Goals, objectives and principles of social networking

Typically, is social media goal setting and objectives planning are similar to the general principles of PR-planning: reputation KPIs, audience coverage, the wording of key points of communication. Further objectives tree is constructed, the audience is segmented by quality groups, messages for each of them are written. So you start working and developing effective projects and actions on the best channels of communication. I prefer to create a prototype of the communication model and test on a focus group, adjust it if necessary, get a budget and start an implementation. Coverage of the tasks of social networks commensurate with their abilities - from selling apples to crisis communications. You can even conduct case studies, test product and choose the chief for your transportation department. And the principles of communications will meet these challenges. But it’s very important to conform to generally accepted norms of behaviour. Don’t be rude, don’t continue senseless debates, don’t even try to start censorship on your blog. Also don’t lie. Please.  It’s rather better to be positive, non-intrusive, interesting, original  erudite. Remember that you are a storyteller. A good story told in time to the right person, can enter the company name in the history of the market.

On-line ecology

On-line environmental friendliness is very important. It is very sad to see the projects’ profiles, rapidly and successfully carried out, and then abandoned at the mercy of spammers and bots. It is clear that qualitatively promoted site with the high attendance and popularity is very nice meal for commercial posters. Project ends, the participants get their prizes, the company decided to stop the SMM-promotion, and after month or two of old beauty and fascinating history we have only painted graffiti wall spamming. It is rather strange as it’s very easy to close the public access to the SMM-group. This is what I call "clean up". Actually, again, nothing is original here - in real world the maintenance of cleaning office, home or city is not even a case to discuss.

Quantity and quality

The lack of quantitative/qualitative focus the audience will certainly play a cruel joke on those for whom the figures in the reports overshadow the strategic objectives of the project. For instance – one manager desperately need to show a convincing figure in the statistics of visitors to the page by the end of the month. So he begins to wreak news, comments, videos and pictures of all available profiles. Even, perhaps, fall to such a mechanism of "black PR" as bots and the "ghosts". Perhaps, at the end of the month the statistics will shine with a four-five-digit numbers. But in reality, the reputation of the company / product / project will not acquire anything new, but in very advanced cases even lose. We remember the shocking statistics from “Vkontakte”: there were 76% of noodles in a "Rollton" group, 73% in "Svyaznoy Bank,"  59% in Adidas and  37 % in Coca-Cola. Conclusions are evident.

Main mistakes of social-media managers

As the social-media is still too new trend in corporate communications, let's not talk about the "mistakes", but "failed experiments". At least, PR-effect is very long story, who knows where those missteps will lead their authors.

However, as Paul Holmes said on his lecture this April, there hasn’t appeared any fundamentally new thing during last 80 years in public relations. Generally speaking, the basis of all failures of web-PR-experiments are the same mistakes as in off-line. In my opinion, the main factors of bad luck are reluctant to listen to the audience, not understanding the difference between advertising and PR, the lack of originality and creativity, as well as unwarranted activity. As you can see, nothing new and it is typical for the Internet. Specific things - such as too long texts are too big/ small pictures, unattractive prizes for sweepstakes and confusing conditions – all this can be corrected by own or somebody’s practice. In addition, the information field on the Internet is changing rapidly, and today no one remember what exactly was so terrible on the company’s page a month ago. This is great advantage of online, but this is the main risk for you – you should always be faster, remembering that the competitors warm your back by their breath. And everybody is copying everything – or, ok we can say that the ideas are just flying on the air. So you burn three days and caught a brilliant idea, admired your "fans" and "likers", and next day after your neighbor added a couple features, and sowed in his audience. A week later, no one will remember who was the first, and the audience will become hungry for more fresh ideas. Lose the rhythm is another great risk for the PR-specialist.