THINKing

Social Media Best Practices

The OnlineMarketerBlog threw out the challenge for us to discuss our social media best practice. The blog’s author, DJ Francis, called me “impressively tenacious”. That’s politically correct for cranky, I think! Anyway, here goes.

Social media is public relations. PR is about dialogue, always has been. Social media allows us to extend our conversations beyond our limited geography. Despite that, the best practices haven’t changed from PR to social media. My best practice was said in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: to thine own self be true.

What I mean by this and what Shakespeare meant may diverge a bit. I believe that you must be yourself. No false persona. This is the PR advice I have always given clients and used myself. I don’t want to be one person at work, another at home, another with my friends, yet another online. To have a consistent brand, you must always be the real you. You must not let various publics define you.

This is why we so often dislike politicians. They say one thing in California, another in rural North Carolina. They let the audience and the occasion define what they say and how they say it. This is decidedly not being true to yourself. This also is probably why I’ll never be elected to anything. Want to know where I stand on an issue? Just ask me.

It is just too hard to juggle different selves. Even more so with the advent of social media where everything you say is recorded for posterity and fed by RSS, Twitter, and Friendfeed for the world to see.

So, be yourself. End of sermon.

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