Best Practices for Using Social Media
on Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Everywhere I go people are talking about social media. By now, you’ve developed some opinions of your own.
One of the biggest issues seems to be the practicality of integrating social media into their existing marketing strategy — specifically Facebook and LinkedIn. The second biggest concern is how to measure it’s effectiveness, or ROI.
In this article I will share with you some of the business best practices we’ve learned for using social media. I will speak to measuring it’s effectiveness in another post. Consider these best practices as you think about your company’s strategy for utilizing social media.
Industry best practices for utilizing social media in a corporate setting include:
- Social media is most effective when it enhances overall corporate marketing strategy.
- Social media goals and objectives must align with corporate goals and corporate marketing objectives.
- Develop a social media handbook including rules, roles, and expectations for using social media.
- Provide training for all who will engage in social media campaigns.
- Develop and administer a strategic brand communication schedule for the different social media platforms it chooses to use.
- Social media is most effective when implemented in-house.
- Keep things simple.
- Focus on customer service.
- Keep “selling” to a minimum (i.e. near zero).
- Trust and transparency are key to growing “followers”.
- Set clear objectives and utilize sophisticated tools to measure results (i.e. SEO/SEM).
- Establish metrics to measure effectiveness of website and social media analytics.
Do you have any best practices you’ve created to help you deal with time management, consistency, or creating community? If so, please share!
Sean Harry
http://www.DrSeanHarry.com