Marketing

The Marketer’s Toolkit: 10 Rules of Social Media

July 7, 2014

You realize social media can be a valuable tool for elevating your brand and establishing yourself as a thought leader, but are you playing by the right rules to be truly effective?

These rules apply to employees or contractors who create or contribute to social networks, forums, groups, or any other kind of virtual interaction on behalf of a business. Whether you use Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia, Quora, or Facebook pages — these guidelines are for you.
The overall goal is simple: to participate online in a respectful, relevant way that protects your business’ reputation and of course follows modern marketing rules of engagement online.

10 Rules of Social Media

1) Build great content

Social networks were initially created to identify and encourage sharing of excellent content. The best content rises to the top, and the worst content gets buried at the bottom. Normally, the migration of content to its “natural” place in a social network is accomplished through sharing, voting, tagging, etc. If you aren’t capable or willing to produce or curate truly valuable and excellent content, then it is very, very unlikely you’ll be successful in social media.
Before sharing a piece content you should ask yourself:

Is this content something that others will like? If it was submitted to me would it be worth my time and would I “vote” for it?

If you can’t honestly answer “yes” then you won’t get far with social media marketing.

2) Listen and learn

Prepare to spend time reading, voting, sharing, and getting immersed in the content on a social network before you start submitting. You should also make some friends before you jump into the fray of sharing your own stuff. Think of it like a cocktail party. If you walk up to a group of people who are already talking it makes sense to listen first and get a feel for the conversation before you jump in with your own contribution.

3) Think hard before submitting personal content

If you submit your own content, certainly don’t submit every article you write. Keep it professional and relevant to your business. Let’s go back to the cocktail party example — you wouldn’t want to spout off every single thing that popped into your head, would you? In most settings, that’s not going to fly. People would think you were strange and self-absorbed. Instead, you should be selective about what content to submit, and time your submissions so they fit into context and make sense.

Looking for tips for relationship building?

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The Art of Building and Nurturing an Online Community

4) Build great relationships

Building online relationships is very similar to building “real world” ones. You have to understand what types of content people enjoy and build relationships with them first (see rule #2 above). Just like you would expect, building these relationships takes time and real work. It means putting effort into engaging in thoughtful and meaningful conversations. Remember, nobody becomes best friends the first time they meet.

5) Maintain good customer service

You’d better believe this is important. The mistake most businesses make with social media is that they think it’s all about free marketing. It isn’t. It’s about service.
Take Zappos’s motto, for example: “We are a customer service company that happens to be in the business of selling shoes.” Smart. Zappos generates three quarters of its $1 billion in annual sales from existing customers, and its devotion to service (including on social) is a big reason why.

6) Stick to the plan and commit the time

To truly succeed on any social media platform you must be prepared to spend some quality time. That’s not to say you must spend hours upon hours in Facebook. But you should spend at least an hour a day submitting and reading content, replying to people, sharing other’s content, etc. Be prepared to invest the time required to succeed and don’t expect immediate success.

7) Don’t submit everything

If everyone submitted everything, social media sites would be spammy and useless, and some have become just that. Also, keep in mind that if you submit all your content and are overly self-promotional, your account could be banned from the social media site you are abusing.
Here’s a tip: groups and forums are extremely aware of what and how much you post. Be smart about what you share and aim to promote about 20% of your own content to social media sites.

How do you ensure your social media is targeted?

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8) Set yourself up for success with easy-to-submit content

If you are attempting to create content that will “go viral” then you need to make sure that visitors to your content can easily share it on your behalf. For starters, you’ll need social media sharing buttons to make your content easy to submit and spread. “Share This” or “Add This” are great examples of such buttons.

9) Under-promise and over-deliver

Find ways to quickly get people interested in your content. In general, you’ll want to write titles for your content that are controversial, provocative, or related to something happening in current events but still relevant to your business. The key is to draw people in with pithy, remarkable headlines that proclaim instant value and are irresistible to those who read them.
For tips on writing attention-grabbing headlines, see Neil Patel’s “Headline Writing 101” and Copyblogger’s “10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas that Work”.

10) Don’t forget to drive leads

Sure, social media is about meaning conversations, relationship building and driving traffic, creating brand visibility, reputation management, and growing reach. But at the end of the day, it’s also about business growth (i.e. lead generation). Don’t forget to include calls to action in your blog posts and other content to ensure you convert as much of your traffic as possible into valuable sales leads.
Are there any rules I’m missing? Let me know in the comments below!


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Photo by: Marc Kjerland

Chief Marketing Office

<strong>Morgan Burke</strong> is Chief Marketing Officer at <a href="https://greenpinatatoys.com/">Green Pinata</a>. She previously worked on OpenView's marketing team.