This Quarter in Social Media
Your Weekly Social Media Commentator Provides Some Tips for Social Media
You watch her vlog every Friday on expertSEM, now get a print version of her social media expertise.
Social media is not just about futzing around all day on Facebook and Twitter. True, it’s more exciting than filing papers and making copies, but it’s certainly not all fun and games. To ensure that social media actually benefits your company, there are just a few rules you must adhere to. Maybe we shouldn’t even call them rules. Social media moves so fast you must be flexible and willing to adapt quickly; therefore, they’re more like guidelines or suggested steps.
The four guidelines/suggested steps you should follow are:
1. Listen
2. Evaluate
3. Take action
4. Get involved
Listen
Everyone wants to develop the hottest application or have their video go mega-viral. But that only happens in two ways: 1. a total fluke or 2. after much research and online cleansing. We recommend that you try for the latter and rejoice if you somehow get the former. Before you can even think about developing social media content, you need to know what people are saying about you out there in the blogosphere. If all you have are negative comments, having a video go viral will do nothing for your brand except make you even more of a laughing stock. Scrape the web for mentions of your brand, products/services and competitors.
Evaluate
What are people saying about your brand and why? Is a complaint justified or is the person simply taking advantage of their online anonymity? Are positive comments backed by experiences or are they simply saying, “Yea! We like you!”? If there is substance behind what they are saying and if it could tarnish your good name, you cannot just brush off the comments. You must take note and discuss what must be done. Additionally, you must notice where the content came from? If it came from Joe Schmoe’s daily diary blog, there is little need to worry. However, if it came from a government site or Wikipedia entry, you must try to do something about it.
Take Action
Depending on the location and tone, there are different options for dealing with online content. If the author is publicly known—reporter, columnist, blogger—you may consider contacting them directly through email or posting a comment on the article/blog. Remember to always be transparent and honest. And be sure to show empathy, not defensive arrogance. If the author is not publicly known or cannot be contacted directly, consider using SEO tactics to raise the ranking of your current online assets. Enhance your website, blog and other online elements. Work with affiliates or sister sites to optimize content. If you hear the same comments coming from a large group of people, you may consider making a public response through a company spokesperson or PR agency. If the outcry is large enough, you should seriously think about improving your products or services based on this feedback.
Get Involved
After you have addressed all negative content and purified your online reputation, it’s time to build your community and have some fun with social media! Determine which social media platforms are most appropriate for your business, create profiles on these sites and begin to offer up interesting and useful content. Link all social media assets to each other and promote them on your corporate website, blog, etc. Keep in mind that social media is not like other forms of marketing. With social media, you must be transparent and personal—keep the self-promotion to a minimum and be sure to engage your fans (or followers, friends, connections—whatever the platform refers to them as!).
Social media can be lots of fun, but don’t forget that it’s also a lot of work. Simply posting a bunch of videos and tweeting about how great your company is just won’t cut it. You need to listen to what your customers are saying, let them know that you are listening, respond in a personal and professional manner then create a meaningful and engaging community that your customers will benefit from and enjoy being a part of.
Tarla Cummings is our social media manager. Check out her weekly vlog, This Week in Social Media, and other great blog posts at http://www.expertsem.com/author/tcummings/.