Excellent!

As you begin to generate a bit of a following and you’re seeing “community signs” such as increased repeat visitor numbers, higher page to visit ratios and also comments on your blog; you may notice the ubiquitos spam.

Some spam is so obvious, if this was 1972, we’d have eaten it. Other spam can be a little harder to detect, and it may get past the spam-catching plugin that you use. Getting comments feels great, particulalry as you launch your business and seek to establish networks and communities so I understand it can be hard to draw that line and work out what is a spam comment and what is a real genuine comment, when perhaps you would rather approve more than you disapprove.

Let’s have a quick definition and then look at a few quick and easy ways to tell spam from the real thing!

Spam is a lot of things in a lot of mediums, but from email, to Twitter to blog comments there are common elements:

1.The route to “spam” is electronic.

2. The “spam content” is most often disguised as a genuine communication

3. There is an attempt to deceive you, for the benefit of the “spammer”.

When it comes to blog comments, the reason for spamming, is to drop a link on your site, to the spammer site. Most of the time the reason for posting a link isn’t so much about getting traffic, but about the spam site, increasing the number of links to it. Some of the most important of the two hundred or so ranking componants of the Google algorithm look at number of links to your site, relevance of such links to your site, the quality/authority of the site linking to you and even more link related factors. If done well and undetected, link spamming via comments can help a spam site achieve a falsely high ranking that does not reflect the tru quality of the site.

So that’s why they do it!

Here’s a few thinks to think about when deciding if a comment may actually be spam.

1. Links in the comment/commentor details: do these links lead to good quality legitimate sites with such signifiers as clear business details in the Privacy Policy, About Us or otherwise legal footer links.

2. Links in the comment/commentor details: are these links relevant to the post, the comment or the general theme of the blog?

3. Does the comment add any value? comments such as “that was a great post – thanks”. Might make you feel great for a second, but if the comment adds no value, or makes no real reference to the content – chances are it’s deliberate spam.

4. Does it read well? Most spam comments are not made by humans, but by spambots. Such spambots crawl the web looking for blog platforms, crawling and following links to activities such as “add comment” then drop the auto content in the bot program.

5. Is it duplicated? If a comment is very vague and adds no value e.g. “A good article and thank you for the information. I will bookmark this post” then you could try searching for that phrase on Google, to see if it is a bot comment. Make sure you use the quotation marks around the phrase to only get results with the exact phrase, with words in that order.

One final point on blog comments in general. Many blog platforms give you the option to automatically approve all comments that are not identified as spam, malicious or otherwise by your blog software. If you work in a litigious or highly competetive sector, it may be an idea to allow automatic approval anyway, reason being if you have manually seen and approved these comments, you then as a publisher are responsible for this content.

More on dangers and legal pitfalls in social media here: Social Media 101

You nearly always did not ask for it.

My first session of the day and it promises to be a really exciting one. Social Media is always a good crowd-puller, but in the hugely competitive affiliate space, Social Media participation has it’s pitfalls.

Here we go…

Andrew is a self-proclaimed geek and former affiliate. Currently working with a big agency and experienced in managing legal social/gaming issues, (particularly the celebrity death odds.)

Participation is underpinned by a required understanding of the law.

We’re starting off in 2000 when Lawrence Godfrey goes after Demon Internet and sets a 15k precedent for content host responsibility. Blame him…

Andrew himself had a client video removed from YouTube, due to a trademark referenced. Less than 100 views before it was pulled.

The Electronic Commerce Directive “ISPs should not have to monitor everything.” However in France Louis Vuitton and eBay are at constant war over fake goods. eBay does offer some policy (the VeRo program) to try to protect IP.

How does this affect You?

Blogs

Post moderation and pre-moderation. Post comment goes live, approved after the fact.) Pre – moderation approving by consideration, actually puts you i a difficult position, as you have complicity approved something.

Spartacus Order – anonymous comment trolls need to watch their backs. This order means the person responsible for comments must identify themselves.

John Doe: 18thc law. A court can still proceed without knowing the identity of a perpetrator.

In the UK, the  Consumer Protection Act. A financial interest must be disclosed e.g. if I chat on social media “Betfair is great”, then I need to disclose my financial relationship, or am technically breaking the law.

Yahoo! Answers example – comment in Car Insurance from a guy who gets a lot of thumbs up, however ‘always’ recommends the same insurance co. Naughty.

