The Paradox of Choice in Social Media
Now that so many people have jumped into the socialsphere some may have realised that they’ve unwittingly opened up their brand and unleashed a co-creative platform.
Take facebook pages for example, many have now mirrored what all the cool kids were doing and created a page for their business or organisation. In doing so some have opened themselves up to not only great community generated ideas but also slander and ridicule. This openness has definitely freaked some peeps out.
There are varying levels of co-creation and all have reasonable amount of openness. One of the biggest decisions anyone will face when entering the social space is the trade-off between providing an awesome open platform for your consumers/enthusiasts or opening up to be destroyed by people who hate you.
My advice on this is: “If people hate you figure out why and fix it fast” – if you’re not sure whether people hate you open up and find out – but be willing to change.
So what are the right tools and how open do you make them?
There are so many social tools out there and they all have various setting. The truth of the matter is that there’s no one size fits all cookie cutter lot of tools and settings to use.
So how on earth are you or anyone else supposed to choose the right ones and what sort of questions should you be asking your self when fine tuning your setting? Some of the questions below might be useful as a starting point for making the tough decisions about how to attack your social media efforts. Enjoy!
Basics – why would people follow you?
- What is your business good at? – Are you good enough at what you do to have fans and followers?
- Why are you getting into social media? If the answer isn’t to do with adding value to your customers experience – then don’t bother.
What platforms to use
- What is the clear and measurable purpose behind each platform you’re using? – how are you going to use each platform to achieve it?
- Where are the social spaces that your enthusiasts hang out?
- What are the people you’re engaging with excited about?
- Do you have extra value-add to bring to each social media platform?
- What are you excited about?
- What are you good at? (writing, story telling, conversing)
- How much time are you prepared to give it?
- Are you willing to change the way you operate?What do you want out of it ? – it’s an ugly question but it needs to be asked, if you’re doing it for fun you’re unlikely to take the steps necessary to create the extra value-add needed to be truly outstanding
Fine Tuning Your Settings
- What would your enthusiasts want to be involved in?
- What’s the incentive for people to engage with your organisation?
- What value do you want to add & then receive back from your community?
- What are the benefits for you and your community?
- What are the risks for you and your community?
- What do you people to be able to do on your social platform (fan page/account etc)?
- What’s your strategy for dealing with slander and hatred
- What is the potential impact of slander and hatred? – it could be a positive learning experience?
Would love to hear what uThnk about social media strategy and settings!