How do I interact with social media?

Imagine you are visiting someone’s house who you have never met before. If you were to walk right in, make yourself a drink, and start talking about yourself, how do you think that person might react? This may sound like an outrageous situation but it is precisely what some organizations have attempted, and been rebuked for. Many of the most active participants within the social media space are people who are extremely passionate about the media they produce and the online spaces where they share their content and communicate with others. The most important thing to remember when dealing with the social media space is to treat it with respect.

In addition, there are several guidelines you can follow to maximize the effectiveness of your social media campaign. They are as follows:

1. Write down your goals and indicators of success
The first place you should start is by identifying and getting agreement as to what you want to accomplish through your engagement with social media. “Because everyone else is doing it” is not a good reason for participating in social media. Take for example the corporate blog, which is becoming a growing usage of social media. Many companies are quick to roll out a corporate blog without firmly understanding the goals they want to accomplish through the blog. The problem is that these companies will post furiously during the first few weeks of the blog’s conception, but quickly lose interest as the tangible benefits do not become immediately apparent. Goals can have a ‘north star’ type of effect, and can insure effectiveness even when the tangible benefits don’t seem immediately obvious. For some, success indicators will be easily measured statistics such as increased traffic or increased hits in the blogosphere; for others, it will be less easy to measure: perhaps creation of a supportive network on the blogosphere.

2. Choose the best method based on your goals
Once you have clearly defined your goals, you may find that the best method may not necessarily involve social media at all, or at least, not the latest and greatest form of social media. For instance, I can remember a client several years back, who was engaging with their key stakeholders via a bulletin board system (BBS). Suddenly, blogging became big and the client wanted to shift their efforts towards a blog. With limited financial and time constraints, the shift would have then caused the client to lose a lot of the capital they had built by hosting and moderating a bulletin board for several years. When they went back to their goals, and realized that their number #1 goal was to develop a strong community of supportive stakeholders, they realized that the right decision was the unsexy one: to stick to hosting and moderating a bulletin board system (BBS). An associated point is that the best method for accomplishing your goal may not necessarily be to start from scratch: sometimes there is an existing blog or Podcast that can help you accomplish your goals with a little support. This gets us to our next point:

3. Study before you act
There is nothing that social media community dislikes more than corporate intrusion, or the idea that corporations are using social media as a marketing or advertising channel. The best way to get around this barrier is to put in the time and effort required to learn about the social media you are attempting to interact with. Take for example a blogger who is posting about industry: If there is a blogger you want to communicate with, spend time studying their interests – are they focused on topic or many; study their posting habits – do they post short articles frequently or long articles infrequently; and study their engagement habits – do they communicate with their audience through comments? Are they well connected with other bloggers? Study their tone – are they likely to respond favorably to you? When you finally reach out to a blogger, you should be completely sure of why you are reaching out to the blogger and confident that they are not going to react negatively to you. It is far better to create a solid relationship with a handful of prominent bloggers than to try and disseminate your message to a large number of them.

4. Be transparent
In recent years, transparency has become an increasingly concept in both the political and commercial spheres, spurred on by a variety of reasons, not the least of which were the corporate and accounting scandals taking place during the first few years of the 21st century. With regards to the Internet, there have been a number of notable incidents in which certain companies were revealed to have been behind what were intended to look like authentic, independent productions. Although there are inevitably going to be covert attempts that are successful on the Web, the cost-benefit just not add up.

5. Track your effectiveness
Ultimately, your success will be determined by whether or not you accomplished your initial goals and achieved your success indicators. Have you increased your Web site traffic? Are you achieving positive hits online? Have your sales increased? Bear in mind that the results are not always going to be immediately tangible, but if executed properly and sufficient investments of time and effort, a social media strategy will ultimately end in positive benefits.