Gambling in Europe

EU free trade is fuzzy when it comes to gambling and proceedings take a very long time to change. One law is that there is coming EU tracking law. Opt out of tracking must be clear.

Other Effects – Google

The algorithm knows gambling content.

That’s the cautionary tale, now for the advantages.

Affiliates are not stupid

Affiliates don’t have a brand committee (nimble and flexible structure)

On average affiliates are 3525% quicker than brands to make site changes

Merchant Disadvantage

One client took two years to put a link on their homepage

One bank took one year to add an RSS feed to a page for a 10k bill from their design agency.

Another took 7 months to decide to use Google Local and 1 year to actually get on there.

Lesson: affiliate organisations are the perfect size, scale and mindset to successfully participate in social media.

Virtual Networking

Nimble affiliates can easily participate in Twitter.

TRAPS

Blogging

Blogger, Mixx, Friendfeed, Twitter, Twhirl – one blog can grow into so many means of promotion it is an easy trap to end up exceeding time spent “being social”. Do monitor your time against benefit.

Dumb Merchants

Andrew himself was previously an affiliate of New Line Cinema – When Lord of The Rings launched, they offered an affiliate scheme on a golden ring for £200 which got a lot of traction in some social media, (incredulity of price for a replica ring) which lead to a lot of impressions, high-interest. Social/viral effect can lead merchants to suspect some form of click incentive. Andrew got kicked off this particular program.

Biggest Tip

NEVER offer legal, financial or medical advice in any way, shape or form.

Also – careful when providing content related to celebs. If it is true = copyright, if it’s private = Intellectual Property.

Moving onto Gamer Networks and the Prime Candidates for Affiliate Social Activities.

Raptr is a perfect hunting ground for casual gamers.

Real-time in Twitter, links text ad links related to trending topics.

Outbrain’s Outcloud A great way to collate blog content into a social content form including thumbnail image content. Costs $10 a month, but huge potential for impressions and clicks. Highly recommended.

Also – don’t forget good old Yahoo! pipes.

In summary – Social Media is a world of opportunity for affiliates, but just be aware of the rules of play, and how social viral campaigns may not convert in the way that is expected by the merchant.

QUESTIONS

What about duplicate content?

Don’t duplicate your own content. Don’t push the same post to multiple distribution points. Check Google from a content dupe perspective. Make sure your post is live on your own site first. Establish authority of source.

PR are the sites good distribution sources?

Yes. Particularly if you can get something into Google News. NYT picked up a press release about how US prisoners are forbidden to play Dungeons and Dragons. Great story, which was picked up by the blogs already for two days before NYT picked it up.

On the bonus side, nobody can tell that you haven’t pressed your dress suit!

If you really want to rock the party, it pays to have a clear idea of why you are there in the first place. If it’s primarily a customer growth objective or a credibility objective, this will effect your follow strategy.

Here’s a few tried and tested, but imaginitive ways of finding people to follow…

1. Use a Directory

A number of directories exist just for people on Twitter. You can search for Twitter users by their interests or categories and/or geo-location. www.wefollow.com is one of the largest, and allows for both interest and location based searches. Other directories include www.twellow.com, www.justtweetit.com, www.twitterdirectory.com and www.geofollow.com .

Make sure you add yourself to these directories too; so that you can be found by people who are interested in your chosen categories and physical location.

2. Speaker ‘Circuits’

If you want to follow and establish a presence with the leaders of your industry, it’s a good idea to familiarise yourself with the ’speaker circuit’. Industry leaders and conference speakers tend to have a highly visible media presence and you will find many on Twitter. Check your industry conference and exhibition websites for a list of speakers. Most websites will feature a detailed speaker profile with Twitter ID included. If not, take your list of names and do a “Find People” search on Twitter.

3. Competitor Websites

Following your competitors is always a great idea. If your industry is super cut-throat, be warned that they may not follow you back, or may even block you from seeing their Tweets. This is a bit extreme and most competitors will have nothing to hide from you, and many may welcome a bit of banter and exchange with an industry peer.If any of your competitors are on Twitter, most will have a link to their profile on their website.

4. Follower-Drilling

Once you have identified a good person or competitor to follow, check who is following them and use the profile information in the followers list to see who could also be of interest to you. In most cases with a well managed Twitter account, you will find followers of a like-mind.

