Social Observations: Purposeful Social Media
Social observations is a new feature I will be starting here on this blog. It will aim to do a deep dive of social media concepts, issues and best practices as they relate to client-employee relationships, personal social media as well as “corporate” social media. Today’s topic is looking at Social Media with a purpose.
I’ve observed enough on social media to know whether you are mangling your personal image or whether you are doing a great job. The difference between whether you mean what you say and sound nasal is almost night and day. In a sense, social media must be done with a personality in mind, but who’s personality should it be?
I think the personality, in many ways, shouldn’t matter. That should be left up in particular, to the person in question who is your social media communities manager, and then taken further from there. Business if you remember, has always been about people and will continue to be about people until android robots replace them.
My mentor Robert Caruso, CEO of BundlePost told me last week words that should resonate in the minds of every businessperson, but even more so for marketing strategists and social media community managers. “Do it with a purpose” he said, meaning that every time you send out a tweet, post something to Facebook or even leave a comment, do it with the idea of meaning in mind and own it with all you can. Personally, this makes a lot of sense. You always want to do social media with purpose too, but too many people simply don’t - especially in the corporate setting. Allow me to explain.
When I think of corporate marketing, I think of men and women in suits looking at how to craft the next campaign and make consumers open up their pocketbooks. In many ways this works, because customers almost have no power in the messaging strategy, and it was like this for many years until social media reared its head just a few years back. To a degree, social media is a part of corporate marketing, but in the way that I have observed in many companies, it almost isn’t. Why? Because one side is just not as stable.
Social media purpose is a different purpose from far-flung traditional marketing. Its community oriented, where you make connections and you further those connections by deeply influencing those around you with your knowledge, understanding of the craft and helpfulness. Unlike traditional marketing where the message was one-time-and-that’s-it, social media requires a long, thought out conversation where you can’t control the message from the other side. Its not customer service, but rather a networking session almost. As everyone speaks differently, a unified personality almost does not matter. Just like you would tell your friend about a restaurant down the road differently than your mother or father would, you would have a community manager unify their own voice that way as well.
Are you doing your social media with purpose? Share in the comments below or tweet at me.
