Separating professional and personal social media

One of the developments in social media I've been watching over the past year is that the line has become blurred between the personal and business aspects of their lives.

Here’s a good example of a bad example. A friend of mine is very active on Facebook and he uses it to generate leads. No subject is off limits and he has no filter. There is no doubt about his political point of view, his relationship with his ex-wife, which basketball team he likes, and which one he hates.

The issue is that he uses his personal Facebook page to post for his business. Unfortunately, as active as he is, he drives very little business for his efforts. My opinion is that people block his feed, manage to ignore his rants, or have stopped following him.

Maintaining personal and professional social media

If you still feel that you need an outlet to vent about the hot-button topics, start a Twitter account that is anonymous. Don't use your name anywhere and don't post anything such as pictures that would connect you personally to it.

Facebook is a little trickier, but you can still maintain a professional and personal presence by creating a business page. You can then drive your business contacts to that page and offer engaging content. One caveat: you will need to upgrade your privacy settings for your personal page so that only friends can see your posts and to make it as difficult as possible for clients and potential clients to search for your personal Facebook page.

What to avoid

If you choose NOT to separate your personal and professional accounts, here are some hot button topics to avoid:

• Political
  If you are a political animal, your posts supporting one point of view can potentially alienate a big audience.

• Sports teams
  It's fine to post positive things about your favorite teams, but if you post particularly vehement content about your arch rival, you've just lost alumni of that institution.

• Relationship
  It is a good idea never to post about things that are going wrong in your relationship

• Religion
  Although it may be important to you, some people find it off-putting. Tread with extreme caution.

10 things to remember about posting on social media:

1. Keep it positive!
2. If you won't say it to a customer with whom you're sitting face to face, don't post it. 
3. Do not over-post or over tweet.   
4. Do not post anything when you are angry, tired or inebriated. 
5. Social media is forever. 
6. Avoid personal attacks of colleagues and competitors.
7. There is really no such thing as privacy online. 
8. Offer information of value.  
9. Make your posts about your audience, not yourself. 
10. There should never be just 9 things in a list.

Theater uses irate customers in branding

I don't normally advocate using an f-bomb in an ad, but in this case, I'll make an exception.

When you go to a movie, don't be surprised if you get kicked out for texting. If you call to voice your displeasure at being kicked out, don't be surprised if your ire is met with little sympathy. If it happens to be at the Alamo Drafthouse, don't be surprised if your message ends up on the pre-movie PSAs. And the Drafthouse website. And a marketing website. Oh, and YouTube.

So what does a profanity-laced tirade from an irate customer say about Alamo Drafthouse's branding?

Tons.

First of all, the theater is unapologetic about what a movie-goer will see at its theater. It appeals to the audience they expect to draw to its lineup of indie flicks.

More importantly, the viral PSA lets the customer know that Alamo Drafthouse values the user experience. It's a small house, and one idiot using a cell phone during a movie can wreck it for practically everyone in the theater. From a branding perspective, you can't do better than to show the customer you appreciate the business and that you will go to great lengths to make sure that customer gets his money's worth.

Does the PSA go overboard? I don't think so. Does it make an impact? You bet it does. With the customer and potential talkers and texters who wander into the Alamo.

Kudos for taking the customer experience seriously.

Social media... it's cheap, it's easy, it's social

Recently, we re-designed a website for a daycare facility. The owner is a very nice lady who handles everything, and I mean everything, at the school. When we met her, she was carrying a monkey wrench and had just finished doing some plumbing work.

We talked briefly about how to differentiate the school, what kind of content and graphics she wanted, and about her dogs, which accompanied her to work every day.

She was open to every suggestion we made, and was really intrigued when we discussed using Social Media in her branding efforts. No one else did that. It was a great opportunity, one that could really show potential clients how they differed from franchise daycare operations. It would give the parents the opportunity to keep up with what their kids are doing on a daily basis. And it would allow them to supply parents with any industry information they thought was important.

We set her up with a blog page, a Facebook page and a Twitter account. She would write the blog with our help. The Facebook page would be used only for photos and additional branding tool and would require very little maintenance. We can put everything on autopilot so that tweets and blog entries are automatically sent to Facebook. We suggested that her teachers and administrators should send out one tweet per day.

That's where our plan came unraveled.

She didn't want her teachers accessing computers to complete the task. Fine, I said. Have them tell the administrator on duty or the receptionist and let them take care of it. She didn't want them to have to dedicate the time to the task.

I made a prediction to my partner at lunch that when we were out of the picture the blog would never get written. He agreed, adding that they were missing a great opportunity to really make an impact with potential and existing clients. It takes 30 seconds to send out a tweet. Eight rooms, that's four minutes a day. I couldn't convince her to spend that time to promote. Writing a blog would take 15 minutes a pop, but for arguments sake, let's say 30.

In less than an hour, she could add value to a client's experience, increase traffic, more effectively brand her business and differentiate her facility from her competition. All at a cost of ZERO DOLLARS. Even if we did all of it for them, it would be $60 a week. (We're cheap.)

Social media is an opportunity to keep your customers engaged. It is mass marketing, but directed at the individual. It's cheap. Wait... it's FREE! It doesn't take much effort, but it does take some effort. It's simply an opportunity to brand a business by presenting the unique characteristics of it. Most of all, it's social. Get it? "Social" media?

Our client's website is successful. They are benefiting from an increase in traffic of more than 50% and are adding about three new clients a month. But the blog page is blank. Facebook is only used for pictures and the Twitter account is not active. They have a trickle of new business when they could have a stream.

I think our client has really missed the opportunity to more effectively promote the business. I think the next time a potential client asks about social media, I'll show them the math.