Question: As a small business we don’t have people full time watching and managing our social media. We worry about mistakes and complaints that may come in while we are tending to other things. How should we stay social but watch our interests?
The best thing about social media may just be rooted in human nature. Just like any interpersonal communication, sometimes messages can be crossed and just like people in general mistakes can be made.
Many large companies employ teams of professionals to make sure that their social media accounts never slip up and that those managing them never make a PR faux pas. However, so long as we are human being leading other human beings you can pretty much count on some mistakes being made.
As a company this means that you have to balance your expectations for perfection with a certain bit of humility. And just know even with teams of people watching your social 24×7 it will never be perfect. So instead of targeting perfection, perhaps the best thing to pursue is being social. Sounds logical, right?
For instance, just the other day I accidentally attached the wrong article to a link I sent out on Twitter. Not only was it the wrong link but it was a link to a competitors page. With Twitter you may think no big deal since few people see the average tweet, but in this case someone did see it and they RT’d it to point out the mistake. (I guess people are listening)
I replied to the person pointing out the mistake and thanked them for the heads up. I then deleted the tweet. It was a small mistake, but silly and one that was seen by the outside, but as a business these things may happen. My recommendation is when (not if) they happen, you stay above brow, kind and grateful. People and companies make mistakes and as a whole society is more willing to forgive those that admit them.
If your social media response time is too slow or you accidentally tweet out pictures of your grandkids on your company Twitter handle just know it isn’t the end of the world. But take the corrective actions and learn from your mistakes.
How is your company handling its social to limit and learn from mistakes?
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.