If you haven't already read the first part in the series, Social Media Guidelines Part 1: Social Principles, you might want to go back and read it before continuing with this post.
The following is an excerpt from my book, Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy, with a few details about how to participate in various types of social media.
You don’t need to participate in everything, especially to start. As a matter of fact, I would discourage participating in too many at once. Jump in with one idea to start, try it for a while, learn and build on it. I would recommend starting with Twitter or blogging. After you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t for you, pick and choose a few more that make sense for you. I'll introduce the major elements here and then elaborate on them in future chapters.
Blogging
I recommend having both a personal blog and a company blog. I tend to like company group blogs, especially for small companies, where several people from the company regularly blog about various topics related to the company. The key is not to use your corporate blog only to pimp your products or for press releases. You should be talking about your industry and sharing your thoughts on the broader market as a whole in addition to talking about your products. Become a thought leader in your industry through your blog. Likewise, your personal blog shouldn’t be all about your company. It’s fine to talk about your company (the reality is that we spend most of our waking hours at work); however, this is your personal blog. Branch out a little. Talk about your other passions, especially the ones tangentially related to your work. Make sure your blog contains a blogroll linking to other bloggers you respect; not to have one is really bad form (see the above section: Not all about You).
Twitter is a way to send short format (140 character) messages to a bunch of people while also reading messages from others. People have mixed reactions to Twitter, but I think that Twitter is only as interesting as the people you follow. If you follow people with interesting things to say, you will probably get more out of the experience. Talk about interesting things (personal and professional), engage in conversations, interact with other people, follow friends and industry luminaries, and have some fun with it. Feel free to talk about your products, link to your blog posts, and talk about what you are working on, but if all you do is pimp your stuff, people are unlikely to follow your posts (again, it is not all about you).
Audio and Video Podcasting
Podcasting is a great way to distribute content that doesn’t fit as well into written form. Audio podcasts are really good for interviews to talk to other experts or to record interesting discussions that happen as part of conference panels. I have done a few Fast Wonder podcasts as interviews with interesting people doing cool things in communities or as recordings of round table discussions. Video is great for demonstrations or presentations where you want to show people something. Screencasts with voice-overs work particularly well, especially for technical topics or marketing videos. While I was working at Jive Software, I worked with the developers to do screencasts and other videos fairly regularly for the Jivespace Developer Community.
You may be noticing a trend here, but your Facebook “presence” should be focused on individuals: people within your company, especially your executives, sharing information. Like with Twitter, people should create accounts and share some personal information along with the corporate information. If you want to have a “corporate presence” on Facebook, do it as a group that people can join or a page where people can be a “fan of” your company, not a company profile masquerading as a person.
Other Social Networks
For companies trying to reach out to a younger crowd, MySpace might be a better choice than Facebook. You can also find niche social networks for many different groups or demographics from technology specific communities to weight loss to politics to anything else you can imagine. Find the ones that apply to you and use the guidelines above along with some initial lurking around the community to come up with the best ways to participate.
Industry Communities
Many industries have communities for people who work in a specific field or who are passionate about an industry topic (PCWorld is one example in the technology industry). In these communities make sure that the people participating are the subject matter experts in their field, rather than public relations, sales, or marketing (unless the community is specifically focused on one of those groups). Find the people that are already passionate about the topic and have them participate as part of their job.
Custom Communities for Your Company
There are also some very good reasons to create a new community focused on your customers or your industry, but again it isn't all about you. A good way to think about corporate communities is that the community "owns" the community . The company owns the infrastructure, facilitates the discussions, moderates and keeps people in check without being too heavy handed. Again, it isn't all about you, so be careful not to constantly spam the community with your marketing messages. If the company doesn't play nice with the community, the community will take discussions elsewhere.
Many More
The ways to participate listed above are what I would consider the basics right now. However, there are many, many more ways to engage with your community: Second Life, discussion boards / community sites, Ning, Flickr, meetups and events, and more. In short, go to those places that make sense for your company. If the industry thought leaders in your market are participating in a social networking site, it is likely that you should also be engaging in conversations there.
As I said earlier, any one company does not necessarily need to participate everywhere. Use your best judgment and participate in ways that make sense for your company.
This was an excerpt from the book Companies and Communities: Participating without being sleazy, which is available in paperback, eBook, or Kindle formats. You can also read posts about similar topics on my Fast Wonder blog.
