Best Practices for Social Media Marketing from a Tech Perspective

I was tagged by fellow blogger and friend Paisano to write about some best practices in social media. Pai mentioned two best practices, Honesty and Respect. Those are key to any relationship.

So how does someone from a tech point of view look social media?

1. Stop thinking us vs them: Of course you’d say, but often in business to customer and tech to user there is animosity. Those in the tech industry tend to look at users not as opportunity partners but people that won’t fully understand nor appreciate their work. This is not a productive approach.

So how to you turn it around? Don’t talk at them, talk with them. Sounds easy, but the key is to join the conversation, and don’t worry about leading it. If you don’t think there’s a conversation, it’s only because you aren’t taking part. Find it and jump in, but don’t try to tell folks how to think or why they’re confused. Spend most of your time listening. Benefits will abound.

2. Look for the niche and unique: Everywhere in social media is another company doing a video appealing to the technorati. Yeah, lots of blogger fodder out there, but what about the stuff for grandmas with a piercing.

Believe it or not, someone besides another tech geek might be interested in your product. Consider gearing some of your social networking and media for someone besides a web guru.

I know of one large niche, home schoolers, that is aching for all the industries to reach out to them, especially the tech industry.

Part of reaching out to niches is learning their language, or at least de-geeking your current stuff. When I’m reading about the latest genealogy tech tool for example, it’d be nice to hear about it’s features without having to understand how RSS works, or how BlueTooth links this or that.

Not new thoughts I’m sharing, but none of it is. They keys to being successful marketing in the social media world are the same ones that work in day to day life, it’s not the signs, it’s the conversation. Whatever enables and supports that will be what works.

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Tags: best practices, social media, social networking