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My #Thanksgiving Social Media Gift To You: A Top Ten of How To Do Social Media Well

Lately I am doing a fair bit of social media consulting which means I am thinking through the ways in which we connect on line. And more than that, the ways in which connecting builds business. This is a massive area of growth for me that has come after several years of blogging. It is a 24/7 job, like blogging and twitter and social media, period. It is a constant evolution and it is dynamic and challenging and I love every minute of building strategy. It is a great fit for me. When I not monitoring my own social accounts, I am building and monitoring them for other clients. I am community manager as part of that process. In my new role I am called on to explain how social media works. I have a lot of thoughts on that always, but it can be hard to wrestle them into words sometimes.

 Because it is almost Thanksgiving and I feel like giving thanks for my clients and my blogging friends, I wanted to share a few of the principals guiding good social media policy:

1.Social media done well is transparent.
2.Social media never sleeps. All the companies doing a good job of building platforms and customer relations are here 24/7.
3.Twitter is the water cooler and it is news and it is a conversation. You don’t talk to yourself on twitter, you chat with a community, you debate and you build relationships. There is nothing sadder to me than a tweet that goes unanswered.
4.The world is evolving fast and social media changes weekly. Instagram today is apparently more powerful than twitter. Pinterest is still evolving fast and who knows where we head next. You have to read about social media and be in it and on it 24/7 to understand where it may be heading.
5.Relationships are still key regardless of media.
6. Some time ago there was a debate about who could Do social media for a company and whether they needed to be under 40s. Age is utterly irrelevant to the process of connecting and building social media connections. Value added to companies on social media only comes with experience in social media and experience managing social media. It matters little who is doing the talking, but how engaged they are, and how engaging too.
7. Quick response time is key.
8. You cannot erase a bad day on twitter.
9. If you make an error fix it, by acknowledging it, not burying or deleting it.
10. It takes thousands of hours to build your on line community. Don’t expect it to materialize overnight.

 I found this chat tonight #blogchat with Mark Collier and I spent some time lurking there while posting my own blog reviews and reminding some of the bloggers I work with to invoice me. The twitter comment by Darren Rowse, a smarty in social media circles, is striking to me because it is so simple. If you want comments on your blogs you have to be there commenting on other’s blogs. If you want customers or people to pay attention to your issue or brand you have to be there giving as well as you are getting. That’s what Thanksgiving and this time of year is about – giving – and reciprocity.

@beverlymacy – the single BEST way to encourage comments is to MAKE THEM! A Lot! #blogchat
— Bruce Sallan (@BruceSallan) October 1, 2012

Take these tips and run with them, or don’t. It’s your choice. I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and I extend an offer to potential clients. If you want to grow and learn how to build the conversation contact thriftymommedia. If you want results, an evaluation of your business (I specialize in non profits) contact me: inkscrblr@rogers.com

Mom of two beautiful active girls, traveller, fitness junkie, social media consultant, and keeper of the sanity.

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