MINDING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MANNERS

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With everyone from moms to CEO’s jumping on the social media bandwagon, it’s important to remember the golden rule-”mind your manners”. Bad manners are creeping into social media sites, and brands are one of the main offenders.

Customers take note of their bad practices on these sites and react. According to this recent poll, only 18% of social media users trust social networking profiles from brands, showing that these brands are not succeeding in engaging their customers.

Below are a few guidelines that will help brands re-engage their customers through social media.

1. Be yourself- transparency is key. In order to gain trust from other social media users and establish yourself within the community, it is important for people to know who you are and what you represent. Appoint someone to manage your social media profiles, and allow for their individual personalities to shine.
2. There is no I in we- it’s important to think outside of yourself/brand. While linking to your brand’s website and/or blog is acceptable, continually doing this without providing other valuable content will cause users to wan. It’s important to remember you gotta give a little to get a little.
3. Lend an ear- both Southwest Airlines and JetBlue monitor social media sites such as Twitter for mentions of customer service related issues. By monitoring these sites they are serving as an around the-clock help center for their customers. In doing so, Southwest and JetBlue establish themselves as a pro-active customer focused company.