Kristeen Bullwinkle

Social content, even the few words allowed in a tweet, can be made to pull its weight. The same care you take for your website content should be given to your social content. Your tone in social media might be a little less formal, but you still want to consider your marketing and service strategies.

Keywords

The same set of keywords you identified for use on your site can also be used in your social media. Consider even more tightly targeted and long-tail keywords, too. Make it easy for someone searching social content to locate you and your products, or services. Or make sure your institution is associated with appropriate issue-related keywords.

The Mayo Clinic does a great job of this.

Remember to consider the keywords you use as links when commenting in a forum, posting an answer, or commenting on a blog. You want to support your other SEO efforts so when you refer to one of your own web pages or blog posts, be sure to use relevant keywords.

Branding

Should you publish from a single brand or from each of your brands?

In the Twitter post example above you’ll see that Mayo Clinic didn’t post from a separate education or audio production account. The tweet came from the larger entity of the institution. They don’t dilute their exceptionally strong brand by having multiple publishers. They do avoid littering their Twitter feed with job openings, however, by posting those from @mayoclinicjobs. And if you’re interested only in audio content, they make it easy to search for it with the hash tag: mayoradio.

If you are a company with a higher potential for bad press or with strong individual product brands, I’d recommend that you have separate accounts for each brand name. Let’s take Pfizer as an example. Their drug names are probably stronger keywords then the company name. The individual brands attract different types of readers.  Someone interested issues around dementia might know and subscribe to an Aricept feed, without knowing it was a Pfizer brand. If an issue regarding Halcion or similar drug hit the media, Pfizer could respond via the specific account channel instead of reminding all their other readers about an issue they’d rather didn’t capture their attention. Another example would be Ford’s separate channels for Ford trucks and the Mustang.

Look at your brand strategy (0r create one) and let that guide your decision on how to publish. Or begin with a single account and if you’re finding that you’re alienating readers by publishing content they don’t care about, then create a new account.

Support your other media

You’ll notice that Mayo Clinic used a new media tweet to support a report going out in the old media of radio. New blog posts, quotes from an interview with your CEO, special offers at your brick-and-mortar location, slides from a training presentation, and news releases are all good examples of content that can be re-purposed for social media.

Let your audience lead

Maybe your audience doesn’t want to interact with you on Facebook. Perhaps they clamor for assistance you could best provide via video, so you focus your resources toward YouTube. Perhaps many are hanging out in another location like Gather, Google Buzz, or a forum established back in 1998. Services like socialmention.com or Google Alerts can be helpful in identifying locations where your keywords are currently appearing and generating some conversation. Don’t rely on those services. Do some deeper digging on a regular schedule. For example, check forums through Google’s discussion option to catch up on audience viewpoints and issues that interest them.

Use social monitoring tools to discover conversations expressing dissatisfaction with your competitors. You might not want to jump into the conversation to shout about how you do something better, but you could respond privately to the people with complaints and make them an offer. Provide them what they want and perhaps they’ll become a spokesman for you. Or simply use postings like this to gather competitive data you can use to improve your business.

Are you checking your log files to see how many mobile users you have? They might appreciate communications via Twitter.

If you’re having trouble choosing where you should focus your social attention, ask your sales and service staff for their opinions. They often have insights on how  and where people are currently finding information about you and your products. They’ll also be able to give you goods ideas for content to share.

Remember that educational content is better than promotional content.

If you really want to control the conversation by keeping it on your own site you’re probably going to fail unless you provide enough incentives to keep people visiting, reading, and posting. If you have user generated content like product reviews, make sure the search engines can index that content.

Editorial guidelines still apply

Even if you’re posting something to Facebook you want the status update to look professional. Consider the tone you use for other media. You might choose to be more relaxed or use more humor in your social media posts, but that doesn’t remove the need to follow style and editorial guidelines.

