This is old news to those who, like myself, have worked in Internet marketing, but tools like Facebook and Twitter can be valuable. Here are some of the tips I've learned in various positions.
1. Be Yourself. Many businesses believe that they should create a Facebook or Twitter profile with the name of your company: "Acme Boxes." This is the complete opposite of what they should do.
First, having your presence consist only of a faceless corporation is boring. The Internet has a short attention span, so everything needs to be catchy. Your identity should not be "Acme Boxes" -- it should be "Bob Smith (who happens to be CEO of Acme Boxes)." Use your real name and picture. The person Facebooking or Twittering should post about all sorts of things including funny anecdotes and personal interests, not only the newest sale his company is offering. Facebook and Twitter users want to befriend interesting people, not corporations. (Billionaire and Virgin founder Richard Branson has many Twitter followers, but I bet that very few of them care what his company does on a daily basis. Branson is just a cool guy.)
The brand awareness that your company gains -- after all, it is listed in your profile and occasionally discussed in your posts -- comes indirectly. Be informal and fun. Leave the formal, boring communications jargon to the marketing department that deals with traditional media outlets. People who use social media frequently are young, tech-savvy, and cynical when it comes to advertising. Be a real person online -- everyone can tell when someone is just there to sell something.
2. Do Not Spam. The quickest way to lose potential customers and be ignored in the social-media sphere is to put a sales pitch in your status every hour. Fewer than half of your Facebook status updates and Tweets should be related to business. Again, people want to befriend you, not your company. The Internet is viral -- for better and for worse. If one person does not like you, everyone will find out soon enough. (Although, if one person does like you, everyone will know as well.) Post on a wide variety of interesting subjects. If you post something with the word "baseball," a Twitter search for that word will bring up your post. And you might get a few baseball fans to follow you and learn about your company.
3. Be Careful. There was a line in an episode of the 1990s, American sitcom "Newsradio" that went something like: "Taking something off the Internet is like trying to take the pee out of a swimming pool." Even if you delete an e-mail, a Facebook post, or a Twitter entry, chances are that it still exists on some hard drive or server somewhere. Especially if someone saw it, did not like it, and saved it. Just because marketing is less controlled by executive suits in the rapid-fire Information Age does not mean that anything and everything is permissible. Don't be like the teenage girl who posted scandalous pictures of herself on Facebook only to have everyone at school see them instead of just her boyfriend. Think before you post. Even if you are not the CEO or Vice President of Communications, you still represent your company in the subconscious minds of your Internet community.
More thoughts to follow.
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