5. Keyword Searching/Hashtags (#)

Use the Twitter search functionality to search for keywords or hashtags that are relevent to your brand and your product. A hashtag is slightly different to a keyword in that adding a hashtag to a Tweet, collates all Tweets that use the hashtag, regardless of content. As an example #LAC is the hashtag for the London Affiliate Conference next week. I may well see Tweets like this…

“Where is everyone staying then? #LAC”

or…

“Going to the closing party?” #LAC

So a hashtag, when used correctly, can help you identify people that are involved or interested in something, even if their Tweet content does not specifically call this out.

Search results for keywords will show Tweets from Twitter users that have referenced the keyword in their Tweet. In many cases this may be because they have a specific interest in your product. It may be a good idea to directly introduce yourself to them by sending a Tweet (@mention) solely to them. Be aware that someone you follow will be quite likely to click your profile to assess if it is worth following you, so please don’t do this!

I want To Be Special!

Tip: If you use a third party application such as Tweetdeck you can create a column for your keyword search or hashtag and all public tweets containing your keyword or hashtag will appear in this column in realtime.

6. Other Social Media

Many other social media sites allow users to add their Twitter ID to their existing profile. If you already have an established community elsewhere, such as your Linkedin network, then check the profiles of your contacts and those that are also on Twitter will be easy to find!

Of course, the standard way to find people on Twitter is to use the “Find People” search within Twitter, however this is a little long-winded and relies on you knowing who you are looking for by name.

We hope these resources and tips give you a bit more of boost to your follow strategy, so that you can easily find people to learn from, connect with, market to and create a relationship with. Do you have any questions about Twitter in general that you would like to see answered in this blog? And do let me know if you have any cool ideas for identifying people to follow!

This year however I’m speaking, reporting, live blogging and all sorts.

I’m really excited having been off the scene for a while. Also I’m a little nervous about seeing and meeting all those people I have spent the past year stalking, befriending, admiring and engaging with on Twitter. I have a bad habit of seeing celebrities in London and thinking we’re old friends, so I’m not confident in my avatar recognition skills. Please don’t be offended if I walk past you. Grab me and explain who you are and we’ll get on like a house on fire I’m sure. Or you may get dragged into a room at SES and interviewed for SEO-Chicks. (If you’re really, really lucky )

First up is #LAC, or London Affiliate Conference (Gaming). I’m speaking on a panel about advanced social media strategies; lead by social media expert @JudithLewis. Judith has been online, since there’s been an ‘online’ and truly knows her onions when it comes to social media, search engine optimisation, paid search, quality chocolate and indeed most other things. I’m excited to meet my fellow panellists, who are Sarah Goodwin of Bloom Media; Matt Nash of OOSOCIAL and Zoe Sands from Cisco.

We have a tough gig though as we’re on Saturday (30th January) last session of the day, on the last day, on the session before the partayyyy! BUT. We’re giving away free stuff including wine and chocolate and I may even have something pretty speshup my sleeve.

So please come and heckle/learn/laugh/eat/drink/snooze/whatever: just come! You will certainly pick up some gems of information, that could help increase your audience and brand rapport; even if you’re an experienced social media communicator.

If on the other hand, if you have no idea what ‘#LAC’ (hashtag) means, or why I’ve prefixed a name with an “@” – then you have to come!

John Prescott on Twitter

I think that this is a great thing. The product capabilities of social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube have opened more than just a new functionality-driven approach to customer communication. Over time, such media have shown us that customers have longed for that personal route and that feeling of belonging, so it’s actually a shift in mind-set we’re seeing.

I’m a member of Virgin Wines, and every time I receive an order I throw the cardboard box in the recycling pile out back. Last time (which was just before Christmas) I happened to notice on the side of the box, the following message; “Did your driver do a good job today?”

Virgin Wines Social Feedback on Delivery Boxes

Isn’t that great? I think this is a bit of a mind-shift from the punative tone of similar messages seen on the back of professional vehicles. What struck me here is that, this is a personal request for feedback on an individual, that is motivated seemingly by desire to reward and encourage good performance.

I’d like to think that brands like Virgin Wines are seeing how well received is the social element in their interaction with customers and are thus embracing this mindset; this friendly and human tone of voice, throughout all of their communications.

A Cardboard Box Can Be A Social Medium!

My point then… customers really want to interact with you. Customers are human beings just like your employees. Customers might not have cared so much about who you are, until you showed them they could.

