Don’t Engage in Social Media Marketing Without Knowing the Rules of Engagement—Thumbonomics Chapter Four

If you’ve been following this blog, you might be thinking, “huh?” After all, I’ve been plugging social media involvement for quite some time. I do believe it’s vital for businesses large and small to get involved in social media if they want to be relevant and stay competitive.  However, I don’t want you to waste your time or inadvertently wander into a situation that could be detrimental to your company.

Social media is no different than any other endeavor—you’ll get the best results the fastest if you know what you are doing.

Thumbonomics Chapter Four talks about the importance of a written social media marketing policy specific to your organization’s needs, stating employee guidelines and rules for using all of your social media platforms.

Why is this so important? To ease those fears about legal issues, staff members spending all day tweeting, or making private information public. A social media corporate policy should indicate what type of content is—and is not—OK to Tweet or post on any social media site during business hours. When your social media policy has been drafted, run it by legal.

I strongly suggest having everyone who’ll be participating in social media profiles for your company sign this document. Check out the template for the social media policy we recommend to our clients here.

Chapter Four also shows you how to reserve and hold all your core brand names on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook by setting up new accounts with your corporate name.

Findability Tip: Every account should have the word "Official" in the title if possible. If you are wondering why, it’s to differentiate your company’s sites from rogue accounts that may have been set up by fans. A perfect example of this is Parelli Natural Horsemanship, a client who discovered that although they were not yet engaging online, their fans already were and had set up these rogue accounts. Find out how they have gathered up these fans and are communicating with them.

Another important part of engaging in social media for your business is to decide on your online “voice;” that is, how you wish to be perceived—gregarious, cutting edge, professional, thought leaders—whatever your corporate personality is.

As you can see, there is a lot to be considered for a business starting off with social media. And guess what? If you already have all your social profiles online, it’s never too late to tweak them, improve them, and take what you are doing to a whole new level of effectiveness and productivity.