I really enjoy shopping at farmer’s markets. The opportunity to connect with the people who grow the lettuce, catch the fish, craft the cheese and bake the bread is an experience far more immediate and genuine than shopping in the freeze dried, shrink-wrapped New! Improved! Fat-Free! big box stores. Real-time community, transparency, authenticity, accessibility – these are among the defining characteristics of social media-enabled conversations. 
An Interview with Michael Brito
Posted by Rick Jamison on August 31st, 2009
Michael Brito is a social media strategist and community builder at Intel. “I blog, communicate and build relationships with other people,” says Michael. “I Twitter actively. I believe that marketing is good; and if you love your customers they’ll love you back and tell people about it. I believe that business results are critical but should not be the driving force behind connecting with people.”
You can find Michael on Twitter, Facebook and his social media blog. In the following interview, we chat about Twitter best practices, why brands need to be believable and his top objectives as a social media leader at Intel.
Rick: You recently hosted a session for Synopsys’ Conversation Central at DAC where you talked about Twitter best practices. In a nutshell, what are they?
Michael: I also wrote an article on this topic recently for Mashable (see 10 Twitter Best Practices for Brands), which are:
- Do your research before engaging customers
- Determine organizational goals
- Utilize either a branded or personal profile
- Build your Twitter equity and credibility
- Track metrics and conversation trends
- Don’t go overboard; less structure is better
- Listen and observe before engaging
- Be authentic & believable
- Track, measure, and iterate
- Don’t just strategize: execute!
Rick: During your Conversation Central session, you emphasized the point that brands need to be believable. Beyond producing great products and all else that one expects from leading brands, what do you mean by that?
Michael: Being authentic and believable are two different things. I may indeed be authentic at every customer touch point, whether offline or online. But if the people I interact with and within my community don’t believe what I say, then there is an obvious disconnect. In other words, if I spend time in a community, build and foster relationships and listen, then the community will begin to trust me and believe what I have to say. So, if blog/tweet about a netbook and how awesome it is for me, the community just might believe me and maybe even go buy one.
Rick: As a social media leader at Intel, what are your most important objectives?
Michael: Great question. My most important objective is to authentically “build community” on and off of Intel.com. If I build a successful community, everything else will fall into place (i.e., metrics, user engagement, increase in sales) – basically, the stuff management values.
Rick: Finally, do you see any unique considerations or barriers within engineering communities that influence their adoption and use of social media?
Michael: I have to be honest. Dealing with the IT community, specifically engineering is new to me. I have always been focused on consumers. I do know that IT/Engineering use social media for a variety of things (research) and it’s important for brands who value that demographic to be present within these communities. It’s important to realize that “building community” doesn’t just mean to create a social network on a brand’s site. It also means participating in external communities where the conversations are taking place.
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