Ten Best Practices for Social Media

 

I have been lucky enough to speak to some amazing groups including the attendees of the State of Florida Prevention Conference and looking forward to speaking on a great panel with Deanan Goldasich http://www.wellplannedweb.com/blog/ and Kevin McNulty http://netweave.posterous.com/ eWomen Network Tampa and the Supermomprenuer Conference in New York at the end of October. 

If you have heard my presentation you will remember that the key is to have fun, be authentic and be yourself in the social space.  I share often how critical it is for business owners to stop being intimidated by people whom make social more confusing than it has to be. The question I get asked most often is: What are social media best practices? So I thought I would share them here with you:  These are the ten best practices that we stress to everyone if you are diving in the social space.

1. Be Authentic: If your service rocks GREAT if it doesn’t, don’t act like it does.  Be who you are and be honest with your upper management and real about your corporate culture, everyone isn’t Starbucks, Zappos or Apple.  Play to the strengths of your brand and the experience for the customer.  If you have crappy service, why not have a little fun with that and use social to make your service better.  Being who you are makes all the difference.
2. Be Active: This is active not spammer active but get in the space, say something when something needs to be said, share when you can, give good nuggets of information there is no golden rule for the frequency.  Get in there man.
3. Build: Fan bases do not grow overnight, unless you are Lebron James.  It takes time, always pay attention to social and always seek to build your fan base with PEOPLE that love your brand, quantity is important but it isn’t the only thing that is important
4. Don’t make people keep guessing: What I mean by this is don’t make people wonder what the heck you are talking about or when you are going to share again, if your last post as February 12^th you might have a problem, if you “test” out different messages without a common theme
5. Share and share alike: Stop being selfish, social is about sharing.  If you competitor, the one you don’t hate is doing something cool then share it…karma baby
6. Dynamic (don’t use one method): Don’t just write blogs, vlog, podcast use methods to speak to people in different ways we all learn differently
7. Fish where the fish are: Use the socials that people you want to speak to are going to, simply said Facebook has over 500M users but some niche socials may be perfect for your brand.  Know where to go
8. Understand engagement tips: We blogged before about don’t be that guy who tries to Friend everyone after one meeting, you seem like a stalker. 
9. Harness WOM: Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, harness what good people are saying about your brand and get them to say it online.
10. Commit to one thing/stop multi-tasking: Oprah said you can have it all just not all right now, and she was right, focus on one platform and grow from there if you are strapped for cash and time, you can be successful.