It’s a good idea to have someone periodically review postings and inform everyone who publishes from your organization about what’s been working and what hasn’t. Having measurable goals is critical to success.

You’ve heard the advice to always know your audience before you create an ad, write a blog post, or compose an email newsletter. I’d like to take that one step further and encourage you to consider your role as well. What cultural expectations already exist in the relationship you have with your customer/client? What role do you want to have with your potential clients/customers? Social media is built around creating, renewing, and nurturing relationships and role expectations matter deeply. If you step out of accepted or expected roles, you could be shunned. Embracing a genuine and appropriate role helps establish mutually satisfying relationships.

Let me give you a few examples.

One social site for college alumni reminds me of chatting with a grandma who knows what everyone in her family is doing and wants to tell you all about it. She’s always displaying new photos and she’s happy to pass along your news, too. She likes getting everyone together and then standing back, stepping in just to keep the conversations flowing and respectful. She doesn’t ask for money. She might make a few discrete suggestions to me privately, such as through a direct e-mail solicitation, but never in front of everyone else. The social site is the alumni’s area and not the development office’s. Development might learn a bit about my interests and then contact me because of them, but they don’t intrude upon the “family” space.

A web site and forum devoted to caregivers of Alzheimer’s and other dementia suffers plays a role very similar to a support group facilitator. They let discussions flow among the participants and come in every so often with a professional’s opinion. They listen in on conversations and when they write a new blog post they make it clear that they’ve been listening. But they are very light handed about it. In this way they inspire my trust in the site. I know that if a participant offers dangerous advice or behaves badly in the group, someone with authority will step in. I see that there are products to purchase on the site, but it took me a couple of months to even notice them on the site. Now they feel more like helpful referrals rather than a commercial sales job.

I can compare my relationship with Amazon to the one I had with a restaurant manager at a local Indian restaurant. He listened to me and took an interest in my tastes beginning with my first meal there, expressed his interest in my dining experience, and eventually I went there every Tuesday night. I even let him bring my whatever mean he thought I’d enjoy. By listening and providing good service, he encouraged me to give him valuable information and to take an interest in his business. He never crossed a mutually recognized line in the relationship. For example, he never asked me about my deodorant usage.

I don’t want Amazon to ask either. I don’t want Amazon to act as my local drug store and outfitter and home improvement store. I’m happy to give them my ratings and views on books and music they have sold me, and I welcome suggestions from them. But I’m not comfortable with giving more. I think they’ve been successful selling items outside their original bookstore model, but not with me. Right now all that Amazon has going for it, from my perspective, is that has my credit card information and my wish list. It’s holding onto my patronage by it’s technological fingernails. I’ve decided to switch to using Powells.com because they understand the relationship I’m looking for.

All sorts of roles can be appropriate in social media. Perhaps you want to be the professor, the flirty friend, the really cool kid in high school, or an adviser. If you offer a calendaring service, it might even be fine for you to take on the role of a nagging mother. In a new campaign Kleenex has decided to try the role of a nurturing mother and it’s performing better than expected.

Now that I’ve talked about roles, I need to step back and make clear that it’s your customers, your users, your clients who get to take the lead in what roles you both play. You won’t get anywhere playing the doting wife if what they need is a reliable mechanic. You can’t be the attentive waiter if they want the efficient dental technician. If you do, they won’t return.

So instead of looking at what your product does and all its amazing qualities (which you do want clearly stated on your website), when you’re in social media spaces listen for what your desired customers want and need. It might eventually be your product, but you don’t push your product messages in those spaces. You chat over the fence, like you would with a neighbor. You find other ways to connect. And when the relationship has progressed and trust has been established, you can offer your services. The timing may be very short if you want to get attention for your funny short film or very long if you want to sell something personal like financial planning services.

You’ve learned how to fill many roles in the “real” world and what you’ve learned there really does translate. Your parents or teachers already taught you to be polite, to listen, to take your turn, and to offer assistance if you wanted to make friends.