Social Media's Ten Commandments

My co-worker, Mike Weiner created this Ten Commandments of Social Media Marketing to help everyone to be more successful in their use of social media tools.

If you attended the MN IABC Social Media event this week, you may have received this mouse pad with these 10 rules:

TEN COMMANDMENTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

I. Thou shalt not lie or conceal one’s identity. Be clear about who you are and your role in your organization. Hiding behind a fake persona is only asking for trouble, particularly with bloggers.

II. Honor thy ears and eyes before thy lips. When approaching a social network group or blogger for the first time, spend time reading past posts and understanding the unique focus and language used before joining the conversation.

III. Thou shalt not covet control of the message. Understand from the outset that social media involves a two-way dialogue that cannot be “word-smithed” or “spun.”

IV. Thou shalt not be overly commercial. No one enjoys a sales pitch, whether it’s at a party or among friends online. Only offer commercial links if it truly fits the context of the conversation.

V. Remember the virtues of integration. Don’t rely on social media technology alone to move your message. A well-coordinated plan that includes advertising, promotions and traditional media relations is still the best way to build your brand.

VI. Thou shalt have only one social media account. Too many similar pages can be confusing. Make sure your organization is coordinated in its social media efforts and refrain from opening more than one account per platform.

VII. Thou shalt not use canned business jargon. Impersonal messages are a turn-off to bloggers, including press releases. Instead, communicate in a human-to-human tone and let them know you appreciate their content.

VIII. Thou shalt not let your social media accounts die. Setting up pages and accounts on Facebook, Twitter or Ning is only the beginning. Commit to feeding unique content to these on a weekly basis.

IX. Thou shalt provide value. You must give the people a reason to engage with you. Offers of free product are one way, but plugging into the causes and communities members care about is also powerful.

X. Thou shalt not over-estimate how interesting you are. Make sure your messages are planned, thoughtful and provide value. This is particularly true with Twitter and Facebook updates. No one cares that you’re eating a ham sandwich.

Twitter Tools for Multiple Accounts

Personal Note from @sbenny35:
Some people have questioned my use of multiple Twitter accounts, saying I'm being dishonest. I disagree. Twitter is about online relationships with others who have similar interests and if you mash all of your interests into one, you'll end up following more than you can digest.

I've broken my accounts down so my followers who don't care to hear about food won't be receiving my ChipDipper tweets, same goes for my other accounts.
-
I've been experimenting with 3 different tools over the past few weeks to find which program is best for managing multiple Twitter accounts. I tried HootSuite, Splitweet, and Twhirl.

HootSuite

• Pros
• Organizes easily
• Everything is separated by account
  
• Sending Feature
• You can send to one or all by just selecting each account the tweet applies to
  
• Pending Feature
• This is especially good if you have a schedule you like to stick to for a blog. You can write the tweet in advance, select your time and then it automatically sends it out.
• Separation of DM and Replies and Sent
• Easy to pull up just the DMs, Replies or Sent tweets
  
• Stats
• If you use the URL shorten feature within the program (owl.ly) it will keep statistics on who clicked on the URL and how many times
  

• Cons
• Sending Feature
• Maybe it's only me, but sometimes when I would click to send it to one account, it would send it to a different account or all 3!
• Web Browser must be kept open
• Sometimes I like to put the internet away but would like to still receive updates without needing to continuously check my web page
  
• No notices
• I like receiving little pop-up notices

SpliTweet

• Pros
• Dashboard
• Has everything on one screen
  
• Color Coding
• Each account is assigned a color. When tweeting you select all or just one and when you receive tweets they have the color next to it to indicate which account received the message.
• Updates Fairly Frequently
• Separates your Replies, DMs and Favorites
  
• Again, always a nice feature to be able to just pull-up messages and tweets specifically for you
  
• Brand Mentions
• Enter in brands that you are interested in and mention of those keywords will be put into this separate category for your reference.
  
• Cons
• Lay-out

• I don't like the way the page is formatted. This lay-out is the exact reason I don't keep just one account. I like having my topics a little more separated than a colored square along the side of each tweet.
  
• Web Browser must be kept open
• Again, sometimes I like to put the internet away
  
• Colors
• Maybe this is me being girly, but I like being able to select the colors for each of the accounts

Twhirl

• Pros
• It's a downloaded software
• You download this program and it functions on your computer without keeping a web browser open all the time!
  
• Accounts have separate box
• Each account has it's own separate box letting you pull-up an individual box or all 3 at a time. To those of you who IM (which I assume is a majority if you're on social networks like Twitter or Facebook) it's set-up like an IM box
  
• RTs, DMs and @s appear in a different color
• To make sure the messages stand out among the others, the tweet directed at you will be another color (varying upon the color scheme of your choice)
  
• Minimize but still receive alerts
• Little messages pop-up at the bottom right-hand corner of your screen when you've received tweets
  
• Buttons along the bottom and side
• Each box has it's own set of buttons along the bottom and side of the text box. The boxes allow you to pull-up your Replies, DMs, Favorites, Friends/Followers, your personal message Archive, Profile LookUp and Twitter Search. You can also Shorten a URL, Upload a Photo, Send a Tweet or Refresh your page.
  
• Fades when not in use
• When you are in another program, the box becomes clear or a "ghost" in the background
  
• Cons
• Several boxes are open at once
• If you don't like having a lot open on your screen at once, this can be a problem, however I just minimize mine. Then when I want to write, I can pull the box up whenever.
  

My choice is Twhirl. I love it! It's everything that I want in a multi-account managing tool. It's really easy to use and keeps me in the know. Let me know your thoughts!

Psst! Rumor has it that TweetDeck will hopefully be expanding into the realm of "Multi-Account Managing." If/when that happens I'll have to re-evaluate my choices. I really like TweetDeck when managing just one account...hmmm...

Once in a while I have a thought and no outlet

Please ignore my old posts (unless you are interested in my study abroad trip to Spain in 2007, then feel free to continue reading) I realized I wanted to write a review about things on Twitter, but had no outlet to share it.