Get connected and doing it right

Growing up I was taught you just don’t tell everything and if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.  Well, social media has blown a hole right in the middle of  those sayings. 

When I first heard about Facebook in 2005, the website was viewed as a college website.  At that time, I had been working for a few years and knew immediately that I was not the target market for Facebook. Fast forward a few years and Facebook is one of the world’s most popular social media websites. Facebook recently revealed they have 901 million active users.

Twitter is such a part of our lives now that most current news events are being shared on Twitter.  I personally learned about the death of Michael Jackson and Osama Bin Laden on Twitter.  With over 225 million estimated users, no wonder information is reaching the masses before traditional news outlets can broadcast the news.

In my professional life, I work with customers and need their feedback to successfully do my job.  My team is using Twitter and Facebook to gather feedback and get customers involved and invested in the services we offer. We share information about conferences, new products, updates, and special pricing offers on our Twitter and Facebook page. Our product social media membership pages are growing as word gets out that we have a presence on these sites. 

My company encourages its employees to create social media product profiles to promote our products.  We have learned a lot these last few months. We have made a few mistakes and learned what to do to ensure we are being effective and following social media guidelines for our business. 

1.      Post effective and meaningful messages. With a limited amount of characters, you need to word your message just right. This is the time when your writing needs to be clear and concise. 

2.      Be active.  Determine how often you plan on posting to your site.  A weekly or daily posting schedule encourages members to visit your site often.

3.      Listen to the conversation. Respond and interact with your members. Provide the expertise on your page to resolve problems that may come up. 

4.      Remove or block spam.  Invest in software that removes offensive language and unwanted advertisement.  You may have to manual scan your account hourly or daily to ensure your page remains free of spam and offensive language. Sharing this responsibility with others helps when software is not available to do it for you.

5.      Track you stats. Make your efforts count for something. Monitor membership growth, product sales, the most active users, and positive and negative feedback.

These are just a few of the social media guidelines that we follow. I’m sure there are others.  Metric trends in social media will determine if this new trend is going to be around for awhile .  The goal of having a social media presence for your business is to generate sells. I would love to hear some of your team's social media guidelines. How do you determine if your social media presence is making a difference?