R2: Know The "Knows" of Social Media

Social media in today’s life revolves around a host of unwritten laws. These are not laws that will put you in jail or will cause the world to suffer. However, these unwritten laws are what help govern companies to utilize their social media accounts to the best of their ability. Listed below are what I call the best “Knows” of Social Media which are each laws that should be followed in order to best use online social media to promote business.

1. Know your audience

In order to effectively produce an online media campaign, you need to know what your audience is looking for. This can be narrowed down by having accurate analytics of your audience. Does your audience contain mostly of young people? Then try making more modern references that they would appreciate. Is your audience consisting or more sports fans? Then be sure to mention things that might relate to what they enjoy. Keeping on target with what your audience is looking for is one of the key ways of not only growing your audience but retaining it.

2. Know your resources

There are many different social media platforms out on the Internet. Knowing which ones to make best use out of is essential to ensuring your business reaches its target audience. Facebook and Twitter may have many more opportunities for growth compared to Spotify or Tinder. But there is also the resource of people. In the reading, Andreas Kaplan said “The main idea underlying collaborative projects is that the joint effort of many actors leads to a better outcome than any actor could achieve individually” (Kaplan 62). People are just as valuable as any platform.

3. Know your limits

With every platform, there are just some things that a large company should not engage in. Treating a corporate Twitter or Facebook account as if it were a personal account does not show that there are proper limits on what the company is putting out there. It would not be the most professional attitude of a company to engage in Twitter wars or go on long Facebook rants at 3AM.

4. Know your power

The power of social media is an amazing thing. And in order to know how to use it, you need to know what kind of power it possesses. This will allow any company to take advantage of their platforms full potential in order to most effectively use social media for marketing, selling, or simply getting the word out about their company.

5. Know your responsibilities

With every great power comes an even greater responsibility. With large companies, they can have a social media following in the millions. With audiences of that size, companies and organizations have a responsibility to ensuring that on their platforms, they are able to maintain a place that will not exclude anybody and will act in the best interests of the followers.

6. Know your voice

Finally, a company will find many things through social media but the most important is finding their voice. Some companies will be able to find a specific style that fits the messaging they are trying to send out online. It allows the followers to feel not only a more personal connection with the business but also recognize what the company will post as familiar.

Kaplan, Andreas M., “Users of the World, Unite! The Challenges and Opportunities of Social Media,” Business Horizons (2010) 53, 59-68