Recently, I wrote about tactics for social media strikeouts, or things brands, teams and athletes should avoid doing.

Now, let’s talk about some tactics for social media home runs, or what you should be doing if you want to be successful with your social media efforts.

Understand your audience – As we know, people are out there on blogs, forums, and social networking sites talking about you. They’re also talking about themselves—what they’re doing, what they like and what they dislike. If you’re not listening to what your audience says about, you can’t possible know how to best engage them. There are many, many ways to find out what your audience cares about. You can utilize simple tools like Surveymonkey to poll your audience and get feedback. You can track mentions of your main keywords to see what people are saying. Or you can just start asking questions on Twitter (but please don’t start using Twitter until you have a strategy for what your goals are and how you’re going to utilize it). Understanding your audience should be an ongoing thing—not something that you do research on once then forget about.

Establish goals – Figure out what your business goals are and see how social media can plug in with them. When you’re talking about getting funding for specific social programs, initiatives and resources, you better have some goals to drive towards to determine what success means. Maybe your goal is to get 123 new ideas for fan promotions. Maybe it’s to provide better customer service and reduce complaints. Maybe it’s to fill some of those cheap seats you’re not selling. Maybe it’s to get 500 people talking about your charity program. Your goals
(and how you define how much they’re worth) should dictate how you approach things.

Participate don’t promote – Don’t act like you own the joint. Even if it is your own community, the community wouldn’t exist without the people who make it. Treat your community members like partners in the community.

Stay positive – At some point in time, you’ll encounter someone who is negative or critical of what you’re doing. If the person is offering criticism, thank them for taking the time to provide feedback. Don’t get into name-calling matches online or stoop to a troll’s level by engaging them. If you must engage a troll, consider doing it on the phone or in person. In some cases, it’s easier to have a real discussion when you can hear someone’s voice and understand their tone. Establish criteria to determine what comments receive a response and what don’t. When you do respond, stay positive.

Negative feedback is often one of the things brands are scared of. In many cases, the act of simply listening and showing people that you have a real human who is paying attention to what people are saying can lead to people leaving more positive criticism. If people feel like they know/can build a relationship with a real person, they’re often less likely to cry foul or leave nasty comments.

Give to get – Give people a reason to interact with you. This means you will probably have to dedicate some resources/time to producing interesting, valuable and entertaining content and you’ll have to spend some time actually talking to people, answering questions and helping them. As cool as your company’s widget may be, no one cares. They care about being helped, learning new things, getting their problems solved, being entertained and feeling appreciated. The more you give, the more you’ll receive. If you do this enough, you’ll build up a solid base of evangelists who will bring you followers, fans, community members and leads/sales.

Be honest – If you say your product can make people fly, and it really can’t, people will find out sooner or later. If you create fictional people and try to pass them off as real (Walmart did this a few years ago), this won’t fly. If you make a mistake, own up to it…quickly. People appreciate honesty and are willing to forgive companies that acknowledge their mistakes, instead of pretending they didn’t happen. Mistakes will happen. The sooner you apologize and fix things, the better people will feel about you and the sooner you can move on.

Commit adequate resources – In sports, success is often attributed to a coach, player or team. However, there are a lot of people behind the scenes (assistants, trainers, scouts, doctors, front office staff, etc) that play important roles in a team’s success. Don’t make the mistake of trying to launch a social media program or initiative and not committing the proper resources. Social media isn’t free. In many cases, one person can’t do everything. If you can’t dedicate proper resources to an initiative, it’s not going to be successful. Before starting something, it’s important to look at the resources you actually have and be realistic about what you can or can’t do.

Don’t fall in love with shiny objects – Think long term. Decide what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it, then pick the tools and platforms you may need. Don’t just use Facebook or Twitter because someone told you to. For example, if you have three customers, you may want to spend your time with them, instead of trying to get people to join a Facebook page.

Align with a cause – People on social media sites like to share things and get involved in cool projects. They especially like to share and get involved in things that benefit the world. I love what Dawn has done with their Everyday Wildlife Champions Facebook page. The page highlights interesting things people are doing to help wildlife and the environment and gives people some ways they can get involved. Would you rather join a page to talk about dish soap or join a higher cause that helps improve our world? Companies should align with a higher cause or mission and promote this through social media. It’s good for the world, and it’s good business.

Those are some thoughts and tactics for social media home runs. I’d love to hear what you’d add – in terms of tactics and if you have an examples of companies doing this well.

Life update – I recently spoke about Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with Jeff Yaniga at the Florida Direct Marketing Association’s annual event. I really enjoyed meeting some smart folks and having some great discussions. If you’d like to see the slides we used, you can check them out on Slideshare.

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