Rent-to-own News - Social media do's and don'ts

By Kelly McDonald,

There is an entire etiquette around social media these days and it’s pretty easy to spot a novice – their blunders are obvious and often provoke a firestorm of online chatter or “flaming.”

So here are six basic pointers to help you maximize your social media efforts and customer interactions:

DO:

• Be present in the conversation.  There’s nothing worse than fanning (liking) a facebook page for a business and seeing that there last post was more than a year ago.  It tells the fan that the company just isn’t actively involved in the online community.

• Be a real person and use real language.  No one wants to read your tech-speak or business-speak. 

• Remember that customers are more interested in comments from other customers.  Post testimonials and foster feedback.

DON’T:

• Don’t spam your customers.  You don’t want to reward your fans and your best customers with spam, do you?  They deserve better than that.

• Don’t self promote too much.  Be helpful. Share your knowledge.  Post an article that helps your customers make good decisions.  Tips, advice or product reviews are always good.  Example:  “what you need to know when getting a plasma screen” would be a great post.  It’s relevant to your business and hugely helpful to your customers.

• Don’t censor your fans comments and posts.  This is especially hard when you’ve been flamed – when an unhappy customer writes a scathing post on your page.  Your urge will be to take it down, but that’s the worst thing you can do.  This is a conversation online, and deleting someone’s post is akin to telling someone to shut up when you have a different viewpoint.  You need to let customers talk about what’s on their mind, even when they’re angry.  The exception is if a fan posts anything profane, racist, wrong or otherwise offensive – in that case, of course you should pull the post.

These tips will help you hone your social media posts and deepen your relationships with your customers and fans.

Kelly McDonald is a popular speaker and president of McDonald Marketing, a marketing consulting firm in Dallas.  She has been featured on CNBC, in BusinessWeek , on CNNMoney.com and on Sirious/XM Radio.  She is the author of “How to Market to People Not Like You:  Know It or Blow It Rules for Reaching Diverse Customers”.