I have witnessed some monumentally bad social media practice this week to the point of being fed up with social media altogether. I’ve seen so many self-professed “experts” making fundamental errors and it’s driving me up the wall.
So I thought I’d indulge in some catharsis by coming up with my top five gripes and then I can get back to loving it again:
- Person or PR machine? We can all see through it, so please get real. Trying to counteract a complaint by simply farming out a positive news story is ignoring the issue and is a wasted opportunity to turn the negative feelings round. It’s a distraction technique: poor communications, poor customer service and an enormously patronising approach. Please engage with your customers and deal with the problem. Or you’ll lose them.
- Delivering the party line rather than engaging in discussion. Earlier this week I witnessed a fascinating group discussion on Facebook as part of a membership-based organisation. It was developing nicely in an interesting, informative, helpful and supportive way – only to be immediately cut short by someone feeling that the organisation had to state its policy on the matter. The organisation contradicted the opinions of all the contributors and effectively said “I don’t care what you say; discussion closed”. Rather than thinking that the discussion raised some interesting points that could be brought up in the next committee meeting, the approach was not to listen, just to broadcast (my pet hate). In fact it looked very much like they didn’t read any of the preceding comments and simply responded to the original poster. It was very damaging to the relationship between the organisation and its members.
- Misguided use of facts. A report is published showing how your organisation has made considerable progress in a certain area. Wonderful! And it is backed up by some delightful stats. Hooray! But that does not necessarily make it a good statistic to be broadcast publicly. Remember, if your customer complaints drop from 1000 to 900 in a year, you are still getting 900 complaints. Well done on the progress made, but it’s not going to impress your stakeholders or potential customers. Search for the things that will make people proud to be associated with you and watch the “likes” increase. If you’re looking to build engagement, consider keeping the less convincing stats for your internal newsletter and give your supporters something that won’t make them roll their eyes.
- One size fits all. Yes it is great to have a social media management tool such as Hootsuite to make light work of social media comms, but each site you use has a different audience and therefore you should adopt different styles and use different content across the range of social media sites. I would not communicate the same way to my LinkedIn group (largely interested in professional development and networking) as I do with my Facebook or Twitter followers (keen on the good news stories, photos and nostalgia). Tailor your messages to get better levels of engagement.
- Unloved blogs. *takes long hard look at self*. Yes I am the culprit here. I spend so much of my working day using and monitoring social media channels that, come the end of the day, I just want to switch my computer off and pretend social media doesn’t exist. Running four very different Twitter feeds and three Facebook pages (and more) takes a lot of work and imagination to keep things fresh. So blogging about my professional life during the evening would not sit well with my determination to strike a good work/life balance. To help overcome these empty spells, planning is the key. Look at the points in the year when you know certain topics will crop up (in alumni relations these include graduation, DLHE, NSS, annual events, telephone campaign etc.). I sketch these out in the calendar with a view to generating content around these themes so I am prepared when ideas dry up. I must now take this approach with my own blog. While I’ll still cover issues as they arise, I can always pencil ideas in for further down the line. I really must do better!
Victoria Noden 