Social Media Guard Rails

14 Dos and Donts

The Bohlsen Restaurant Group 9/20/11

So what is social media?

1. Dont sell. Its unbecoming. Think of it as telemarketing at dinner time. There are 155+ million Tweets a day and many more Facebook posts. Value and things of interest gets noticed.

2. Be interested in what your target is interested in. Castrol found out its users index high for motorsports. It funded original content creation around racing (hiring photographers, videographers, etc.) and gained new relevance in a low interest category.

3. Use all forms of media. Photography, video, audio files are shared and clicked through at higher rates than text.

4. Have a motivation.
Like a good actor who knows his/her motivation a social media participant should have an agenda and stay true to it. Cybils (multiple personalities) need not apply.

5.

Break new ground.

The two most common commercial applications in social media are promotions and customer care. They are getting tired.

6. Rock the hashtag. Aspire to create new hashtag topics that trend big. Be creative. Make sure your hashtags support the motivation and brand idea.

7. Think social and be social. Dont be a half duplex (one-way) broadcaster. Be in the we and you business, not the me business. Dont be boring or pedantic. Funny is good.

8. Posters beget Pasters. According to Jakob Nielsen and Charlene Li, about 8% of social media participants are Posters or original content creators. Target Posters and Pasters will follow. And dont forget to post on other peoples blogs.

9. Dont ask for the order. Many social media curators and managers ask visitors to follow or friend them. Its tacky and needy. Enable participation and make ordering easy, one click away, but dont ask.

10. Theres more to share when you are mobile. Social media will increasingly become mobile. Encourage it, enable it.

11. Be fresh on Twitter, share and discuss on Facebook, blog to have skin in the game, and push people to your website.

Dont give all your traffic to Mark Zuckerberg.

12. Manners matter. Listen more than you talk. Thank people for their retweets, views, follows, posts and suggestions.

13. Be a stalker. Its okay.

Get smart on smart people. LikeMind opinion leaders can be real-time Princeton professors. Follow, admire, its okay to touch. In fact, consumers may play you.

14. Monitor and Analyze the Chatter.

Listen to learnbut analyze for action. Engagement data (clicks, retweets, likes, friends and views) do not ROI make. @mention is an @ctive mention.

Random Thoughts.

Conversation monitoring thoughts. Dont anger the angry. Correct misinformation immediately, but be beneficent. Allow people their opinions. If offering to help, be human not an office drone. When engaging customers and prospects humble is better than cocky.

Why Users Quit

Facebook: Company authored too many posts (44 percent); Their wall became glutted with marketing (43 percent); Messages were repetitive and boring (38 percent); Posts were overly promotional (24 percent); Content was irrelevant from the start (19 percent).

Why Users Quit

Twitter: Messages were repetitive and boring (52 percent); Tweet stream became inundated with marketing (41 percent); Company tweeted too frequently (39 percent); Tweets were overly promotional (21 percent); Content was irrelevant from the start (15 percent).

Thank you slide.