Social Media

1. Don’t ignore the benefits of mapping out a content strategy before you start. Many businesses clearly have no direction, objectives, style and purpose on Twitter. If you really want to make it work for your company, you need to stop and think about all the above plus how Twitter integrates with your existing channels of communication.
2. Don’t get going on Twitter until you have done your research. It’s simple to set up a Twitter account and start tweeting about your business. But this approach will be the longer road to success. Instead, follow a few leading brands and competitors in your sector first. You can observe and learn a lot from them about what works and what doesn’t before you enter the fray yourself. Once you’re out there, retreat is rarely an effective option. Think before you tweet.
3. Don’t feel you always have to answer Twitter’s question “What’s happening?” A minute by minute commentary of what IS actually happening in your business would be deathly. Vary your Twitter updates (tweets) by including repeats of other people’s tweets (re-tweets or RTs) and links to stuff you’ve seen or heard about that you believe will interest your followers. Which leads us on to…
4. Don’t forget to make almost every Tweet valuable to others. Your business tweets should offer value and information in some shape or form. This could be some news particular to your company or sector, a link to an article, or simply an update about what you’re doing business-wise today. You should be allowed to include several simply personal Tweets too, as this way your followers will get to know (and hopefully respond to) the real person behind your company updates.So, don’t tweet about stuff that is not at all interesting to anyone but you. Twitter is not about me, me, me. Your customers really won’t care about what you had for breakfast (er…unless you’re a restaurant I suppose.) Also, those “Good morning Tweeps!” updates every day have to stop.
5. Don’t Tweet too often (this divides opinion actually). It’s OK being enthusiastic (and let’s assume that all your tweets are reasonably interesting) but don’t overdo it. Whilst there’s no set rule for how often a normal business should tweet each day, my view is that anymore than 25 straight tweets is probably too many (that’s not including any replies to customers or comments on mentions by others). People might start to think you don’t actually run the business if you spend all day tweeting. Plus you can come across as hogging the conversation.
6. Don’t continually sell yourself or your company. Twitter should not be used solely as a direct sales channel. It is NOT direct mail online. It’s astonishing how many businesses only ever use the medium for this purpose. It’s OK to drop in the odd sales push every now and then, but only after you’ve built a good following by using genuinely interesting content and developing some meaningful relationships with others. No hard sell all the time please!
7. Don’t auto-respond. There are applications you can use that automatically send a corporate message of greeting to any Twitter user who follows you. Apparently, many business owners think this is a good idea, but I’ve yet to meet one. People know these auto-responses are exactly that – automatic. They can make your business look insincere and impersonal. And I don’t accept that the quality of the message can make auto-responding OK. Don’t do it – try having a genuinely personal dialogue instead.
8. Don’t forget your manners. Twitter is a series of conversations. You might to try and start a few that nobody listens to, but that’s OK. But always be polite, respectful and kind. Try hard to involve others in your conversations (by using the @ sign followed by their Twitter name). Also – try to listen to what others are saying and join in constructively. Call me old fashioned, but there’s a lot to be said for showing humility, kindness and respect on Twitter – it normally gets a very warm reception. Never be needlessly rude on Twitter about anyone or anything and keep religion and politics off the agenda (er…unless you’re a church or a political party I guess…)
9. Don’t Re-Tweet and not credit the original poster. Twitter is all about sharing information freely with others. Many times you’ll see a great tweet and think “I wish we’d said that!”, but don’t be tempted to pass anything off as your own. Bad form and flies in the face of what Twitter is supposed to be all about.
10. Don’t use Twitter to deal with the sort of customer feedback you should deal with in person. For instance, if you run a hotel business, don’t tweet stuff like “”@unhappy_guest – that smell in your room wasn’t there b4 you checked in. Could it be your shoes?” Need I say more?
11. And finally – please DON’T forget to follow me on Twitter!

Facebook allows you to create a page to promote your business. This allows other Facebook users to ‘Like’ your company and receive updates from you without becoming a fully fledged friend. It’s quick and easy to ‘Like’ a business on Facebook. One click of a button and it’s done, no ‘friend requests’ and ‘friend confirmations’ to deal with. It’s immediate.

However, in the past week I’ve come across two local companies, (one extremely well known) that are using a personal Facebook profile as opposed to a Facebook business page to promote their company. This can have its problems.

Here are just 5 of them:

1. You are breaking the rules
You may have set up a personal Facebook profile using the name of your business or your business branding. If you also have another Facebook page for your own personal use, I’m afraid you’re in contravention of Facebook rules and one or both accounts could be suspended. Section 4 of Facebook’s terms clearly states that you shouldn’t have two separate Facebook accounts and you should never use a personal Facebook profile for commercial gain. I’ve seen businesses have their accounts suspended altogether over this malpractice.

2. Your business won’t be seen
Facebook business pages can be optimised for search engines like Google but personal Facebook profiles cannot. Surely you would like as many potential customers as possible to find your company online wouldn’t you? Using a personal page to promote your company is hindering your chances.

3. No-one will ‘Like’ your business
It will be much more difficult to gain ‘friends’ as a business if you’re using a personal Facebook profile because regardless of privacy settings (which confuse most Facebook users anyway), people will be reluctant to share personal information with a company – no matter how good that company is. A Facebook business page allows people to ‘Like’ your company without any privacy risks because your company cannot access their personal information.

4. Your business could run out of Friends
Although it’s not easy to verify, many commentators say that Facebook will only allow a personal profile a maximum of 5,000 friends. But your Facebook business page can be ‘Liked’ by a limitless number of people. Why limit your opportunities?

5. Your business will be one dimensional
Whilst you can only have ONE personal Facebook profile (if you’re obeying the rules) you can create more than one Facebook business page. So if your company has several sub-brands or specialities, you could consider creating a dedicated Facebook business page for those too.

Convinced? And there’s more where that all came from.

It’s not rocket science. Facebook personal profiles are for people and Facebook business pages are for businesses. Of course you can still reflect your business in your personal Facebook updates, but it’s simply not designed to enable a company to maximise the many benefits that social media offers today.

UPDATE: BREAKING NEWS ON 31/03/2011 – FACEBOOK HAS NOW DEVELOPED A TOOL THAT WILL NOW ALLOW ALL BUSINESSES THAT MADE THE MISTAKE OF SETTING UP A PERSONAL RATHER THAN A (BUSINESS) PAGE PROFILE TO MIGRATE ONE TO THE OTHER.

Click here for more: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate