Peter Friedman worked at Apple for a long time and now does social media consulting. He has an excellent book that just came out, ‘The CMO’s Social Media Handbook‘. Recently he was interviewed by Leo Laporte and he shared all kinds of great tips for businesses to use in building a social presence.
2 Quick Tips
Here are two quick tips I pulled out of the interview from this social media visionary. These are targeted for businesses that want to add some value and create a party (an analogy I’m sure he borrowed from me :) ) for their customers and future customers.
Tip #1:
The old 80:20 rule. Usually, companies do it wrong, they talk about themselves 80% of the time, and 20% about their industry and customers. This should be exactly opposite. Spend 80% of your time talking about and engaging with them, and 20% talking about yourself. Within that 80%, spend half of it talking about the industry in general (i.e. helpful horse-care tips) and half of it talking about issues particular to them (i.e. what are you doing with your horse this holiday weekend?).
The propensity for a company to talk about themselves is what I like to call the ‘Desperate Corporate Selfie’. Most companies want to simply talk about themselves. When they do, they just look silly and self conscious. People get tired of this and tune out. So, stop focusing on yourself and look at the world around you to become a helpful resource or party for your community.
Tip #2:
How do companies fill that 20%, where they talk about themselves? A business has to realize that its best social media assets are its customers, along with its employees. They will naturally engage with the company via social media and in the process of doing so will add a real human touch and reflect the personality of the business. All this helping to build a more approachable and lovable image.
Watch the interview and tell me what you think…