5 Tips to Avoid Social Media Disaster

2. Be Authentic

You don’t have to hire an actor to appear in your marketing videos. Let the company speak for itself.

Would an actor have been as charming as Blendtec Founder, Tom Dickson, using his high-end blenders toblend high-end electronics? Sales at the company (whose blenders will set you back $400) increased 500% along with their viral videos.

4. Avoid Social Media Done Wrong

Dave Carroll’s viral “United Breaks Guitars” video has attracted over 10 million views on YouTube. Amber cited a recent study that concluded United Airlines had lost 180 million dollars and 10 percent of their share price as a result of the damage to their reputation. That’s enough to have bought Dave 80,000 of the Taylor guitars that United refused to replace.

6. Keep up on Trends: What’s Hot This Year on the Web?

• Group buying: Groupon and others have become the fastest growing web sector. Watch out forUforce, a reverse Groupon business model that allows customers to band together and propose bulk buying to businesses in return for discounts.
• Quora is a crowdsourcing question and answer resource that’s gaining traction. Your brand’s presence could position it as an authority on topics related to your products.

7. Key Social Media Statistics

Here are some stats from the presentation that caught our eye:

• 66 percent of women don’t check in with Foursquare due to the “creepiness factor.” Simply put, many women don’t want to constantly publicize where they are out of concern for their safety. This might be something to consider if you’re trying to find appropriate social channels for a brand with a largely female customer base.
• 35 percent of people use mobile applications before they get out of bed in the morning. No word yet as to how many of those applications are alarm clocks.

1. Have a Social Media Policy

Social media sites have a home in today’s workplace, but each company needs to develop its own rules for its employees about how and when social media should be used at work.

Does anybody like writing policy agreement? Nope. So use Policy Tool, a free web-based policy generator that will write your company’s policy based on a 12-question survey. You can customize it from there.