Should you RT every positive comment about your organisation?

NO! Please stop it!

Okay, I should expand on that a little I guess. Here's the thing... for months now I've been noticing a growing trend of some university and college 'corporate' Twitter accounts (ugh!) retweeting positive comments that people say about them. This can be anything from someone enjoying an open day to a student excited to have been offered a place at your organisation, to someone celebrating their graduation. In the past ten days I've been asked by at least three universities whether this is something that they should be doing, so I thought it merited a blog response.

First, the positive. The fact that they are doing this demonstrates that universities are now spending more time monitoring and listening to what people say about them online. Great! Well done. This is very much a step in the right direction.

Now, the reason why I don't think we should be retweeting all of those lovely comments: it looks needy and desperate. This is personal opinion and I am sure many people will disagree with me, but the need to shout out and spread every single good thing said about us online to me almost suggests that we don't hear many good things said about us. People follow people and organisations on Twitter who provide them with some kind of added-value to their lives, not those who simply pat themselves on the back. Your RTs of someone saying something nice adds no value to the user experience.

I am not for a second, however, suggesting that you shouldn't do something with all of those lovely tweets. Too bloody right you should. They're great! We revel in them and we want to see more. So, here are a few thoughts for what you might do with them instead of simply retweeting them.

1. Say thank you
Simply thank the person for saying something lovely about you. Other people will see you thanking someone for their kind comment and will therefore know that people are saying good things. But you won't be shoving it down their necks in a desperate 'look! look! someone said something nice' way.

2. Have a conversation
Beyond just thanking them, have a conversation with them. Find something out about them, engage with them, find out what prompted them to say such a lovely thing... what did they like most about their visit to your campus, etc? Use this as an opportunity to develop a deeper connection with that person and to gather crucial feedback. You might even prompt them to say even more lovely things in the process.

3. Favorite it
Many people use the 'favorites' functionality on Twitter as a bookmarking tool. Turn it instead into a recommendations/endorsements tool. It's more subtle than retweeting those comments, but it gives you a place that you can direct other people to (link from your website) to share the great things that people are saying about you. I do this for myself and my work, but this could easily be done by organisations too.

4. Build lists
Create a list (can be private if you wish) of all of those lovely people who say nice things about you. This can be your 'ambassadors' list and will provide you with a way of keeping in touch, and maintaining engagement, with those people. They're your fans, and they'll continue to be if you keep them involved and engaged. You never know when you might need to call on them for something further down the line. Alternatively, the comment that they make might reveal who they are in relation to your organisation, so you might add them to a list of 'prospective students', 'alumni', 'current students', for example. These lists could become very valuable to you as part of understanding your target audiences, what makes them tick and how they use social media platforms like Twitter to help you finesse your engagement plans and activities for them, as well as just keeping in touch with those individuals.

There should be a number five here I think. It will feel tidier. But, I'll leave that open to you. What else do you think you can be doing with positive tweets that people make about you or your organisation?