I don’t know about you but I am perpetually fascinated by how much we (the human race that is) are preoccupied with looking good in front of others. We’re just a little bit obsessed with this. Ok to have a messy house but as soon as you hear someone is popping round you go into cleaning overdrive? Thought Uggs were ridiculous until your best friend bought a pair? Worry more about what you said in front of others following a night out (as opposed to what you actually did or what kind of state your liver is in the next morning)? We’ve all been there, and social media is no exception. After all how many of us joined Facebook following peer pressure of the ‘Pah, you’re not on Facebook? You’re so not with it’ kind?
So now that we’re on Facebook (Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) how do we use these networks for business purposes without making an idiot of ourselves? Here’s how:
1. Do it right or don’t do it at all. Thought Twitter looked like fun so you set up a company account? Haven’t tweeted since last November? You may not exactly look like an idiot but you will put the question, ‘are these guys still in business’ in peoples’ minds.
2. Don’t put tweets through LinkedIn, the content of which centre mainly on the weekend’s rugby results. Yes, it’s the weekend, yes you’re quite entitled to go to the pub and watch rugby and no, we don’t want a blow-by-blow description of the game via LinkedIn (or at all, really…)
3. Get your branding sorted. Please please please don’t opt for the standard blue clouds background on Twitter. It screams, ‘I’m just messing around on Twitter, so much so I can’t even be bothered to get a custom background’.
4. The auto-post. Be careful of this one! I specialise in striking that balance between full automation on social media and spending all your time doing absolutely everything manually, and believe me it is a delicate balance to achieve. The worst offender is the automated @mention on Twitter. You send a tweet saying @johnny hi, heard you’re in town next week, shall we hook up? and you get one back saying @socialemer visit my website for all the latest news on widgets.
5. Be careful about how you use your Facebook profile. If you accept business contacts as friends on Facebook then remember that they can see all your photos and all photos you’ve been tagged in. Adjust your privacy settings so that people only see what you want them to see, and create lists within Facebook so that when you write a post you can decide whether it’s going out to friends, business contacts or both.
Looking good,
Emer
Social Sorted 