Top 10 Guide to using Social Media

It is certainly interesting that so many ‘brand experts’ are emerging. Some of the latter appear to be developing a cottage industry in terms of referring each other. Good luck to them and maybe there is a market to advise people on using such tools.

I would be disturbed if conversations with such advisor’s were talking about what you can do with social tools rather than how you can use them with real evidence of impact on clients.

Anyway, here’s a list of best practice when dealing with Social Media tools.

1. When dealing with people online, engage in true conversations, albeit that tools such as Twitter can be linked to RSS.
2. Good to keep your updates ‘sweet’ and relevant to the network of people who are following you or even keen on the same subject areas, for example, if your network is focused on sports, you can always extend the conversation on related subjects such as nutrition.
3. Celebrate the successes of others. From a client perspective, you could, ‘big them up’! There is some mileage in when you champion for others, they might champion for you. NB This should not be done in a sycophantic way!
4. Engage and Interact. e,g: follow-up business conversations.
5. Don’t Broadcast. Instead, communicate related business stories and news.
6. Participating consistently builds a stronger on-line reputation for your company and boosts your presence within social media circles.
7. Sometimes I wonder who’s really writing celebrity blogs! Is it their PR agencies or ghost writers. It is worthwhile reconsidering dialogue with these people!
8. Consider your reputation. Consider what you are about to enter into Internet history before you respond to posts from other sites.
9. Understand what I call web dynamics, i.e: understand the behaviour of respondents on your various networks, for example, when are people most on-line and what subject areas do you get the most response from.
10. Communication is key, for example, audio and video blogging is great – However, poor production is easily off putting. In other words, sometimes short and smart communications is better. It is worth considering something called a ‘drip strategy’ ,i.e: planning the release of your knowledge.

There you go, lots of advice and it was all for free!

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