Over the past week, there have been a few incidents of poor Social Media etiquette by some famous tweeters. First Rashard Mendenhall shared is feelings about the death of Osama Bin Laden, then later this week, Reggie Bush made a comment about his time off during the NFL lock out, then when he was ridiculed by his followers, said it was a joke, and everyone should have known it. What is most troubling for me about these incidents are that I am sure that Reggie Bush and Rashard Mendenahall both have highly paid PR consultants, who should have given both a lesson on what is appropriate and what is not on Social Media. In today’s Social Media world, whatever information you put out, has the chance to be picked up pretty quickly, and could have major repercussions. So how does a small business walk the line between giving their opinion while not causing a bad public relations mark on the company?
When working with our clients the first rule of Social Media that we teach them is that every action on social media sites should be treated just as one would with an in person meeting. It is easy to forget that behind a screen name is a real person. If you went to a networking event and you saw that a person was going up to every person in the room, and spending just enough time to with each present to get a business card and then they leave, they would have very little value to you. They obviously are not interested in what you are bringing to the table, they just are trying to sell their product or service to you. This is the same thing when a person is only sending out messages on social media try to sell. They are not adding value to their community. When interacting with your social network, your goal should be continually add value, this could be by answering questions, sharing information, or pointing others in the correct direction. I promise if you are adding value to your community, the sales will follow, not only will you build a strong trust from your peers, you will also build a reputation for the person to turn to when they have a question about your expertise. Are you adding value to your community?
My second rule of thumb for social media is, before sending any information out to your social network, think “would someone say thank you for the info”?. Are you adding value to your network, or just adding information? Are your followers commenting on your posts? Are you getting retweets or likes? These are great measurements to for how much value you are adding to your network. Before you send out a message stop and think for a second, “would someone thank you for your information”?
My third rule of thumb is the one that Reggie Bush should keep in mind from now on. Social Media is consumed mostly by words, and is usually in short messages. It is extremely hard to convey a tone of voice in these messages. If you are going to be sarcastic or joking in your message, you need to put some kind of acronym that tells your readers. If not you are leaving it up to your readers discretion, and that could come back to hurt you. In my opinion it is much better to keep your message on social media very straight forward. I feel it is very important to remember that even when sending a message to someone that you know in the real world on social media, it is still visible to many people that you do not know.
What are your rules of thumb for Social Media?