Who Am I? Branding Your Image On Social Media in Three Steps
Your business has an image. In the "real" world you protect your company's image as best as possible, but do you do the same on the various social media platforms available to us? Do you pay attention to what goes live on your Facebook page?
Your business has an image. In the “real” world you protect your company’s image as best as possible, but do you do the same on the various social media platforms available to us? Do you pay attention to what goes live on your Facebook page? Do you constantly follow your company’s tweets? If not, you’re setting your brand up for failure.
All it takes is one bad Google+ update to negatively impact your businesses’s image, so how do you protect yourself? Follow these simple tips below:
- Create accounts – One of the best ways to protect your brand’s image online is to be sure you are in control of any accounts related to your brand. Without creating accounts on various social media platforms, you, unfortunately, leave yourself exposed to impostors.
- Develop guidelines – Who will manage your accounts? Don’t leave your social media management to your intern. Your social media accounts should be managed by more than one person, so that each action can be checked and balanced. Also, guidelines should be developed to provide your employees with a road map of your brand.
- Put together a strategy – Updates shouldn’t be off the cuff. Anything posted on your platforms should be planned out ahead of time, so that you, as well as others, can analyze what is being said.
What Say You?: How do you protect your company’s image on social media platforms?
Well said guys 🙂 We follow these same best practices here at LabTech, ConnectWise and Quosal. We view social media as a large part of our brand and work hard to maintain our virtual image. We have a dedicated Virtual Team Lead who manages all things in cyber space. Updates are thought out and planned so we’re not just blowing smoke into an already noisy space; we even use tools such as Owl.y reports, Klout and Social Mention to gauge measurable KPIs on our social media initiatives.
How do say this without being “The Downer”…
This is so 2007! We have moved well beyond these basic things. This is standard SOP now. The real story lies in leverage social media platforms not for promotion or reputation management but for corporate communications beyond email and the phone. Best of breed clients of Ulistic are now leverage social media platforms to accept service requests, private forums for clients and prospects and to create that personal relationship with the community.
Everyone in the business now has a mandate to be socially connected. Not just one person but the entire team.
Just my 2 cents Canadian
Stuart Crawford
MSP Business Consultant
Toronto, ON
Erinn@1: Thanks for those additional tool tips.
Stuart@2: Constructive criticism always welcome. While the tips from CJ Arlotta may not be “new,” they’re still relevant…
1. How many MSPs/VARs have dated web sites or bad web sites with no social media extensions?
2. How many MSPs/VARs have attempted social media extensions only to fail miserably?
It’s sort of like coverage about sales and marketing: It often serves as a timely reminder for VARs/MSPs to refocus on areas where they need considerable improvement.
Best
-jp
Agreed on the basics CJ. All brands and businesses should establish a system of social media best practices. There are many variables out there to consider when posting content, but engagement is the real key. At PacketTrap we want to curate content and start, join, or add to the conversations out there related to our products, partners, and industry. Joe’s points in comment #3 are valid for many businesses out there. Don’t keep waiting to get involved.
The Nielsen results from Sept 2011 are impressive and continue to grow daily.
– Americans spent a total of 53.5 billion minutes on Facebook in May 2011
– 60 percent create reviews of products or services
– About 31 million people watched nearly 157 video streams on social networks or blogs in May
– A growing segment – about 37 percent – access social networks with their mobile phones
– More than twice the number of Internet users age 55 and older accessed social media on their phones than a year ago.