With the Virgin Wines example, I was immediately warmed to the thought that they care about my experience, they value my feedback, and they also value their staff by rewarding good performance. I want to continue to be a customer of a business like that. I’ll admit that I intended to send an email, but got distracted by what awaited me in my inbox. If they’d given me the option to tweet @virginwines then I definitely would have; and would have said something like “the man brought fine wines to my house. I am in love with him”.

Instances of brands embracing the social mindset are occurring more often in Europe, but it’s been happening for a while in the U.S. Coca Cola famously offered two of their biggest fans a job, after (said fans) Dusty and Michael created a kick-ass facebook fan page some time in 2008. Rather than contact Facebook and demand these guys handover the page to them (which Facebook will allow you to do), Coca-Cola obviously thought who better to run their fan page, than such die-hard, genuine fans? If you haven’t come across this story before; its a great social media case study, and you can find a thorough review on Econsultancy.com by Patricio Robles.

Now 'Offical' Fan Page

Brands aren’t just becomming more social-minded in the way that they involve consumers though. We’re also seeing brands communicate a human approach by telling us about the people that work for them. I’m thinking in particular of the charming and amusing “Intel Star” TV ads.

I took this video from their official “channelintel” on Youtube, where they state “Rather than focusing on a new product, the 2009 “Sponsors of Tomorrow” ad campaign celebrates what makes Intel different; culture, personality, heroes…”

That Intel are taking the trouble to endear to us the people that make the things that other companies stick into the machines we use to connect online, is a great testement to the brands embracing a social mindset. Even the less consumer facing brands!

What Does This Mean To Me?

I’m aware that all of the examples above reference brands that are hugely well known and have the sort of marketing budgets the rest of us dream of. Because of this, I think we can have more faith in the benefit of adopting a social mindset in approaching your customer communications. Huge brands like Virgin, Intel and Coca-Cola do not do things lightly. When your revenue is into millions and billions of dollars, you do not invest in a campaign direction without research and analysis. If these brands recognise a customer desire to connect and act on it; we won’t go far wrong to follow their example.

What Practical Lessons Can We Put Into Practise Here?

1. Be Consistent: Decide your social media brand identity and register it in as many places as you can. Use the same brand name, brand icon and profile precis throughout. You will probably benefit from having one detailed profile and a brief profile version, depending on the media tone of voice and character space available.

2. Be Everywhere: Register your social media profile in as many places as possible, starting with the most suitable for your audience and focusing your time in the same way. Even if you never intend to communicate via e.g. Bebo, you can at least protect your brand and make yourself available in the event a potential customer wants to interact with you there.

3. Be One Brand With One Voice: Instead of referencing “our Twitter account”, or “Our Linkedin account” think of your brand as everywhere online, and the social media platform is just the lens through which a customer may prefer to see you. Instead think “come find us on Linkedin”, “come join our fans on Facebook”.

4. Listen And Learn: Save the one-way “me, me, me” messaging for the spammers. Use the functionalities of social media that faciliate two-way communication. Monitor post interactions on Facebook, check your @mentions on Twitter; and most importantly try to respond and acknowledge those who participate.

5. Let Go Of Your Brand: I’m not saying you have to ‘do a Coca-Cola’, however it’s important to know that the people that buy your product have every right to mention your product and feed back about your product. It’s how you handle that feedback and what you can learn from it that is invaluable.

So there we are. None of this is remotely unfamiliar is it? In fact you may have been reminded in the anecdotes here about your favourite local caf, or the corner shop from your childhood. I think it is human nature that we crave recognition and we want to be valued as an individual customer and not a sales statistic. Social media websites have the functionality to enable brands that would other wise be very distant, to feel more local and approachable. From this; we’ve been reminded of what we already knew.

A social mindset is nothing new. What’s (fairly) new is that online technology faciliates a local and social approach not previously possible for national and international business. And your customers will love it!

Not so.

Blogging isn’t for everyone and every business, and there are perfectly good reasons not to blog. Additionally, ‘having’ a blog is only the functional and logistical requirement taken care of; it is you, or a willing (and somewhat talented) member of your team that needs to commit to blogging, for your brand and online business to benefit.

If you think your business website needs a blog, (or perhaps you’re being advised to add a blog but you’re not really clear as to why;) if you have the content and the commitment here’s some of the upsides.

