Social Media Faux Pas

A company, in legal terms, is a 'legal person'. It can enter into contracts, own property and even commit crimes.

A company, however, should proceed cautiously in starting Twitter and Facebook accounts. Social media's guiding principle is human interaction. For example, it's cool for CEOs to blog. Just ask Bill Marriott.

According to the CEOWatchBlog, "When a CEO (or other corporate executive) publishes a blog in his or her true voice, it encourages trust among the blog’s readers."

Author of the famed text, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David Meerman Scott (left), also shares this view. In a blog post highlighting different industry specialists' predictions on the social media trends for 2009, he estimated that those companies that seek to create personal profiles on forums such as Twitter, will soon be forced to live their external brand internally.

Hooray for web 2.0!

There are some exceptions however. For example, while Twitter is ideally suited for companies, Facebook has a page application that allows companies to track the stats of their users and their behaviours on the page. You can also set up groups on facebook and track the stats organically by monitoring group membership changes following promotional efforts.

However, it is strictly against Facebook rules to "register for a User account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a User account on behalf of any group or entity".

It can be challenging to understand "new media", as some refer to it, especially if you are newly discovering the media relations and marketing capacity of the Internet but once the basic rules have been grasped, it should be smooth sailing. Trust me, there are more similarities than differences.

Again, the basic rule is that your customer wants to talk to a real person so when you are setting up that account, think twice before you put your company name, get one from a birth certificate instead.

Further reading

CIPR Social Media Guidelines (updated January 2009)

50 Ways to Take your Blog to the Next Level

Social Media for Business - Who's Doing it Well & How

Follow this blog for regular updates on Lyrical Lava's perspectives on marketing and public relations in Barbados.