Social Media Guidelines

Companies would comfortably commence social media in their organizations if they set certain Social Media guidelines beforehand. Develop them organically in reaction to situations as they arise but few of them listed below are the must ones to be put as must-haves for your Social Media Policy.

a) Commence with goal of social media
Instead of putting up the old way of doing things, with unnecessarily restrictive model of engagement, present the project plan with specific goals to achieve.

b) Give accountable directions
Your organization and its representatives need to take responsibility for what they write, and exercise good judgment and common sense. No one wants to loose a job, of course, so using common sense and being responsible is important.

c) Be genuine
Try always to include your original identity and, when appropriate, your company name and your title too. Consumers buy from people that they know and trust, so let people know who you are.

d) Look at your audience
In social media channels, remember that your readers do consider current clients, potential clients, as well as current/past/future employees. Consider that before you publish and make sure you aren’t weaning any of those groups.

e) Employ effective opinion
Refrain from comments that can be interpreted as slurs, undignified or provocative. The Internet is full of varied opinions. Make your employees understand that companies can and will monitor employee use of social media and social networking web sites, whether they are engaging when away from the office.

f) Understand an idea of grouping
The essence of community is to understand the balance between personal and professional information. Using your community, make your customers or users feel comfortable sharing, connecting, and receiving help.

g) Safeguard confidential & proprietary info
Being transparent doesn’t mean giving out the confidential or proprietary information. Company will seriously question the judgment of an employee who shares confidential or proprietary information via social media.

h) Add value
Pull in value to your followers, readers, fan, and users. Make sure that our position is heard and commented on for upcoming products or services.

i) Productivity matters
Employees would lose focus if they are spending too much time on social media sites. For your social media endeavors to be successful, you need to find the right balance between social media and other work.

Since word of mouth is extremely important, it’s a good idea to make sure all of this is clearly laid out in your social media policy.

Beneficial Twitter Tools

When one starts using Twitter as a communication tool, he finds it pretty easy to keep up with everything. But once you decide to use it for brand awareness/business and also as a marketing tool, you will find it a bit unmanageable; as with time you get to know that keeping up with all your followers, adding additional followers and trying to keep everyone interested, become pretty unmanageable.
Numerous tools and applications have been developed to make things easier. Really useful ones are:

a) Hootsuite – This tool helps to organize tweets and followers also. You can even schedule tweets for when you are away from your computer. You can create groups of followers to closely monitor their tweets. It will track your URL clicks, and update the stats on all the clicks to your links. It also allows monitoring different twitter accounts, if you have more than 1. Moreover, it’s 100% free!

b) Tweepular – Tweepular allows checking the mutuality of your followers. Meaning you can find out who isn’t following you back, or people who are following you but you are not following back. It will also allow you to unfollow people in bulk. It is a good idea to unfollow anyone who isn’t following you back, unless you find their tweets interesting and useful.

c) Twitpic – It’s a good idea to get personal with your followers and a good way to share pictures with them. Using twitpic will allow you to instantly share photos with your followers; it will create a link in your tweet that directs them to the photo.

d) Vidly – Vidly is basically the same as twitpic except it allows you to share videos. Videos are better than photos, and helps in getting connected with your followers. Take some short videos that share tips or information in your niche or industry and share them using Vidly. Your followers will love this and most likely share it with their followers, bringing more traffic to you.

e) Twitterholic – It helps to check twitter stats. From how many tweets you’ve done per day, how fast your twitter list is growing, how well you rank in your area, how you rank as it compares to other twitter users, and much more.

You can use these twitter tools almost regularly to keep track of your twitter profile, stats and schedule your tweets.

Social Media Marketing Execution Process

Visualize, Plan, Believe and then…Act!
Internet marketing campaigns helps to enhance the value and image of your flourishing business, along with your overall web presence. For this the social media marketing follows an approach to achieve success.

a) Requirement Analysis
Collate detailed information and develop a precise and to the point review of your requirements to comprehend in a better manner. After a collective brain storming session, analyze how well and value added solutions and services could bring up the success rate.
b) Visualization
With the project description and requirements in hand, visualize the process to adapt, to provide best web solutions estimating the time and price to do the work.
c) Planning
Formulate a plan and work out accordingly to attain definite success assigning specific tasks amongst various resources.
d) Interaction
Constantly communicate with client with detailed progress report of project; get feedback and incorporate to enhance project further.
e) Launch
Prepare a mock up according to requirements and inputs, share with the client and once approved, kick off the project. Ensuring that the project finishes in the intended time, without compromising on the quality and exclusivity, the final project is then operational.
f) Postproduction Support
Offer various post production or maintenance support solutions to the client. Depending on the volume of the changes or alterations, vary the price cost of each.

Remember, value your clients and their feedback and feel glad to assist them, as and when required.

Transparency in Business

There is hardly a conversation about social media today without discussing the concept of transparency. Customers and stakeholders increasingly expect it as the new operating standard.

Transparency is to be open, honest, and accountable and about responsibility. People listen and make evaluations and decisions based upon what you say. To make your business more transparent:

a) Be Real — Spread Awareness about What You Know
Talk about the things that you are aware of. Just stick to this. Then make sure to specialize in specific related areas.

b) Share Opinion, But Listen as well Stay Open to Other Views
You are fully responsible about the information you share. If you find someone else’s views good, then do appreciate. That kind of openness earns respect. Sharing your opinion is actually a part of marketing strategy.

c) Be Honest
Put all the appropriate details. Do not neglect anything that could be important for anybody else, it might affect your online credibility.

d) Be Well-timed and Responsive
Respond instantly. Being a part of social media, remember that timeliness impacts your success and failure. At the moments of controversy, timeliness plays significant role.

e) Consider Grouping
None of us can work as an island in social media world. Transparency means creating groups and communities. Educate customers and generate ideas for new products and services. Targeting right audiences makes lot of difference.

Sometimes, it’s hard to share the truth openly. But adopting transparency would definitely help to be more real, honest, and creditworthy and connects better with customers.makes lot of difference.