A job in social media – more than just setting up a Twitter account and posting company news

Updating our social media strategy and a couple of thoughts gelled for me. I’m growing tired of people with Twitter accounts or Facebook pages thinking that is the same as running these channels for a brand. It’s a little more complicated than that! And while the internet is full of best practices and people acting like they have a right to tell you what they think of what you’re doing, at the end of the day you need to build up a reputation and brand personality on these channels in a way that your customers and prospects and your own company will trust you. These are social. networks. People are not on social media to be constantly sold to.

I’ve been working this field with the same job for just over 5 years now. I can tell you that being on social media is not just about claiming an account on every conceivable channel to share news with keen fans or followers. Channels need editorial direction, management and investment and the skill required to run this environment should not be underestimated. These days social media channels are widely accepted as the first point of contact for your brand and you need the right people to manage these online relationships. You shouldn’t treat social media as channels for blatant customer acquisition – engagement is the benchmark in 2015 – the point of sale and ongoing retention is about a relationship. We need to converse with people on these channels, provide useful and helpful content, and empower them to make the right decision.

The challenge when your company grows is maintaining consistency – your channels have increased in followers and engagement over the years, you’ve built up rapport with frequent posters and recognize avatars from years gone by, so how do you introduce new people to do something more than pump out stuff the marketing or PR team gives them or not be over-the-top smarmy when helping with support questions or completely missing the tone or not having the skill to read between the lines when you’re dealing with all manner of questions and comments fired at you in 140 characters or less? This is where a mission statement for your social media efforts overall, and per channel comes in, where a content calendar can guide the right tone and messaging to help maintain consistency. Just because setting up and using a social media account is available to anyone, doesn’t mean that’s the right experience to run a brand channel on it’s own. It’s actually not easy – you’re becoming an unedited spokesperson for your brand, the voice of the company and with this comes great responsibility – new folks to your social media team should be trained and guided. This is where I struggle a bit – I am where I am today by basically feeling my way through it and find it quite hard to teach that, and even harder to push back and explain why social media accounts should continue to be tightly managed.

If someone ate your cookies?!

Saw this posted on Twitter recently and thought it was quite a funny story. Pokes at the English a bit too! (Looks like this is posted on some discussion site somewhere, not sure where or why, the person who posted it on Twitter posted just this image.) You can click to make it bigger if the text is too small …

B7UzTYGIIAALD4m

3 amazing things about yourself

Saw this on Twitter. If someone asked you to do this, could you?

Screen Shot 2015-01-07 at 1.20.13 PM

My friends, what are your 3 amazing things … about yourself?

We can easily find amazing things about other people we know and love but not so easy when it comes to ourselves. I couldn’t do it!

Social media rules for running your business accounts

Useful things to think about if you’re using social media in your business. Some great ones and things I stick by.

Screen Shot 2015-01-01 at 5.08.28 pm

A lot of people just see social media as a place to waste time and talk to friends and people virtually.
The 36 Rules of Social Media

Dealing with trolls online

It’s pretty tough to be on the end of vicious commentary and so often I’m unsure if these people even realize there’s a real human being at the other end. Would they speak to my face like that? (Note this is what I deal with sometimes at work, not personally, thankfully!)

“Many have asked whether the cozy veil of online anonymity mostly encourages well-intentioned truth telling or mostly emboldens people to act like assholes.”

How To Cope With The Shit Trolls Say Behind That Cozy Veil Of Online Anonymity

Excuse the swearing but life IS too short to worry about some stuff

An interesting take on resolutions! I like the idea of finding stuff to just stop worrying about!! Half the time it’s all stuff that makes you fit into society – but as long as you’re not hurting anybody, you should live life how you want to.

Screen Shot 2015-01-01 at 4.20.08 pm

Orange leaves in Massachusetts

Orange leaves

Paris is quite orange at night

tumblr_muo1y87xdU1soy6l2o1_1280

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

Paris 2013 – as told by my tweets

London 2013 – as told by my tweets