Having been named “Twitter Queen” the second week of my internship, I have spent many hours researching how social media can be used as a marketing tool and building up Twitter followings for Ventures in Development and Shokay. Prior to arriving in Shanghai, I knew very little about Twitter – I was one of those many people who made Twitter accounts, got confused by all the #, RT, DM, bit.ly and @, and abandoned it shortly thereafter. (Apparently the top 10% most prolific Twitter users account for 90% of all Twitter activity:
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html)
I quickly discovered that a huge number of social entrepreneurs tweet, and that a lot of fascinating discussions on social enterprise, bottom of the pyramid models, and venture philanthropy are easily found and followed on Twitter. Basically, if you are aiming for the double-bottom line, or want to create some sort of positive change in the world, Twitter is the place to be. I have been doing research on the social entrepreneurship field since January, and yet there are many relevant organizations and companies that I only discovered once I logged on to Twitter. Maybe the rest of the world doesn’t see why 140-character posts should make any difference at all, but it appears social entrepreneurs think differently.
Since it is important for any newcomer organization that wants to become a leader in a given field to stay up to date with all the latest developments, as well as network with peers, I quickly started searching for social entrepreneurs and adding both @shokay and @venturesindev to their lists of followers.
Here are some of my favorite social entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter:
@jnovogratz: Founder and CEO of the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit global venture fund that makes philanthropic investments in enterprises that present innovative solutions to poverty.
@beyondprofit: A cool new magazine on social enterprises in emerging and developing markets.
@ayllu: A new organization that wants to spread microenterprises to poor communities around the world. Founder Melissa Richer is currently in Brazil conducting market research and always has interesting links and insights to share.
@socialentrprnr: A blogger at Change.org’s social entrepreneurship page.
@SocialEarth: This organization just launched a new social enterprise video library, and my mentor Carol Chyau is featured! Check it out: http://video.socialearth.org/carol-chyau-discusses-social-enterprise-in-china.
@startingbloc: Educating young social entrepreneurs through their exciting programs – I’m sure
@reachshijie and @ayllu could tell you more about it.
@khayacookies: Cute social enterprise selling cookies made with all-natural ingredients by South African women. What I like is that by hiring and training unemployed people in Philadelphia, as well, they integrate social impact throughout their supply chain.
@KINDSnacks: The makers of a new health bar which will soon be sold in Starbucks. A portion of the profits go to promoting peace in the Middle East.
One thing I really like about Shokay’s Twitter strategy (already in place before I arrived) is the use of Twitterfeed to aggregate posts from all its team members. Basically, if any Shokay team member posts a tweet with the words “Shokay” or “yaks,” that tweet automatically feeds into the Shokay company account. With team members Twittering from Xining (where the yaks are), Chong Ming Island (the location of our knitters’ cooperative), Hong Kong, and Shanghai, followers of Shokay get an inside look at the social enterprise and all aspects of its supply chain.
One challenge of building up Shokay’s Twitter following is determining the appropriate audience to target. Of course we want to promote our products – clothing, accessories, toys, and a home collection hand-knit with yarn spun from Tibetan yak down – but we also want to contribute to all this buzz on #socent (if you don’t know what that means, check out http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/twitter-hashtags/). Social entrepreneurs may follow us because they think our business model is interesting or similar to their own, but they are not necessarily going to bring us sales. And our tweets on the definition of social entrepreneurship (http://www.venturesindev.org/defining.htm) probably aren’t going to interest the knitters and crocheters who like our free patterns and cute baby yaks (http://twitpic.com/a7ywk). We have to find a way to balance our content in a way that satisfies all our target audiences.
More updates to come! For now, I will leave you with some greetings from our yaks.
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