THINKing

Social Media Best Practices

September 10, 2008 on 7:36 am | In #smcharlotte, Blogs, Brand, Harry Hoover, Online, PR, Personal Branding, Public Relations, Social Media, Twitter, social media marketing best practices project | View Comments

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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Heh, nothing cranky about that! This is just sound advice.

Thanks Harry,
DJ

Comment by DJ — September 10, 2008 #
Good points.If you are your self at the social sites and don´t pretend to be someone else, you will do fine.Just build up your profile by participating in the sites by voting and commenting on other members content.

Comment by Tom At The Home Business Archive — September 10, 2008 #
This advice is something I wish more people lived by in their business and personal lives. It’s a value that I also emphasize to clients on a daily basis.

Comment by Gail at PUBLISIDE — September 10, 2008 #
That’s a great point. People should be themselves, in all facets of life, because as you pointed out, it becomes too exhausting to play different roles throughout the day. The philosophy at our company, MarketLeverage, is that the employees should be able to be themselves at work, because usually, they’re more passionate and work more efficiently.

Comment by Rebecca — September 11, 2008 #
[...] a supporting vein, Harry Hoover with THINKing proposes “to thine own self be true.” Here, here [...]

Pingback by Social Media Squad » Social Media Marketing Best Practice - Honesty — September 16, 2008 #
I agree with you in the sense that in order to be successul in social media, you have to not only be true to yourself, but also reflect who you are to others. I wrote a similar post for a meme asking for the . There were many results that stated the importance of participation, reaching out, etc, but in the end I think it is more important that you are nothing but yourself so that people who take interest in you actually have something in common to which you can contribute. With that comes all the other important practices in social media.

Comment by Erin — September 17, 2008 #
[...] THINKing. You are a smart, capable person who understands how the world works, and who understands digital personal branding. This is aimed at the hapless person who just happens to stumble by and who needs schooling on this [...]

Pingback by THINKing » Out Of Work? Don’t Be That Guy — July 30, 2009 #

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