Other interesting insight and advice from the social media junkie panel:
- Be sure to start off your social media program by listening! What is the social media universe saying about you and your company now?
- Find the social media channel that makes you excited to participate and get involved in that channel. If you like it, you're more likely to do it more often.
- Show your personality!
- Be honest, authentic and transparent.
- Check out what your competitors and others in your industry are doing on social media. It's a great way to get ideas!
- Check out Twitter in Plain English video - a great explanation about what is Twitter.
- Demographics for social media channels are all across the board. Twitter seems to skew older than Facebook and Facebook skews older than MySpace.
- It's more important to have good your content rather than just frequent content.
- Handheld video is a great way to add an extra punch to your social media campaign. It doesn't have to be professionally shot video.
- Top pitfalls to avoid: don't pretend to be something you're not; be sure to take advantage of the tracking tools available; remember you're having conversations in a permanent, public archive - think twice before you post; be conversational, not a corporate robot
- Take a few deep breaths and have two people review your response before responding to an angry post.
- Social media is a skill set that is essential for all marketers and PR pros today.
- Check out LinkedIn for B2B companies.
Last words of advice:
- Kevin: be brave and curious and explore
- Ari: Don't get focused on the tool; social media is bigger than a single tool
- Andrew: Google is your home page. Have a personal blog and a company blog.
- Mike: Get ready.