you spread your message.
• Look for moments when you can take advantage of the situation – somebody says or does something that you can immediately react to.
• Give your followers an action at the very moment they are impassioned that empowers them and shows them how one action and snowball and spread virally to make a huge impact.

Finally, look at some of the suggestions of one of DCI Group’s resident social media experts, Sarah Hoffman, posted a few weeks ago on using social tools for advocacy