Nine Top Tips For Implementing Social Media

Three years ago, I was contacted by a marketing representative of a large European company to write a white paper describing my vision for social media within businesses. Now that the social media boom is looming, I have decided to revise and update my recommendations:

1. Communities are important, but not every brand has one. Communities are built around a common interest and the need for people to help each other. Just because some people are merely buying products doesn't mean that they are part of a community. Companies need to foster community feelings before thinking of orchestrating a community. For detailed tips on how to foster communities refer to Hagel and Armstrong's "Net Gain".
2. Don't confuse comments with collaboration. Collaboration is about working together and from the bottom up. This includes encouraging people from the shopfloor to come forward and letting clients talk to one another. Not all companies are prepared for this, and it may take a while before they are.
3. Avoid the meatball sundae effect: Before launching a social media initiative, make sure your brand can be aligned with the social media spirit of transparency, openness and willingness to engage with visitors. If your brand is incompatible with this and refuses debate, suggestions and criticism, perhaps social media is not for you.
4. Facilitate, facilitate, facilitate: To create an effective collaborative website, it needs to be kept up-to-date and refreshed continuously, especially at the beginning of the initiative. You need to respond to suggestions or comments as soon as they have been added. The social media etiquette approves of prompt replies because it shows the interest that your organisation has in its audience.
5. Respect your community and no hard-selling: Social media users come to your websites to gather information, to exchange, share and receive too, but they will not stick around to look at your product descriptions, unless they are particularly interesting or tempted to provide feedback on them. If you want to sell your wares on social media, use permission marketing and disclosure.
6. Great causes can work wonders: It helps to think big and adopt a stance on the big questions. If all you do with social media is talk about yourselves and your company, you will attract a limited amount of traffic. A great example is Kaiser Permanente's story on its fight in favour of healthier eating habits.
7. Think user-benefit vs. company-benefit: Put others first and your business interests and objectives second. Your tone of voice has to be very straightforward and very honest and you have to avoid patronizing your visitors.
8. Openness, transparency and disclosure: Collaboration implies transparency. Avoid creating fake blogs, fake posts and fake reviews at all cost. Infiltrating social media with your hard sell message is frowned upon and will be detected quickly by the people you are trying to reach. Check the SMBC disclosure page for details.
9. Execution is everything. An effective social media initiative requires a strong company commitment involving many different people in the organisation. The more commitment you get from the people you work with, the more it shows through to your audience.