Social Media Marketing

Organizations have a lot to consider once they decide they want to jump intosocial networks and social media. There are many opportunities to slide off therails, or worse, to let the effort fall into disarray. Here are some thoughtsbased on a question I received recently in email about guidelines, a toolbox,and how to grow a community.

Start With the Intent First, know what the intent of your social media and networks will be. Are youhoping to improve awareness and open communication about yourorganization? Are you looking to reach new markets and open channels for salesor membership or market adoption? Are you hoping to use these tools ascollaboration platforms? Are you making informational products? Are you justvirtualizing your water cooler?

Knowing your intent drives which path you take.

Treat Your Community Like Adults Companies and organizations are most worried about how blogs and podcastsand wikis will be used. The truth is, most employee code of conduct policiescover this related to email use. It’s not much different. Don’t add anotherthousand rules as to what should go on within the social networks, exceptinsofar as what differences come with the medium. For example, don’t burypeople in what not to say. If you’re a publicly traded company, let them add adisclaimer to the blog (strictly my opinions), remind them about the emailpolicy, and let it go.

Social Media and Social Networking Starting Points, by Chris Brogan… You may distribute this article in full to anyone. You may print copies for personal use.

A Sample Blogging Policy If I were launching a social media program at a company, I’d hold a quick meeting in person. I’d mention the following:  We’re opening up blogging to the organization. Every one here is now invited to use our new blogging platform. Why do this? Because we think you’re creative, intelligent people, and we want to give you a chance to share your ideas with a larger audience, inside and outside the organization.  As this is public, just remember that we can’t talk about company secrets, upcoming projects that aren’t yet public, or anything that could impact our company’s stock value.  Within reason, you can say what you will about our publicly released products and services. If you’re critical of something, recommend solutions. Offer examples of improvements. We’d prefer it to be constructive. Use your judgment.  When posting pictures or movies or music, understand that some materials may be copyrighted. For instance, just because you can see a picture on a Google Image Search or find it in Flickr, that doesn’t mean you have rights to post it on your blog. We’ll talk more about Creative Commons and some other resources later.  It’s fine to post “off-topic.” We don’t expect every single post to be about the organization. We hope you’ll talk about us from time to time, as our goal is showing our customers, vendors, and other stakeholders, as well as the community at large, that you are what makes our company amazing.  Mentioning our competitors is fine. The world doesn’t revolve around us(okay, we pretend it does!), and we know that some people do some aspects of what we do better. Don’t rub our noses in it, but we get it.  Deleting blog posts is considered bad etiquette on the web. We won’t do it here, unless something violates our privacy policies, and/or our ethics policies. Posting hotties probably won’t fly, but the occasional cute picture of your cat in a cowboy hat is okay. You’re a real human, not a robot.  Did we mention it’d be cool if you talked about us once in a while? Great!  It’s considered good etiquette to link to other great posts you read, and to comment on other blogs written by people you admire or want to engage in conversation.  As for how often or how much is too much, and things like that, around here, we measure you on your results at your primary function. If your work starts suffering on your way to the A list of bloggers, we’ll have to adjust your expectations a little bit. Otherwise, use your judgment.

Elements of Your Social Media Platform People are selling all kinds of technology for blogging. Even when there are plenty of free and open source platforms out there. Even simple hosted opportunities abound. Beyond that, there are some great new collaborative products, and TONS of content management software companies out there making all flavor of solution. So, instead of recommending any specific platform, I’ll point out some things to consider:  Operating environments vary: several content systems work on Linux platforms, using solely open source, and others are built for a Windows environment. If you’re building the system in-house, consider what your IT team will be comfortable supporting. Or, bypass both camps entirely and build on a hosted environment out on the web, but this is a consideration.  Related to the last point, the more arcane or unknown the system, the less likely it will be for you to find support, should the vendor and you fall out of love. Be wary of that.  The content system should feature RSS feed support. This means that all the content can be exported via a specific protocol that allows people to view it in a reader or other application of their choice, and not just at the website as a destination. (For me, systems that don’t support RSS are a show-stopper. You might have a different opinion).  The ability to post in a simple visual manner (that would feel like using a tool like Microsoft Word) as well as the ability to post in HTML format is useful. I like writing in HTML, but others might prefer the comfort of the WYSIWYG tools.  Media support is fairly standard these days, but should be considered. In a world where YouTube isn’t just skateboarding dogs any more, the ability to embed Flash video, as well as the ability to post MP3 and MOV files (amongst other types) would be important.  Video has lots of added challenges. I strongly recommend a 3rd party hosting platform, and then embedding a player instead of integrating to your platform. Yes, there are great platforms working inside the firewall, and there are some easy add-on video solutions, but if you’re going to go heavy into video and aren’t a production or media company, that’s a part that’s probably best outsourced.  Is mobile a priority? There are applications like Utterz and Tumblr and more who allow for mobile posting. Integrating input from more than one source would thereby also be important and of interest. Pay attention to how easy it is to import feeds and post into your media platform. This is one limitation that can be somewhat vexing later on.  Backing up, exporting, importing, and some administrative functions are important to consider, if you’re going to put any serious data and effort every week, regardless of the fact that it’s posted on a hosting system.  Customization is important. If you can’t make the platform look and feel like the rest of your presence, what’s the point? Most systems accommodate for this rather well, permitting CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) support and other features, but make sure.  Beyond this, there are lots of “your mileage may vary” opinions, but this should be a good start.