Joe Hall at Marketing Pilgrim has a great post up… I think he does a great job of breaking down his advice into the simplest possible terms:
How To be Yourself in Social Media
Don’t read stupid bullet points about how to be yourself, write your own.
Don’t be witty, unless of course you already are witty, in which case: carry on.
Don’t look for exposure by doing something uncharacteristic.
Don’t follow the leader and hang out with the cool kids.
Talk about what you enjoy and makes you happy.
Quit trying to be something and just be you.
Of the hundreds of posts I’ve seen offering "rules" for social media, this might be my favorite. Fail to follow these, he warns, and you’ll come off like this guy:
Source: Flickr; Marketing Pilgrim; your worst nightmare
The relentless crush for attention and traffic online can make normally sane, interesting people act like idiots. Idiots get attention, yes; but is it really the attention you want? If you really are the guy dressed up as a unicorn, then great, and God bless the Internet for making it possible for you to find others like you and celebrate your shared, um, interests. Most of us aren’t that guy.
I would add two more rules to the list above… these aren’t principles that relate just to how people interact online; they simply describe how people relate to each other, in any way. They will hold true in every situation.
To be noticed, you have to stand out
To be respected and trusted, you have to be yourself
If you are in a room full of people shouting, you have two strategies to get attention; you either shout louder or you do something different from everyone else. A quick turn online will show you how many people are stuck on the first strategy.
Brand used to mean what you said about yourself; in the age of social networks, it increasingly means what others say about you. If you are big enough and well-known enough, you will attract plenty of positive and negative commentary. If you are small and unknown, then you are even more vulnerable to buzz that could make or break your little business.
Try this exercise: do a Google search on the term "I hate ___", replacing the blank with your company name. If your brand is well known, chances are you will find whole web pages dedicated to the topic. Trust me, this can be a depressing way for marketers to spend a few hours, but remember: this is the Internet, where someone hates everything. "I hate the Salvation Army" pulls up 87,000 hits; "I hate the Red Cross" 166,000. Even "I hate puppies" returns over 230,000 hits.
You’re not fooling anyone. So how do you protect your reputation online? When and how should you intervene if you spot negative commentary about your brand?
Track reactions to your brand online. To react to issues, first be aware of them. Your approach for tracking your online reputation can be as simple as running periodic search engine queries on your brand, or as advanced as setting up a social media dashboard. You can find some good options here. The technology matters less than the commitment to building this into your weekly schedule.
Sort the issues into categories. This is pretty easy and an important first step. Is this a product issue? A customer service complaint? An upset investor? Set up a few simple categories and assign "response owners" from your team. Make sure they understand what’s expected of them.
Determine whether the issue is timely. Don’t worry about putting out old fires. If you find a year-old comment thread where posters are discussing with great enthusiasm how much they hate your new product, let it go. Focus on current situations where you have a chance to insert yourself into the discussion and head off a bigger problem.
Determine whether the problem can easily be resolved. One of our software clients was criticized by a popular blogger for not offering online product documentation. After a quick email from the company pointing out the link to their user manual, he happily updated his original post and praised them for their responsiveness. Many times, frustrated customers are simply looking for information.
Decide whether you are at fault. Is the complaint justified – or is there at least a chance that it might be? Or is it a clear misunderstanding or distortion? If there is something to it, a gracious apology or commitment to investigate the issue can work wonders. If not, a polite but firm clarification or rebuttal is needed.
Respond to the loudest, most influential voices first. Focus on those bloggers or tweeters that get the most traffic and carry the greatest influence. Often, they won’t be the point of origin, but will simply be reposting something from another smaller blogger. Unless they have a clear agenda against your brand, they will usually try to deal fairly with you.
Engage personally. Most bloggers and many commenters offer their email addresses. Start by sending a friendly, polite message directly to the owner. If you are offering an apology, be specific as to what you will do to correct the situation. If you are responding or defending yourself, provide details to support your argument. Sign the email with your own name. Most bloggers will post your message on their site. If they ignore you, take your message to the other blogs that have picked up the story, and be sure to mention that you started at the source.
Maintain the right tone. It can be infuriating to watch someone run down your business online, but settle down. Never lose your courteous, gracious tone. And never seek to intimidate or threaten anyone into removing content; those threats will end up online and make a bad situation worse. Be very careful before proceeding to any legal action, even if justified that tends to do serious damage to your reputation online.
Close the loop. Live up to your commitments. If in the process of responding to a customer’s issue you promised to give her a replacement product, make sure it gets done. And then post an update to the site where the discussion took place.
