As the custodian of several Twitter accounts, including one in my personal and one in my business capacity, I found these do's and don'ts for communicating in the social media space relevant and useful. Titled 'Beware the Bitter Twitter', it's written by Ericka Chickowski and features in the February 2011 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine:
Social networks can be great communications tools, but take a misstep and you could end up doing your company more harm than good. Perhaps the biggest mistake business people make is posting while in the wrong frame of mind. There is a good rule of thumb everyone who 'tweets' should live by: "Don't Twitter while you are bitter." Of course, there are plenty of other mistakes that social networks make each day. Here's what to avoid:
Don't:
- Push out political rants because something in the news really ticked you off.
- Mingle personal announcements with marketing messaging.
- Focus on hard-selling your company's products or services.
- Automate cross-posting of the same content across numerous channels.
- Impulsively air grievances with customers, partners or even competitors on a public forum.
- Leave your friends and followers hanging when they comment on your links or give you a shout-out with an @ message.
- Let your accounts lie fallow.
Do:
- Engage friends and followers in political discussion relevant to your industry.
- Create separate accounts for personal friends and for business associates.
- Consider posting relevant opinions, links and photos about your industry that will truly interest friends and followers.
- Tailor your strategy to the proper channels to avoid annoying Facebook users with Twitter hashtags and Twitter followers with incomplete tweets.
- Take time to think before putting up content that could be referred to by search engines even after you've deleted it from your account.
- Make an effort to engage frequently rather than just foisting your marketing message on them.
- Try to offer new content frequently. If you don't have time to commit fully to all channels of social media, think about focusing on one where you can go all out.
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