Whether you do it in-house or use a Social Media Manager you must be proactive in your social media communities.
In the new age of social media networks such as Facebook Pages, whether you are monitoring the page or not, people may be posting things that can have an adverse affect on your brand reputation. It is essential that you have consistent, well-planned Social Media Management. Whether you choose to hire a Social Media Manager or assign someone in-house to monitor and moderate your social media presence, like your Facebook page, being proactive in managing your social network presence is essential.
Social Media Communities are springing up all over along with new platforms and applications. Take Foursquare, for example. Available on an iPhone or Android smart phones, Foursquare encourages geocentric communities. Using the phone’s GPS, it tells the user what restaurants, movies and other venues are near the user. If the user goes to a restaurant, they can ‘check in’ to the restaurant on Foursquare, which immediately informs not only all the friends in their Foursquare community, but their Twitter followers where they are. This could be a thousand or even 10 thousand people who get the message, depending on how many friends or followers the person has.
The user can also leave ‘tips’ to other followers and friends in the online community about the restaurant they just ate at, the movie they just saw, and the service they just received and so on. Business reputations can be built up or torn down very quickly.
This all goes on whether the business owner is aware of it or not. A customer may have had a bad experience with a server at your restaurant, for example, told 10,000 people in their online community about it, and there goes your reputation down the sink, and you, the poor business owner don’t even know what happened. A business that is proactive monitors social media networks. In fact, social media communities are the cheapest and many times most accurate way to get customer feedback. If, as in the previous example, you the restaurant owner find that your service needs revamping, you can let your customers know that you have retrained your staff or raised your customer service standards, changing the social communities perception of the business.
A proactive business can use Facebook or Foursquare to reward their visitors, whether it is a simple acknowledgement and thanks for their patronage, or giving them a giveaway if they mention the Facebook Page’s name, for example. Foursquare gives the person who frequents the establishment the most, the title of mayor of the establishment. The mayor’s name is displayed prominently on the establishments page on Foursquare, and can be influential in building the reputation of the establishment. In order to positively build their reputations, a business could come up with creative ways to reward the mayor, who will in turn most likely give positive feedback about the establishment to the other members of the community. Word of mouth and recommendations from others in a community is always the most effect form of advertisement.
Creating a strategy to monitor and moderate social media networks and communities is one of the most important things you can do when building a community. But, it is essential to have such a strategy even when you are not building a community, because whether you are active in it or not, the community may be being built for you. You don’t want to make the mistake that even large companies like Adidas sometimes make in not keeping up with their community and having porn ads published on their pages.
Assign Someone In House or Hire a Social Media Manager to Carry Out a Strategy
Have a plan to manage your social media. Assign someone in your organization to be responsible for it, or hire a Social Media Manager to assist you. Don’t just set up a Facebook page and forget about it. Take advantage of the new trends in Social Media available to you now.
