How many of your employees have access to social media? Do any of them know company secrets or have ‘dirt’ on management that they’d love to spread?
You have joined the millions of other companies that are now using social media of all types to communicate with customers, announce new products and specials, and dole out professional advice and information that makes your public hunger for more from you.
That’s terrific and it could just mean a nice growth in your business statistics.
With everybody and his brother carrying a Smartphone and with access to the internet and social media, who is minding the electronic information store? It’s great that you are getting so much out there and drawing attention to your company and your products, but do you really know what is being said and by whom at every minute of the day? Who’s in charge of your social media?
Create a Hierarchy
If you don’t have a specific structured hierarchy for your social media output you could be asking for trouble. In the past you would have professionally taken photos and ad agencies making up what you would put out for the public to see. Press releases were scrutinized before they were released. TV and radio ads were tweaked and re-tweaked until they said just the right thing. The message has always been very carefully controlled and with good reason. This is marketing 101.
Get your social media policies in place before it comes back to bite you and damage your business.
When any of your employees has access to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others, there is the potential for unwanted early leaks of information and company plans, sensitive information or personal catfights between employees, and the dreaded ‘employee tells customer where to stick his complaint’ about your product or service. The sky is really the limit here.
Imagine the new product line that you have been developing for 3 years and are preparing to launch at just the right time according to the marketing studies you had done at great expense. The line will be launched in exactly one month and 3 days. One of your employees, however, with access to your company Facebook account decides to be a ‘rebel’ and make the bold move to reveal your new product line now instead. This employee is in R&D, but your marketing department explicitly came up with the projected date for release. This is not too hard to imagine and the devastating effects are not hard to imagine either.
The solution to this is to have a social network policy in place and someone to oversee it. You will then rest easier knowing that everything going out to the public will have your blessing and be implemented according to specific policies and procedures.
4 Things That Will Help Control Your Online Brand
- Claim Your Google Profile:
If you have not created a personal Gmail account, you should! If you have, complete your profile. If you choose to go as far as creating a Google+ account, now you can also create one for your business as well.- Gmail.com
- Reserve Your Name on Social Networks:
There are several sites that will help you reserve your name or company name. This will prevent others from getting it first. It can be a little time consuming, but even doing that basics and creating a minimal profile to reserve your name will help.
- Create Company Hub Pages.This is a great way to share with others all of your major social media sites!.
- Fullyfollow.me
- Flavors.me
- And one of the most important things is once that you have created your Social Media presence is always act consistently. If needed, find someone that has experience to do this for you.
About the Author:
The SEO-Alien is a project started in 2009 regarding all things online marketing. The site started out more of a diary of predictions, suggestions and references to things I frequently used for online marketing... before social media marketing was even an option.
I hope you find the information and tools presented here useful and something worth sharing with others.
If there is anything else about online marketing or any online advertising strategy you think would be helpful, please let me know.
