100 Social Media Tips You Must Know Before 2011

by Mohammed on October 5, 2010

Forget the introduction this week – this post is clear cut and straight to the point. As the title suggests, below is a list of 100 tips about social media that you need to remember before 2011. Some might sound generic and applicable beyond the scope of social media – but that’s exactly the point. Social media is an extension of real life engagement so let’s Go!

1 – Be human, be real.

2 – Engage, listen and measure.

3 – Focusing on internal operations (culture) is a golden key to successful customer service.

4 – Make sure employees understand how to use social media tools and processes to brand the company image on the web.

5 – Maintain your brand effectively on the social networking sites.

6 – Successful social media strategy = successful human relationships and conversations.

7 – Invest time in educating employees about social media benefits.

8 – When you mess up, be the first to admit it and learn from the lesson.

9 – Before you develop a social media strategy, be clear about your marketing and communication goals.

10 – Start with listening.

11 – Delegate when necessary.

12 – Think visual.

13 – The lines between public and private, personal and professional are blurred in online social networks.

14 – Be interesting and not just an old news.

15 – Remember, adding value to your network starts with you, so be generous.

16 - The key to social media success is to get online and listen to what the customers/fans/criticizes have to say.

17 - Appreciate your followers.

18 - Before you develop a social media strategy, establish your key performance indicators and what success will look like for your business.

19 - Respond quickly.

20 - Build a strong network: Your network represents those you know and trust.

21 - Leverage connections to get introduced to inside sources at companies through someone you already know.

22 - Social Media is a profound change that impacts all departments in the organization.

23 – Stay relevant and authentic in your message and different in your style.

24 – Don’t build a SM strategy without knowing the business objectives.

25 – Think quality comments, blog posts, tweets, etc.

26 – Don’t think numbers, think of a community you build for your brand.

27 – You must have a content strategy before you have a social media strategy.

28 – If you are trying to build authentic relationships online, use a real professional photo of you (as your avatar).

29 – Social means engaging, sharing, and caring.

30 – Remember, in social media you need to have big ears.

31 – Don’t sell. At least, not all the time.

32 – Before you develop a social media strategy, evaluate which social media channel could support you in achieving your goals.

33 – Listening is a form of participating that gets overlooked by many, but is the most important step in engagement.

34 – Quality still trumps quantity.

35 – Make your content count and you’ll be able to stand out amongst the masses.

36 – Realize that how you behave online is how you will behave in person.

37 – Your message across all social media sites should be consistent.

38 – Social media policy goal is to organize and manage your message on the web.

39 – The human capital is the foundation to build a successful social media campaign.

40 – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. are medium tools and they should not replace having or writing to a blog. A blog is preferred to be your brand’s hub.

41 – You don’t need to be the best technology guy to use social media effectively.

42 – Never expect overnight success by applying social media strategy to your business.

43 – Do not disclose confidential or proprietary information on your blog, Facebook, Twitter or any other online platforms without appropriate approval.

44 – Contribute value to the online conversations.

45 – Always pause and think before posting.

46 – You should make sure that your online personal activities do not interfere with your job or work commitments.

47 – You have sole responsibility for what you post to your blog or publish in any form of online social media.

48 – Do not denigrate your competitors.

49 – Instead of blocking social media which is an easy thing to do, maybe it’s better to use common sense and tell people not to say online what they won’t say in public.

50 – Careful what you post on your social networks, nothing goes unseen.

And …

Et voila! What did you think of the tips? Hey, how come you look surprised? OH! You’re wondering where the next 50 tips are well, what I failed to mention at the beginning of this post is that this is a co-authored effort. John and I believe that two minds are better than one and that is why we decided to write these 100 tips together… here’s the next batch