Top 10 social networking tips for enterprise - part one

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You may be forgiven for thinking that social networking is all about orchestrating riots and stalking celebrities. However, the truth is that social media is a business tool that no enterprise can afford to ignore. But how can you implement a social networking strategy that actually works? IT Pro has been asking those in the know...

If your customers are spread around the globe, this affects not only what language you communicate with them in, but also what time, and the content and tone.

1. Be human

Kate Craig-Wood, managing director of Memset, has found that having a 'face' on your business account is really important, abiding by the old sales adage of people buy from people.

"It might sound a little odd coming from a technologist who is a firm believer in the future of the cloud IaaS market as an automated, interoperable commodity market place much like the electrical power grid is today" she explains "but we are not there yet and even then there will always be people and values behind companies".

Craig-Wood also advises against the PR department approach to social media business. "Too often you see blog posts and Twitter accounts that are clearly generated by a PR department, or done generically from a company,” she warns. “I think they are missing that important objective of presenting a personable face".

2. Globalise it and scale it

Any investment of resources into social media has to have longevity. To set up a Facebook or Twitter account without a long term plan would be folly.

To turn this from theory to reality, enterprises need to ensure social media presence is managed in a unified way by creating and maintaining one that is scalable, whether your company needs a global presence now or in the future.

Luca Benini, European managing director at Buddy Media, explains the business reasoning and advises to look at location first. “If your customers are spread around the globe, this affects not only what language you communicate with them in, but also what time, and the content and tone," he says.

Then there's the small matter of analytics as your presence on social media grows. "It has to be tied to all enterprise social media channels on a global scale including applications" Benini warns, adding "so you can use historical benchmarks and adjust your activity accordingly. You have to work with key stakeholders within the business to determine appropriate KPIs, for large enterprises.”

This also means making sure the KPIs apply to the performance of social media in every country and to every audience. What’s more, businesses have to make sure the internal processes to manage this are also scalable.

3. Let community conservations drive your SEO

Adam Mertz, senior product marketing manager at Jive Software reckons that it's far better to create your own social community than simply rely on the likes of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to do it for you.

"It's more effective as you have 100 per cent control over the look, experience, SEO benefit, and most importantly the data behind the interactions" Mertz insists, adding "the best way to approach your community strategy is to tightly integrate it with both your Facebook and wider social web strategy."

Indeed, any decent community provider should be able to expose your community conversations within Facebook as an app living alongside your Wall. "This exposes people on your fan page to your community, and in addition, when people post on the community app there's a double bonus" Mertz explains.

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