TRUSTe Whitepaper for Business Owners: How Not to Botch Social Media

TRUSTe WHITEPAPER
Business Owners:
How Not to Botch
Social Media
Conversations You Can't Afford to Miss
55 2nd Street, 2nd FloorSan Francisco, CA 94105415 520 3400 tel415 520 3420 faxprivacyseals@truste.comwww.truste.com
©2009 TRUSTe. All rights reserved.Online conversations about your business, complimentary and critical, happen every day. They occur on consumer review sites, blogs, Twitter and Facebook and they will, in many cases, become permanent records of your business's successes and failures. And, unlike word of mouth, these online conversations can spread like wildfire-at the click of a button.
When dissatisfied consumers take to the Internet companies risk substantial fallout. United Airlines learned this lesson when a disgruntled customer posted a homemade music video on YouTube criticizing the airline for negligently damaging his guitar. The video received nearly six million views and came at an untold public relations cost to the company.
This anecdote, while extreme, underscores the power of social media. Consumers can leverage this power and you can too. When done right, it can reinforce your company's good standing, build your business, and ensure the continued satisfaction of existing customers. When done wrong, it can and will damage your brand. In reviewing three social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and consumer review sites, we'll go over the dos and don'ts of social media for businesses who (smartly) want to participate in these online conversations.
Facebook
Do:1. Create a Facebook Fan Page for your business.
2 . A dd Facebook applications to enhance your Fan Page. Mashable.com has a nice 1list of apps for businesses, ranging from online voicemail to finance apps.
3. Reward your Facebook fans with exclusive offers and discounts.
4. Engage your Facebook fans with creative content (games, recipes, quizzes etc.)
5. Interact with your Facebook fans and respond to their questions and concerns.
6 . C onsider using "Facebook Connect" to enhance your business Web site with social networking capabilities.
7. C onsider buying Facebook ads to market your business. They're targeted to specific demographics and relatively inexpensive, even for small businesses.
8 . Join Facebook groups related to your business to improve your networking capabilities.
1 http://mashable.com/2009/01/22/business-facebook-apps/
2 ©2009. TRUSTe. All rights reserved.ExampleSplenda ran a highly successful campaign via their Facebook Fan page, offering free samples of their new Splenda Mist product to their Facebook fans. They distributed all 16,000 samples in one-sixth of the planned program time and gathered important market data from more than 1,500 fans that responded to a detailed survey. For more ideas and examples of how to successfully use Facebook for your business check out Facebook's marketing page: http://www.facebook.com/marketing.
Don't:1. S pam - your Facebook fans come to Facebook primarily to share and socialize, not shop. Hard marketing pitches will not win you fans on Facebook.
2. Invade fans' privacy or violate Facebook's terms of use.
ExampleWhen Burger King offered free burger coupons to their Facebook fans who "un-friended" ten friends the social networking site stepped in and pulled the plug on this advertising promotion. While Burger King's marketing team had the right idea in offering Facebook fans an exclusive promotion, they failed to realize that the campaign violated Facebook's terms of use by notifying users who had been de-friended and moreover violated the Web site's ethos of establishing (not severing) connections.
Twitter
Do:1. Engage in dialogue - query your audience. Listen to your followers. Respond.
2. H umanize your tweets- these are 140-character tweets not press releases. It's ok to speak informally or have a sense of humor. Businesses often identify the employee(s) behind the tweeting with a picture and name.
3. R e-tweet content you find interesting. Promote others (doesn't have to be competitors).
4. Track conversations mentioning your name or brand with Twitter Search.
5. Reward your Twitter followers with exclusive offers or discounts.
6. Use Twitter to advertise job openings.
7. Follow experts and competitors ... [download for more]