Discoverability

Adding relevant and original content to your website is a very good thing to do. As a general rule, the more content you have, the more chance you have of someone finding your online business. As an example, let’s imagine your online business offers a specific product, e.g. vacuum cleaner bags. Many people in the UK may habitually and colloquially search using “hoover bags” to see if they can find an online ordering service. You might not want to reference a specific brand in your formal messaging; however such variations can easily be referenced in a blog post about “the strength of brand in the vacuum cleaner industry”. Of course other factors affect how and when your website pages may show up in search engines, but certainly the more relevant and original content you can add to your site the better.

Audience

As we already know a blog can help increase your audience from a discoverability perspective. Blogging affords you a certain amount of freedom that you likely won’t have on the core pages of your site. Such freedom to explore your topic can help you tap into a whole new market!

As an example; imagine my online business is a vegetarian resource, focusing on the individual health benefits of a vegetarian diet. I choose to write a post on “vegetarianism as a green lifestyle choice”, given that this is a current news topic. If my post receives good volumes of traffic, agreement in the comments and links to my post from green-lifestyle resources; this would indicate to me that deliberately targeting and messaging my product to an environmentally conscious audience; would be worth exploring.

If you think this seems a little hopeful, I can think of any number of products that have exploded in popularity, due to the discovery of a completely different application of the product *coughs* Anusol, *coughs* Viagra.

Feedback

A blog is a social communication tool. Save controlled-message, formal announcements for your press releases. Allowing comments on your blog opens up the benefit of discourse and feedback, as your readers can tell you what they think of your topics and points, and also add their own opinion and perspective too.

So what if you get a negative comment? If it is downright rude, silly or offensive then you can spam it. If a negative comment is a disagreement with a point you have made, you can either defend yourself with further evidence; or if they have a valid argument, talk about how you will consider that argument and what you might take from it. Either response will show that you have listened, considered, engaged and acted. Would you buy something from a brand that listens, engages, considers and acts? I would!

Reputation

One of the best ways to establish reputation is to do a bloody-good job for your customers. Word does spread and referrals will come; however if you’re a start-up, it is only natural that this will take a bit of time. Another way to help establish reputation quickly is by writing interesting, knowledgeable and well-researched blog content. Your peers and competitors will begin to notice (many companies routinely monitor competitor information and may even subscribe to your blog) – so here’s your chance to show them that you know what you’re talking about.

Learning

We may differ in some ways, in how best we learn. Some people can absorb information very successfully from a two hour 4pm lecture. Others may benefit more from practical experimentation, role play and such-like. One common factor for most of us is repetition. We tend to learn a little more, or a little faster if we repeat what we have learned through writing it down, re-enacting it or speaking about it.

Blogging can be a great learning process for the blogger as well as the reader. Regardless of the type of post I may be writing, there will always be some degree of reflection, recall and research. I personally find that to construct a blog post, I’m collating a number of points that I feel I know the way on, and organising them into a constructive narrative (I hope). I find this helps me reflect on my own knowledge, as well as encouraging me to keep learning, as I will seek recent information and resources, when doing my research.

I’ve deliberately kept these points and benefits one-sided, in that the above references only the benefits to site owner, rather than visitor. I want to address this quite seperately, looking at what your blog can do for your audience (and how this will also, indirectly boost your business.) If anyone wants to get me started with some thoughts on that, please comment away!

To illustrate; imagine I’m a small business in the 1960’s seeking to make the public aware of its existence. I’d have to think about physical, visible signage for my premises and advertise in the classifieds. All of that costs money and would involve hiring specialist professionals to create such signage and ad copy. Fast-forward to today, and a small business director has everything they need to make their business brand known; strong and discoverable, just a few keystrokes away.

Of course this works both ways! So, just as a brand owner has some great tools and resources to reach a wider audience more quickly, so does a brand consumer have numerous outlets to transmit their dissatisfaction or voice their opinion. And rightly so; as it’s a good thing this so-called democratisation of the web allows all of us consumers to voice our opinions in an open and public forum. It can be a headache for brands however, as this unregulated, unofficial content on the web vies for attention with your own material. Now; we’re not about to advocate attempting to bury all negative publicity, it is still publicity. What we are advocating is that you seek to ‘own’ your brand message at least on page 1 of the search engines.

Why Own Page 1 for Your Brand Results?

•    Consistency of message
•    Brand recognition and reinforcement
•    Increase traffic to your owned and operated websites
•    Look like a big deal

How to Own Page 1! (It’s easier than you think).

