Your Message Lacks Sincerity

For the past few months a number of companies have tried to get on the social media bandwagon. There have been scandals like the Domino's pizza scandal and many missteps along the way. One of the most important tools that you can have in Social Media is your personality. If you are insincere, it will come across in your message. People can tell if you are truly passionate about your subject matter.

Keeping the importance of online personality in mind, many companies choose to use a PR firm to manage their Social Media presence. For many, this is a bad idea. It is always best to have someone who knows and understands your products writing and responding to your followers. Along the same line of thought, some companies have decided that an Intern is the solution to this Social Media Craze. Unless you are including the Intern in your organization, this will not translate well. There is no incentive for the Intern to manage your information and their lack of initiative will translate into poor posts.

Each account should have one person who posts. If there are multiple people sharing the same Twitter handle, they need to have different signatures. Otherwise, there can be confusion resulting from multiple personalities being expressed from the same account. A good example of how to do this is @GuyKawasaki. His ghost writers are AC and LF. They simply post these initials at the end of the tweet so that you know who wrote it. Another successful attempt at differentiation that I have seen is a local company called DO512.com. On their twitter each employee has a separate accounts. An example of this is @Do512_Kristin

Finally I would suggest that you avoid the programs that allow you to automatically follow those who mention your brand. First off, it's just creepy that when you mention a company like OLPC that you are being followed the next day. More importantly is the fact that you cannot pay attention to all of the posts that would result from following so many people. To make your presence on Twitter more successful, you should only follow those people who are posting information relevant to you. Use tools like search.twitter.com to search for what people are saying about you instead of following them all.

Delayed Message with Social Media

One of the common reasons that cause companies to fail with social media is the delay in message delivery. Twitter thrives on immediacy. If your organization requires approval from legal for each message that you deliver, you will not be effective with social media tools like Twitter. If you cannot deliver your message in a timely manner, don't bother entering the realm of social media. If you insist on using Twitter and other social media tools unsuccessfully, you will be placing your brand at risk. It would be better to avoid the space altogether than to have a mediocre presence.

Twitter was designed to allow people to communicate freely and to aid in disseminating messages quickly and easily. If you are protecting your updates, you are limiting the ability of your message. It is possible to succeed while protecting your updates, but be sure that you have a strong brand that people want to receive information from before you use this approach. For the majority of companies, protect your updates could easily be the kiss of death. If it is not easy to receive your message, most people will not be willing to listen.

Many people have approached Twitter as a one-way conversation. While this can be successful for some organizations, the majority will find it necessary to follow at least some of their followers. The organizations that can thrive without following others are typically short lived relationships like concerts and festivals. These accounts are only interested in building buzz for a short period of time. If your goal is to use Twitter to communicate with your customers, you must respond to your followers. One easy way to track what others say about you is to create an RSS feed based on search terms. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this concept click here. One of the best ways to build brand loyalty is to respond to your followers when they talk about you. Be supportive and always thank them for retweeting your message.