usaseopros.com - Search Engine Optimization

Congratulations, you’ve gotten your company or brand name on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg and a number of other social media sites…but now what?

Your first post or two was rejected by the community and marked as spam even though another community accepted it. You tried to comment on a post and got thumbed down. Meanwhile, your Twitter profile, which quickly gained 250 followers has now sunk to 89, and you haven’t tweeted more than once a week for the past month.

Social media Web site profiles and accounts can be a powerful and effective way to reach out to your audience, but they need to be handled with care and thought.

#1 Don’t simply leap into community discussion without first listening. This means don’t submit your latest blog post, just because you love it, to each and every social news site. Spend some time on the site and see what is accepted and what gets rejected.

Every site has different moderators, different rules, and different levels of community acceptance. Twitter is fairly straightforward. You’re welcome to spam your stream with self-promotion, and nobody can give you a thumbs down – but they can unfollow you.

When I write a blog article for USASEOPros, I don’t always rush out to submit it to Sphinn – an internet marketing news and discussion forum. I try to participate in the community, “sphinn” articles that others have submitted that I enjoyed reading and found relevant and yes – submit some of my own stuff.

But not everything will get through, and that’s going to be something you’ll want to keep track of. If your first five submits were accepted on Reddit, but you last one wasn’t, what was different with it?

#2 This really should go without saying, but unless it’s a political or religious site, or that’s what your company is involved with, keep politics and religion out of your discussion.

Those are two topics that cannot result in a victorious argument – one that is sure to generate. Someone somewhere will disagree with your stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and you’re simply going to end up in a flame war, potentially damaging your brand name.

#3 Try to be professional. This varies site to site, but if you’re managing a company profile on Twitter, then tweeting about Pamela Anderson’s latest foray isn’t acceptable.

I found this interesting blog post about never LOL-ing on Reddit. If you’re trying to promote a business or brand, that’s probably sound advice.

Keep your responses to blog comments and your own comments to thoughtful, professional language. If someone disagrees with your post, thank them for reading the article, and perhaps offer a (polite) rebuttal of your own.

#4 Don’t make it all about you. If you’re managing your company Twitter account, don’t make it a habit to only tweet about your own stuff. Share industry-related things that interest you AS A PERSON. Make the people who follow your feed feel like there is a real person behind the profile page, not just a corporate entity.

I wrote an article about Twitter spam, and I said one of the easiest ways to drive people away from following you is by only posting about yourself and automating the process.

Yes, Twitter can be exploited and used by a number of automated systems. You can schedule your messages to go off every 12 minutes for a certain period of time on a certain day. You can auto-DM and auto-follow people, but are those things that really going to get you the results you’re looking for?

Having 12,000 Twitter followers is surely an ego-booster, but what if 11,824 of them never click on your links and never read your blogs or shared articles?

I would prefer to have just 100 followers if I knew that all 100 of them were actively engaged with my content and communicating constructively with me.

The same goes for sites like Reddit, Digg, etc. Please don’t let your ego get the best of you on these social sites. Other companies and other people can write quality content and can create something shareable. Don’t shy away from spreading the good word!

#5 Try not to simply dip your toes with these sites. You’ll see much better results if you actively manage your Twitter account day to day, rather than simply appearing now and then after you’ve written a new blog post or your company submitted a press release.

We have several team members who are active on a large number of social media sites, every single day. Yes, as an individual it can get a little crazy to manage 22 different accounts and post, comment, and digg every day, so you might pick just a few to get start.

#6 Trolling has (unfortunately) become part of social media – try not to let personal emotions affect your responses.

If you manage social media accounts for a business, you’re representing more than just yourself online. You have an entire company that you’re speaking for, intentionally or not. Just because someone lashes out at you on a social media site does not mean you need to bare your fangs.

In fact, it’s almost inevitable that you’re going to run across someone who flat out doesn’t like you or your company. Deal with it professionally. The Air Force has a (now) famous blog assessment chart that pretty accurately dictates what your type of response should be.

Air Force Blog Assesment

More than anything when it comes to social media, remember that this is an important avenue to reach out directly to the people you hope to sell to/work with. Keep it composed, keep it professional, and keep it friendly!

By: Zack S.