There are a few things you’ll hear over and over again when reading about social media:
Engagement
Transparency
Time
Strategy
and so on. You must engage with your customers: when they talk, you must talk back. But don’t pretend you’re a customer or a mysterious blogger, and rave on and on about how marvelous your product is. People will pick up on it, – and call you out for it. Developing a real page, a community, a resource, will also take a lot of time and effort. Companies are hiring social media promoters, analyzers and coordinators as real manpower within their staff. Gatorade hired a firm to develop a whole system that’s devoted to helping those folks. Then, when it comes down to rolling out the tweets, status updates and flickr photos, you’ll find some step-by-step instructions, books and posts that tell you how you should define your plan and create your strategy for the long-term.
These tips are all true and helpful. But the main point that isn’t hit home as much as it should be, (and what it seems social media newcomers find difficult to grasp) is the idea of evolution. Facebook for instance, is constantly rolling out new features and settings, to the point where they’re being sued. It is not the same network as it was when it first started. It is not the same network it was two months ago. So to not embrace this concept of change within your base of followers is a big misstep. By all means learn how the systems’ foundations work, but social media has a big trial-and-error component to it. You could think a particular status update will garner comments and likes galore, only to find it was completely ignored. To hold fast then, to the strategy you developed that strictly allows for one or two types of posts, will not grow your community. Use the information from each interaction to understand what it is your customers want to hear and what it is they like. (They do call it “Like” for a reason, after all.)
Be flexible.
Try things.
Let it evolve.