Creative businesses have a lot to gain from being involved in social media. But before you dive in, think about what you want to achieve, and how you can avoid obvious pit-falls.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media services can be powerful tools when used intelligently:
- You can develop the profile of your creative business
- It can provide a direct line to your potential customers
- You can see what your competitors are doing and saying
- It ensures your voice is part of the conversation.
Social media is a great tool, but it can rapidly consume a lot of time. Before starting your first tweet, here are six points to consider.
1. Decide who will do it
Although regarded as a cost-effective form of marketing, the ongoing engagement of social media should be considered an overhead. You'll get more reputation and reaction if you can devote more time to it, but that won’t necessarily lead to more sales.
Be realistic about how much time you can devote to this activity and decide who owns the engagement:
- Is it a marketing activity, or a creative one?
- Are you going to appoint people who tweet, or encourage your organisation more widely?
You may decide to have two or three people monitoring the accounts on different days. Try to keep the number of updates and the tone similar. You should be looking for a combination of fun, engaging and industry-relevant posts. The odd Friday-afternoon joke humanises your brand, but constant trivia will drive people away.
2. Listen first, then speak
When people follow you online, they’re choosing to read your updates and give you some of their time.
Social media is a bit like standing on the edges of a conversation in a pub, with people you’ve just met. You should take your time to assess the crowd.
There’s nothing worse than that person who grabs the conversation and drones on about their pet subject. Until you’ve found your voice, only respond to people who contact you directly.
For many creative businesses, the value will come from seeing what people are talking about. Getting information from those using your competitors, learning what’s being done well and done badly.
Keep an eye on searches related to your company and industry. Pop-up in useful and unexpected ways. But don’t do what Habitat did some years ago and use unrelated topics (such as iPhones and Iranian elections) to announce their sale to people (see Social Media Today).
3. Learn to share
If there are interesting events by your peers, or even your competitors, don’t be afraid to share that content. Linking to a competitor feels strange, but your followers are probably more loyal to your field than your business.
This kind of content makes you a more interesting and credible source to follow, by people who may not be interested in your services when they subscribe.
Sharing responses to your own posts can help build community. But be modest, and don’t share every positive comment.
Make it easy for people to share content from your website, with integrated buttons for Twitter and Facebook. Don’t constantly ask people to 'share' or 'like' stuff - it's annoying and a sign that your content mix isn’t right.
4. Guard your information
Try for a combination of fun, engaging and industry-relevant content.
Not every creative work you share online has to be final quality, especially if it helps to illustrate the creative journey.
For some people it can be more interesting than the final polished outcome, so don’t be afraid to share it, alongside the narrative of the people who did the work.
A concern might be your ideas leaking out, but people will generally be careful if reminded not to post information online that hasn't been released.
5. Protect your reputation
You also need to be careful of ideas coming into your company. If an employee says, “working a new pitch for widgets”, and somebody replies “I love widgets, and if I marketed them I’d do this…”, you need to be careful about how that idea is used.
You don’t need you don’t need bad publicity and potential IPR problems, when six months later someone claims you unfairly stole their idea.
It’s great if your employees comment about the public elements of work, but make sure they always declare their interest. Do the same if you join a forum related to your activities. Joining and immediately posting “THIS THING LOOKS GREAT” is off-putting to the regulars.
However tempting, never join review sites and give positive comments on your work (known as 'astro-turfing'). You will be discovered and it will backfire.
6. Accept criticism and admit mistakes
If you can respond meaningfully to legitimate criticism, do so.
The anonymity of the Internet make people type things that they would never say in person.
People will say critical things about your work. Bear in mind that people who comment online are very vocal, but may not be representative of your community.
If you can respond meaningfully to legitimate criticism, do so. Being seen to deal well with complaints well is a great way to improve your brand.
As a creative business, you know that you will never please everyone, so don’t be afraid to respectfully hold your ground against well-expressed, but subjective, criticism.
Not everyone will be constructive, and if they’re really angry or abusive consider that it may not be worth trying to engage. Many people will find a thoughtful response enough to resolve things, but some people will only be happy when you entirely agree with them.
At some point you’ll share something that doesn’t quite hit the mark, especially if you’ve more than one person writing content. Delete the mistake and apologise. Never try spinning that you were 'hacked' or had 'technical problems' - people accept mistakes, not laughable excuses.
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