Social Media Rules & How to Combat Them

Habitat is back! Going as far back as June, in the Internet world this is basically a few light years, Habitat were using hash tags to spam trending topics, popular matters like the Iran war and the new iPhone unveiling.

Habitat has shaken off its social media woes and after a firm slap on the wrist is back with marketing messages and money-off deals.

Is this the way to do it? It seems people are very happy to see them back, and that their way of increasing signups to their customer database has long been forgotten as we are now willing to put a comforting arm around the shoulders of Mr. and Mrs. Habitat and say, ‘everything will be alright now.’

The apology came soon after when they realised what they were doing was wrong, rather than a clever way to sell a couple of furniture items:

"I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message. We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.”

The outcome has resulted in a very helpful Habitat, which is what it should all be about anyway! They seem to have learnt their lesson and it is time to move on and ask ourselves how can we combat bad social media posts and what do we have to do to build a community online?

Combating Badverts

The number of people and companies that use social media is growing rapidly, and so the mistakes in social media marketing will be increasing as well. This post is designed to help those users of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Sphinn, etc, learn what to do when they have posted something they might regret?

What happens if someone is being very negative and abusive, you have got hot under the collar and given as good as you got? Oops!

Well, let’s get things in perspective, it is not the end of the world; your online journey is not over. In fact, it just shows you're human. However, making arguments personal should be avoided and when it happens you must apologise.

Always do your best to respond to criticism in a professional manner and be considerate of the other people's feelings - a response of ‘I can take your comments on board and pass it on to the necessary department’ would be much better than ‘go stuff yourself!’

You may also be interested in a previous I-COM blog post about Currys and PC World, Adrian Berry discusses how not to treat your customers.

Social Media Rules

Social media is about building relationships and interacting with your ‘friends’ online! Simply put, be social! We like to know that we are talking to a person and not a computer, Habitat is a good example that they are giving useful and relevant information to their Twitter followers. This builds trust and a sense of reliability for Habitat brand, as they are providing good information that can help customers out and potential customers can also see that Habitat are being nice and offering information for FREE!

Another string to social media’s bow is that we must share! Being able to swap information, provide relevant and useful services for your friends will help your brand be spread across more than just the small community you have built online.

If you are a company using social media then it is a great way to improve your customer service, and you have a great tool to help promote the latest happenings in your business. A company in Houston, Texas, called Coffee Groundz updates its Twitter with a lot of useful information for its customers, but also tweets every time a fresh batch of coffee has been produced, so you can come in store and pick up your fresh cup of coffee! Now all I need is a ticket to Texas!

The implications for not using social media are similar to the pitfalls of using social media WRONGLY! Doing nothing to promote your business online means you could lose out on the online customers, but not promoting correctly, being abusive, or not responding to people could be even worse!

We must remember, it is not about selling - if you wanted a new pair of football boots you would search for it on Google, go to a well known website directly or head down the high street! If you enter a community online you don’t want to be bombarded by sales, you want to feel as if you are talking to friends and sharing things that are useful for each other.

Follow the rules online, be conversational but also be business-like. Do not speak as if you are chatting to Davva, and Ste if you are promoting a business on LinkedIn, it will go down as well as high fiving the queen during a knighthood!

Get to the point, and be up front, honesty is the best policy and people are not stupid they will see right through you if you are being fake. Talking the right way in a community is similar to targeting the right audience; you need to be sure of who you think would find what you are talking about useful; for example MySpace is not a good platform for selling insurance.

Remember to establish relationships before you ask for favours, this is critical. You have to make sure the steps are followed first before you can ask for a favour, as people do not know you and would be unwilling to respond to your request if they get nothing in return or don’t even know who you are.

Finally it is about quality and not quantity, just like content and link building, finding the right people is important and getting more targeted people will prove far more beneficial than distributing your message to large quantities of people.

Considering all the factors, we must remember that if it’s public, then it’s public! Think before you post and always engage with your audience.