No one wants to invest time in something only to be mediocre at it. We want to be great. But before you can be great you have to understand what being great looks like. What are you trying to achieve and what are you aiming for? What do people who are great at X look like? Because before you can be better than them, you at least have to be equal. And that takes some understanding on your part.
Do you want to be great at social media? Well, below are 23 things that great businesses do in social media. Maybe you can help me and add to my list in the comments.
Ready?
Great social media brands…
- Bring sexy back to word of mouth marketing.
- Dedicate time to answering questions from customers, potential customers and people first learning about the brand.
- Constantly poll their community for opinions, feedback, and criticism.
- Make it a habit to highlight other brands that are doing cool things, even if they’re doing it outside of their particular industry.
- Start conversations that others are scared to have.
- Give their employees a unique voice and the permission to connect to others.
- Regularly save the day.
- Push back the curtain to give their audience a better understanding of how things work, why they work that way, and what the company believes.
- Bleed company culture.
- Use tools to monitor their social media activity and makes adjustments when things aren’t working.
- Don’t take social media too seriously, but are too smart to view it as a joke.
- Understand the importance donuts and share them regularly.
- Don’t forget to tie offline events into what they’re doing online so there’s cohesion between strategies.
- Track their brand name in social media and knows when to respond, how to respond and how to engage brand advocates.
- Give us “the why” to go along with their social media calls to action.
- Plan for social media as to not leave channels voiceless for long periods of time just because they’re busy.
- Never, ever automate human interaction.
- Understand social media doesn’t belong to just the marketing department, but the company as a whole.
- Enter the waters with a social media plan to help guide their interaction and make sure they’re getting something for their investment.
- Use their social media plan to avoid falling victim to Shiny Object Syndrome.
- Understand that social media is the medium, not the message.
- Pass on insights gleaned from social media throughout the entire organization so that the right people are hearing the right conversations.
- Have clear social media guidelines so that employees know how to engage on behalf of the brand and connect with customers
