The Three Rs of Social Media

Mary Schmidt

Oct 12, 2011

They’re almost the same as the old Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic.

Reading.  I’m not nearly as nice (or fun) as The Bloggess when clueless PR flacks/flakes send me junk. (She responds with a photo of Wil Wheaton collating. You’ll have to read her post to grok this, link at the bottom of this one.)

I also don’t like it when people contact me – stone cold, out of the blue, having obviously never read one word of this blog or any of my other writing.  For example, complimenting me on my terrific family-oriented blog, then asking for free advice or help promoting a product.  Really, no, I don’t need free diapers, baby formula or diet aids, thank you. *Sigh*  Some company just wasted a lot of good money on bad, sad PR.

If you’re going to really connect with people in social media you have to do a lot of good old-fashioned reading. Find the people who’ll really be interested in your topic; this is a positively ancient basic of blogging, which still applies, no matter the technology you’re using. 

And, yes, Twitter can be fun…but that shouldn’t be the only thing you read about or by someone.  My retweeting a great quote from the Dalai Lama isn’t going to tell you much about my business.

‘Riting Just the other day, I ran across a Facebook link on a web site.  Only one problem. The company hadn’t bothered to set up a Facebook page, much less write anything new on their web site or blog for months. Yeah, I know. It’s tough to keep up with all the writing and updating (I’ve been a bit lax on this site myself at times) but we’ve got to do it.

...and about that Twitter thing.  I recently re-activated my account, specifically to keep in touch with folks I met at SOBCon…and to expand my social media strategy (yes, I have one) to prepare for new endeavors.  Yet, as much as I enjoy some people’s tweets (and retweets to good info and inspiration), I also find myself already ignoring a lot.  Some people simply tweet too much.  As with any other writing, think before you tweet. Of course, I’m not exactly a queen of Twitter; last count I had 40 followers…:) but somehow I don’t think my bombarding the world with my every single thought is going to change that. 
 
Relating This takes time.  You can’t simply throw up a Facebook page or a blog or madly start tweeting.  You’ve got to read and write (and mean all of it) to really relate. 

(For a truly mind-blowing example of a truly stupid - not just clueless - PR firm, read The Bloggess post. Wow. These people really exist and companies pay them money?  Apparently nobody at Brandlink Communications has looked at the Internet for years…and clearly they didn’t bother to do ANY research on The Bloggess. At last count, she had over 173,000 Twitter followers.) 

In Marketing Troubleshooting, Pet Peeves, Social Media Reality Checks, Web Bytes