Engage with brand champions. Don’t spend all your time reacting defensively and putting out brand fires. If you find a group of people online who enjoy your brand, find ways to keep them engaged. These can include a simple "thank you" email, discounts or special offers, or a chance to preview your new product before it comes out. You can’t be in all places at once, and these champions will be far more effective at building and defending your brand than you could be.
Remember to keep perspective: you can’t please everyone. You can, however, win over current customers and potential new ones with your responsiveness and willingness to meet them on their own ground.
I run into people all the time that don’t realize their tweets are public. They think it’s a closed system between them and their followers. If someone else jumps in the conversation, they’re often surprised… I have seen several instances where they then tweet "how did you see my messages?"
The fact that Facebook defaults to friend-to-friend messages and Twitter defaults to friend-to-everyone is lost on most people. It’s much like open wi-fi networks. It’s a lack of education in general. Much of this is because the technology and the tools are so new – but much is also due to the "personal" feel of Twitter.
If there’s one thing Twitter does well, it’s create the sense of a "conversation" between people. You feel like its just you and your followers, and it’s easy to forget, whether through misplaced comfort or outright ignorance of how the technology works, that your messages are out there for all to see.
The best social media technologies are those that make people feel comfortable. Those are also the ones that, if not sufficiently understood, can be most dangerous. Once information is out there it can’t readily be reeled back in.
We are on the lookout to see how the new Google Wave (see details at Mashable, here and here) communication platform will impact the social media landscape and how competitors will respond.
Krim’s post on Twitter’s migration to its new landing page and its likely attempt to broaden its audience made me think about the deep thinking that our friend Chris Boudreaux has been doing on social media governance. We’ll have an interview with Chris up on the website in the near future.
Take a look at the issues and solutions he raises in this presentation.
With its new landing page, Twitter is making a big marketing move away from personal-based, hyper-specific tweets to topic-based, conversational tweets. Probably in a bid to make the service more relevant to a broader user profile (the news- and entertainment-obsessed).
Social media offers powerful new means for people to communicate and interact, but they don’t change the rules for how people connect.
None of would try to challenge the laws of physics. The laws that govern human interaction are just as immutable. They have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with basic human behavior.
These rules apply to both brands and individuals. Forget them at your peril.
Law #1: We need a reason to connect
Just three factors determine the strength of the connection between two people:
Affinity. We have similar interests, tastes and values.
Familiarity. We have shared experiences or have common people in our network.
Desirability. One of us has something that the other one wants.
What’s interesting about social media . I’m much more likely to find that kindred soul who also likes Polish electronic music and collects Cabbage Patch dolls (I’m not speaking from personal experience here), or whatever. It’s also much easier to stay in touch with people (familiarity) and find that job/new sofa/hot date that we want (desirability).
The limits of social media show up in the proliferation of weak social bonds – new connections with little of no real value.
Law #2: Some people are more valuable than others
Think back to your middle school and early high school days (our first training grounds for social behavior). What did it mean to be popular? It wasn’t really about knowing the most people, but the right people. Some kids had more "value" than others.
Nothing’s changed. Some individuals still have more value than others. These are the influencers, the leaders; if you get them they pull through the followers. These are sometimes the most connected individuals in the network, but not always.
Law #3: Follow the influence, not the noise
The real challenge with building your network online is separating noise from value. Often, the people creating the most churn on social networks aren’t the ones who have the most to offer.
Some people are internet superstars – they do a lot online, and seem highly connected, but their real influence (and overall quality of their network) is low. They have many connections of very low value.
Imagine riding a bus and handing out your business card to everyone who gets on. That’s what this networking strategy is like. You are better served looking for the real leaders rather then the most active players of this game called social media.
Law #4: Communication is in the details
When you meet someone new, you react to many things at once: their body language, voice, appearance, what they’re saying, their facial expression, even their clothes. If you are like most people, you can tell if you like them or not within seconds.
What’s happening? Based on many subtle factors, you are subconsciously running them through your Affinity/Familiarity/Desirability filter (see Law #1). Are they polite? Do they smile and make eye contact? Do they wait until you are finished speaking before they talk?
It all matters. People are complicated, so communication is too.
In social media land, however, many have a tendency to dismiss the subtleties as unimportant and blaze right to the point. Subtlety matters just as much online as offline. The details are different but still important. Has this person taken the time to read your profile? Are they in your network or spamming you? If they are asking you to do something for them, have they taken the time to establish some kind of connection first?
