Büro für Sinnfragen

“366 • 135 • Shower drain” by Pragmagraphr on flickr via creative commons

What are the secrets of keeping your social media campaign successfully running? What are the pitfalls of the day-to-day engagement?

Suppose you want to engage in social media and you have done a good preparation, have digged into the topic of social media, have come up with a marketing strategy and marketing plan. The next step would be to put all this into action.

But be careful: It’s easy to mess up and lose your fan base by doing something stupid. What are the traps you want to avoid? How do you get a lively and happily growing community? As a rule of thumb: social media is easy to mess up – but it’s not rocket science either. Be nice to your audience and your audience will be nice to you. Keep your manners (remember from the previous post: you are the host of a party) and a bit of common sense.

This is the third and last part about corporate social media (here are part one on social media basics and part two on social media strategy). If you don’t want to benefit from mistakes others have done for you read this and know your Ten Commandments for your daily social media routine.

1. Do it yourself
Do not outsource your social media relations to agencies. It’s good to get outside advice or consultancy. But do not let some (random) outsider write your blog posts, tweets, blog answers, … . It will show. Remember that authenticity is vital.

2. Answer!
Answer to thoughtful input from your followers. Answer as often as you can at least from time to time. And try to answer quickly. Use every bit and piece you’re putting out as a nucleus for a conversation. That’s what your goal is on an operational level: communicate with your community.

3. Be all business
You represent a company. So even though your community might be chatting away freely, cursing, cussing, accusing and so on you have to be all business. Don’t use inappropriate language; behave as if you were the host of a party. Don’t get wasted.

4. You give, you get
You need to give something in order to get something back. If you want to get real engagement from your followers you need to give them something: valuable information, first hand info, seriousness, honesty, reliability. Do not scam, do not misuse your followers for strange purposes.

5. Be passionate
Who should become the person responsible for contacting your followers? Easy answer: the person who wants it wholeheartedly. There’s no better precondition for the job as passion. Your company will be represented well and your fans will love passionate communication.

6. Do not underestimate group dynamics
In social media you are not talking to single persons, you are talking to the crowd. This is a different level of communication. People are able to connect to each other. There will by group dynamics. Never underestimate that.

7. Develop a vibe
Try to develop a culture (an atmosphere, a vibe) for your community, which your followers like. Remember that you are the host and the boss of your community. You have to be strict if people threaten to destroy your vibe. If you have rules you will have to be strict if they are being violated. It will gain you the respect of the other users. Your followers will love you for that.

8. Have fun!
If you have fun doing what you do your followers will. If you are a grump in private and have a hard time getting along with people it will show.

9. Represent!
Show faces (i.e. real persons) to your audience. Show them who is representing the company; who is responsible for the posts. Show real people not departments, logos or names only.

10. Take online offline
Do not be all web-focussed. Invite people to your shows, fairs, events or whatever you do in the offline world. Again the important point is to engage your community. This goes vice versa: Get you offline followers involved in your online activities.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.