Updated: Rules Of Engagement: Stay In Your Social Media Lane
February 4, 2015: Updated middle of the page*
November 16, 2014
The Difference between Marketing vs. Branding
Twitter analytics showing organic growth of followers
Rules of Social Engagement Part I
Stay In Your Lane
Business vs Personal
We know if someone is in our life for personal and or business reasons but those lines become blurry regarding social media, websites and blogs, and very few (and I mean very few) can blur those lines successfully.
*Updated
Here is one such campaign that’s blurred the lines of professional & personal that could actually end up hurting victims of mesh even more if those not familiar with the topic first encounter this campaign. Wearing an expensive watch is fine for personal use but when asking people to donate to a cause for victims it is inconsistent & contradictory language to action.
Foundation vs Concept
That blurry line is the reason to have a well thought out business plan or foundation prior executing marketing opposed to having a shaky business concept that focuses on branding. Think of the old adage that it’s more important to plan the marriage than it is the wedding. Only the number of failed marriages (roughly 50%) looks cheery in comparison to the number of failed startups which show as many 9 out of 10 failing within the first four years.
Substance vs Image
1
Looking down the left hand side of the bold titles: Business, Foundation, Substance
Are the majority of your posts supporting your business?
Do the analytics of the site support your desired direction of your media?
2
Looking down the right hand side of the bold titles: Personal, Concept, Image
Are the majority of your posts personal (use of I) personal pictures & stories?
Do the analytics of the site support your desired direction of your media?
Example: If you thought you were engaging potential clients but you have more pictures of your vacation or personal stories it’s easy to make the necessary corrections to eliminate those posts and add more content driven posts with substance.
This is a great checklist to evaluate against each of your social media accounts, websites, or blogs to help determine where you are in the process or what still needs to be developed. Once the list is firmed up run it against your analytics to see if supports the desired direction you have for each account.
Case Study: Show One, Do One, Teach One
List all of your websites, blogs, and social media accounts.
After each mark if you think it’s 1. Business 2. Personal
I’ll use my accounts as a “show one” for demonstration.
Website 1
The consulting component of the business:
MMpiHer Business, Market & Startup Development started in 2011
Blog 1 & 2
The blog that supports the consulting business:
Killing My Career started in 2014
Social Media 1
LinkedIn-2013
Facebook-2013
Twitter-(May/June 2014)
All analytics support company manipulation (including Google) which directly impacts website/blog traffic. Meaning if LinkedIn decides to shut down your site or Facebook does and if you rely on that for traffic to your site and that’s how you get clients-these arbitrarily shut down accounts can hurt your business if you rely too heavily on them. This is also why SEO is a lot of hype and the goal of any site is to attract as much direct daily traffic as possible. You control your business and your traffic.
I’ve read, although do not agree, that business owners should respond to clients via the medium the client wants. That theory is problematic because startups have limited resources and limited time; and, it’s too time-consuming to successfully maintain too many social media accounts.
This is a common mistake when people become too worried about the “branding” and not the “foundation” of their business. Run the accounts you have well and maintain them daily but limit the type of social media accounts your business uses.
It’s recognized that this goes against a lot of “golden rules,” in marketing and customer service; but, it’s better to send someone an email than spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to send something on Instagram.
Like everything in life, know what your strengths are and work those into your business. Social media is no exception, so decide which mediums you’re comfortable using and stick with those for at least six months to a year before adding or deleting a social media account.
Using Twitter analytics (the newest of all accounts) from the last 28 days gives a good overview and to access this data on your own Twitter account click on your tiny picture on the tool bar and the fifth item down is analytics.
Most Unique Interests refers to the top five interests of my Twitter followers, which is consistent with the business model: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Startups and SEO (even though my position is different than most on SEO-it’s still my audience)
Top Interests refers to the top 10 interests of my Twitter followers: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Technology, Business & Finance, Business News/General, Tech News, Business News
I’m not sure where activism and fraud fall into the Twitter data, so it’ll take a little more work on my end.
77% of my followers are male: I’ve worked in male dominated industires my entire career so that pull is consistent but I’d like to bridge that gap and this is good feedback to allow me to make the necessary adjustments.
LinkedIn continues to disappoint across all areas for me and is again consistent with the traffic pulled from LinkedIn posts to Twitter engagement as it was one of my worst posts in 28 days. This is also consistent with the other LinkedIn to Twitter engagement posts throughout the month. I’ll give it another month and then likely unlink my LinkedIn to Twitter.
One of my best Tweets was a re-tweet from an #Essure #Victim which is promising.
And what should have been the most exciting thing since I’ve engaged on Twitter which was the single highest engagement, retweets, likes and even picked up 38 new followers (who will likely quickly unfollow) was really just a sucker punch to the gut. Yep, this tweet made it across 176,000 feeds-I’ll be reaching out to Kim Kardashian and see if she’ll “wear” #CleanUpYourMesh #FDA #JNJ #Bayer #BostonScientific #AMS #Coloplast across her cheek the next time she decides to “leak” pictures. Because there are a lot of really sick women who need attention and she’s just not one of them.
