Friday 8 June 2012

5 'Rules' for Successful Social Media Operation


1. Many companies treat their social media accounts as if they were billboards and they are not… you must engage… or don't get involved at all.

2. Often individuals treat their social media accounts as a chance to be outrageous… its a bad policy and will bite you in the ass down the track so resist the temptation to do it!

3. It seems to be common practice for organisations to just use their company name rather than that of a person… not good, pick a name… make it fictitious if you must however people like to deal with people so give an individuals name.

This is basic even when I worked for a finance company 30 years ago we had a "Mister Brown" campaign… XYZ Co… just won't cut it in the social media space. We were all Mr Brown if someone called us and asked for him or we said MR Brown is with another customer, hi I'm Ric and I can help you! It's not rocket science!

4. Fix your avatar and make it consistent across all platforms… get rid of the cartoons, cats, pics of your kids and pics of your favourite toy!

5. Don't just broadcast, you need to invest the time and money to interact… hire me to do it for you or dedicate staff number who is competent and be prepared to take the good with the bad.

Bonus Number 6. Don't just talk about your product… talk about your town, city or industry!

Bonus Number 7. Lighten up a bit.. I know you are fighting a terrible disease or uncovering and outrageous injustice however if you want others to share your stuff on their networks (to get attention for your Facebook page or whatever) you have to give them something that "their network" will be interested in.

More from Ric at orglearn.org

11 comments:

  1. Great tips that everyone should follow. Thanks for sharing Richard!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great article. However, you should make easier to find you on twitter from this page. A search on twitter lead me to @EagleTweeter. Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thoroughly agree Richard! Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent post, Richard!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great article... lots of commonsense sauggestions that somehow people can't see.. well done Richard

    ReplyDelete
  6. Great article that includes stuff that should be commonsense but some how people seem to short on that when it comes to Social Media... thanks Ricgard

    ReplyDelete
  7. #6 requires some finesse in the execution. Way too many small-business social-media accounts seem to be in some bizarre panic/confusion mode and just throw up random things, LOLcats or worse. If you cannot think of something interesting to say about your business or industry, I do think you should take the "don't even try it" advice ... Facebook in particular is not nearly as indispensable as some believe, anyway. Still unsearchable, from within or without, and the new "reach" numbers verify that even if you have a lot of followers, your visibility isn't what you think ... so we urge people to make sure their WEBSITE (regular and mobile) is what's really getting the attention. - Tracy in W. Seattle

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thank you! Very good advice Mr Brown, Richard.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I agree, Ric. The engagement part is slowly becoming clear after everyone was only looking at how many people "like" or "+1". Most companies are just not able to connect the dots between a brick and mortar store and their social media presence and website. If you don't engage in social media, it is like letting people in your store walk through and not approaching them. Your store is the place where you do business. If you ignore the people coming in, you are not doing good business.

    ReplyDelete