In the first post on this series I provided 10 reasons why social media is about he people. I talked about how important relationships are to success.
For the second post in this series I am going to focus on the planning and prioritization stages of social media.
Many organizations claim to “be social.” They claim they have social media integrated with sales, marketing, and even customer service. They may even tout that their customer service teams are using Twitter to communicate and help customers.
The real question is this… are they providing social lip service or social customer service?
You’ve heard the words… Tweet Chats, #TweetChats, Hashtags, or even hashbrowns as one of my clients first called them. You see the early notification tweets: “Peeps – I am going to be sending more tweets than usual the next hour, headed into a tweet chat.”
For those who aren’t engaged in the tweet chat or don’t understand them, a tweet chat may seem like a bunch of noise. You are half right and half almost right. Yes, there may be some associated “noisy tweeting.” However, tweet chats can offer great benefit for you and your business to build new relationships, increase blog readership, build community and even get new followers or Facebook fans!
So you tweet into a Tweet chat, a Facebook LinkedIn group or page, Quora stream, Empire Avenue community or blog comment discussion with good intentions. So what is it? Why do you have difficulties “gelling” with these online groups? Your offline relationships are “just fine.” You simply wish people would spend more time “offline” living “real life.”
You have read the blog posts, listened to the webinars and even bought the books. You’ve been watching the tweets go by for at least three to six months. One consistent message you keep hearing is that social media is one big conversation. Twitter is all about the conversation, connecting with real people. You wish you could have a conversation. You wish even one person would talk to you on a regular basis.
What is a Twit? It’s not the same as a tweet although it’s sometimes referred to as one. Is it a person? Is it short for Twitter? Is it a tweet gone viral? Or a tweet gone bad. Or neither? Check out these 33 tips to not be a twit on Twitter.
Granny has been busy since she last stopped by. She’s been tweetin’ and learning about online relationships. She dropped by recently to share some updated words of advice regardless if we want to hear them or not. Check out Granny’s 40 Tips for Good Social Relationships.
Let me hear it…
“I am a CEO and I am not afraid to tweet!
I am not afraid of a blue bird.
I do NOT have to share what I eat for lunch every day!”
You know who you are. You don’t dream of sweet little blue birds who will bring you positive ROI or make your phone ring with qualified leads. You have nightmares instead about a crazy ROI eating bluebird with fiery red eyes who want to grab every waking moment of your Marketing VP, Customer Service VP and even Sales leadership. You wake up in hot sweats after a dream of walking into the shareholders meeting and everyone laughing about the photo that had 2200 views on TwitPic of you at the neighborhood Christmas party last year.
So you have a Facebook business page, a LinkedIn profile, a blog, and maybe even a professional photo taken for your custom twitter background. However, something about that crazy bird and all those 140 character yappin’ peeps freaks you out. You want to be part of the conversation yet you aren’t certain how to start or what to say!
To this point you have made the choice to sit on the sidelines. Though when you lay your head down on the pillow at night you can hear the little bird saying “come on, tweet with me, you can do it!”
Getting out into world, learning from new perspectives, enjoying the company of others is the spice of life.
So why in business do we find this so hard to accept? Why do we think we’ll accomplish more if we stay inside our corporate and virtual home offices as we fervently turn in our social hamster wheels of marketing strategies, business plans, engagement approaches, audience research, websites, Facebook pages and suites that hoot?
Yes, the economy stinks. However, that doesn’t mean we need to work the hamster wheel 24/7. It actually should drive the opposite behavior.
Social media is free, right? Simply register for 50 social media profile accounts, start tweeting, facebooking and linking and you’ll have tons of free leads, referrals and an instant community, right? WRONG! There is no short cut to social media. Why you ask? It’s easy, to setup profiles, easy to get new friends, easy to [...]
To tweet or not to tweet was your question of 2010. Now that it’s 201 you’ve decided to take the big tweet plunge. You finally get the guts to hop on Twitter. Chances are your experience might have started out a little like this:
1. You setup your account.
2. You followed some famous people that Twitter suggested you follow. As you did this you thought… “hmmm… just what I thought… Twitter is a waste of time… why do I need to follow Justin Bieber?”
If you had to pick one, what would it be? A Facebook “like” or an email address? When building a community and connecting with your audience, would you rather have 1000 fans on your Facebook page or 1000 qualified names?
Although the answer on the surface seems quite simple, the truth is it’s not so simple.
“To tweet or not to tweet? Facebook or not to Facebook? Hire intern or hire agency? Train sales team or keep them in the dark? Share what I had for lunch…. okay, never mind… we’ll start social media next year, not now.” To do social media or not do social media seems to be the [...]
Late night tweet sessions. Foursquare swarm parties. Panera Bread meetings at 9 pm and Facebook moments that make you laugh so hard you cry. Your baker knows it, the mailman knows it. You like tweets and they like you. The baker thinks you’re talking about cupcakes and has no idea what Twitter is.
The key is to find the balance between social media addiction and insanity. It’s okay to tweet all night as long as you have some good tweeters beside you, right?
Check out these 60 signs to determine if you may be in fact a social media addict.
What happened to proper etiquette in business? What happened to an introduction? A hello? Or how about a “it’s nice to meet you, what’s your name”?
For some reason people get behind the tweet deck, Facebook business page and LinkedIn and think they can skip the “get to know and like you” phase and skip straight to the coupon blasting or buy now button.
It is important that with social media we don’t lose site of basic audience communication and nurturing principles. Social nurturing needs to start at day one. Take the time to invest in your audience and the quality of their response and willingness to take action on your behalf will be exponential.
Today I kicked off my day with an awesome coaching client. He is a financial exec for a large corporation. We are working with him to build a business platform to enable him to at one point break free from the chains of corporate America. We are helping him build a strategy for social media, develop a brand architecture and a business platform for which to build a community that he can share his knowledge and help others.
It is easy to become part of the blur of any media. Social media is in some ways already becoming like traditional media. Just as TV, Radio and Billboard ads become a big blur, so do tweets, Facebook FanPages and the million other ways you can connect via social media.
So, how do you separate yourself from the blur? How do you become more than a Facebook FanPage? How do you get your audience to visit your FanPage after the first initial visit?
We have all seen them. The blog comment that just doesn’t belong. The comment that we all know shouldn’t be there. However, because of blog norms and social etiquette we leave it there and feel an unjustified obligation to respond. You know what I am talking about. Either you are one who leaves these types [...]
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