A serie of interesting articles on how companies should approach and work with social media.
The Science of Building Trust With Social Media
The Internet-era has made establishing trust an increasingly complicated issue. Our finely tuned ability to read facial expressions does not apply to e-mail, and emoticons are, at best, an imperfect substitute for sarcastic inflection (raise your hand if you’ve ever gotten into trouble for typing something that was meant to be a joke). So, how can we establish trust when our online identities are often little more than an avatar and few lines of text?
5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
Successful self-promotion only works in moderation, because if you’re constantly only promoting yourself, many people will unfollow, unfriend, or block you from their network. The best way to build a strong personal brand is to promote other people, which creates goodwill and a connection, as well as distributing value based on what you have to offer: Your expertise. If you’re helping people 80 or 90% of the time, then people will be much more accepting of your self-promotional messages the other 10%. You will also start to notice that other people will promote you — and their endorsement is even stronger than your own proclamations.
Consistency is extremely important when it comes to any kind of branding, from personal to corporate.
Selecting a unified “picture” and spreading it across all your social media — your website, your blog, your presentations, your press kits, your business cards, etc. — will build image recognition in the mind of your audience. Consistency is significant for pictures, your name, as well as the fonts, the colors and the overall message that you communicate through your online properties.
HOW TO: Deal With Negative Feedback in Social Media
It is often said that social media is a conversation, and what is meant by that is unlike traditional broadcast and print mediums, which are often one-directional, social media is very much a two-way channel. Not only can businesses communicate with their customers, but their customers can communicate with them and with each other, as well. By and large, this type of communication is a good thing — businesses can form more personal relationships with customers and customers can become part of a community around the brands and businesses they want to support.
However, when you open the conversation up to anyone, you can also potentially invite negative criticism that you need to be prepared to deal with. Here’s a quick guide to dealing with negative feedback on social media.
HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- Determine Your Objective
- Find an Internal Evangelist
- Consider Your Employees
- Check Your Tech
- Listen First
HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
The Corporate Social Networking Manifesto
It does not take weeks or months, it takes YEARS to establish trust and create a real community around your organization or action. Don’t expect anything coming for free or shortly, it won’t happen. Share, listen, reply and start all over again. Don’t get upset when you get criticized and treat it as attention. Focus on the most active users who support you they will make you happy and help you continue on the long run.
Have fun and don’t treat it too seriously, be natural or let your employees be natural, it will just work.
- Listen
- Answer
- Focus on the negative and thank people for the compliments
- Engage 24h a day
- Be as transparent as possible
- Group the feedback on a site such as user voice
- Be agile as you create the products
- Change priorities often in your roadmap with the most requested features
- Don’t forget to innovate
- Create content and share on all of them
- Identify your best fans
- Create your own little social network for your tribe
- love your users, give them small gifts and special events or products
- help them share about your brand with share buttons
- be everywhere and on every platform
- use social networking internally
- participate or better, support by partnering with the events where the social software junkies go
- Show us real people
- Use video, it’s human and carries much more
- Be proactive and share as much as you can. Add value, not just marketing crap.
- Patience!