Get Your Domain Name: Make sure you own your brand domain name. www.whatever.com and the local TLD for each market in which you operate; that is if you don’t already! Your own company website is the easiest way to own your first result.
Join Professional Directories: Add yourself to professional and local directories for your sector, thus controlling profile information and having the knock-on benefit of association.
Write and Distribute Press Releases: Writing specific and tailored news about your company is a great way to inform often, and in an official way. Distributing this news as a press release to your online press and having this covered is absolutely invaluable. Trade press publishers naturally tend to rank well due to the authority of their content.
Create a Social Media Presence: Social media is a fantastic, wide-reaching and cost-effective way of essentially, advertising your brand. Facebook pages, Linkedin profiles and CrunchBase profiles are all good ways to extend your brand message. We looked at a couple of good practise tips to be aware of, when expanding your social media brand in a previous post.
Blog and Comment: Nobody knows your business like you do. So get out there and blog, guest blog, comment on related blogs. Establish your internet credentials by showing exactly how much you do know about integrated circuits, or bridal gown design or whatever it is that you do.

Although we can’t control (nor should we want to control) what is said about our brand, but we can control what we say about our brand; so there’s really no excuse not to.

1. Be discoverable
From Facebook to YouNoodle, many social media/networking websites offer you the chance to have your content surfaced to the search engines. DO take advantage of this opportunity. Firstly this is valuable from an SEO perspective as these sites and your presence on these sites can be spidered by search bots. Such reference to your brand and links back to your site from high-volume high-credibility sites, helps improve your own PageRank. Second reason to tick that box, is that if anyone searches for your brand, they will be able to see not only your own website, but also your presence on the social media websites you have chosen. Provided you are consistent in referencing your brand (more on this in a second) this helps add validity to your organisation and faith in your brand as the user is confronted with a back-up reference to your brand from additional trusted sites. Incidentally, if your own website appears below your Facebook/Linkedin/Crunchbase profile – come see us and we’ll sort that out for you!

2. Be consistent
Your brand is your intellectual property and should be treated as such. Larger organisations tend to have entire rulebooks dedicated to their various brand identities, corporate fonts, logos and other marks. Every brand, (no matter what size) should have some basic rules in place regarding company name, logo(s) and profile. As an example – our company name is theMediaFlow (all one word, with the emphasis on Media and Flow by the use of a capital ‘M’ and ‘F’) if you search for “themediaflow” using Google, you will find a number of results on page one, including our own site, our Linkedin profile, our CrunchBase profile and various news stories about us. In nearly every case the result references “theMediaFlow”. If a result references “themediaflow” this appears to be an inconsistency, and it would be natural for a reader to place less trust in such a listing. Your social media profile is your chance to reinforce your exact brand identity, image and message in a consistent, professional and controlled way.

3. Be your own biggest fan
Unless you’re McDonalds or CocaCola (in which case, “Hi, we’d love to manage your SEM. Skype me!”) you probably can’t afford to advertise on every billboard in town and in the Corry Street ad breaks. Until that time, social media is your space to promote your business and talk about how wonderful you are, what you do and who you do it for. Do not be ashamed to big yourselves up. Never feel silly writing in the third person; and DO remember to be consistent. We find it helps to use the same profile précis as a starting point for each of our professional network profiles.

4. Be yourself
You can’t win every single deal and you can’t please every single customer 100% of the time. Each organisation has its own cultural ethos and identity. It’s what makes an organisation most distinct from competitors. Ask anyone who has just chosen a supplier what clinched the deal for them, and oftentimes they will state that “the organisation was a good fit”;” the people really understood our business,” “we got a really positive vibe from the team” etc. It is therefore important to allow some sense of your organisational values and culture to permeate your social media communications.

You will find that the technical/functional differences between networks contribute to a certain tone of voice, i.e. Twitter’s 140 character limit promotes familiarity and less formality than say a Linkedin profile; therefore trying to have the same rigid tone of voice across all your social media may seem insincere.

Please note: I’m not advocating that every brand should do their own social media communications, but a good third party social media professional should be able to communicate with your audience as an extended member of your team. They should be able to speak of “we” and “our” goals and missions; and be able to understand your business objectives, core customers and values.

We hope you found this post interesting and useful. Please do add any other pertinent points that you think we have missed that are important for growing your social media brand.