Thai-Spy.com Thailand Private Investigators

Dear Colleagues:

There are some of us who are old hands and experts at various forms of social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and others of us who are just getting our feet wet and maybe not fully up to speed on some of the finer points.

While you can indeed spend hours puzzling over and fiddling with your settings on most social media platforms, there is a simpler and much more approachable list of things you just should not be doing: no way, nuh-uh, never-ever-ever.

I take it as a given that you see some value in social media and your accounts there, and that you’ve spent at least a little time developing your social media presence.

That can range from building a network of Followers on Twitter, to making at least some effort to build a network of Friends on your Facebook Profile and gain Likes to your Facebook Page, as well as building a network of contacts on LinkedIn.

Having invested that time and effort, it would be a shame to see it all go to waste because your account was suspended or even deleted, wouldn’t it?

Every social media platform has a set of rules — Terms of Service (TOS), Member Code of Conduct, Rights and Responsibilities, etc. — and as a condition of maintaining an account there it is imperative that you read and abide by them.

Why? Because failure to do so can lead to loss of your accounts. This may seem like stating the obvious, but there’s a particular risk factor most people don’t consider.

From my prior career arc through the IT field I can tell you that without exception the customer service departments of all online services and social media brands are perpetually understaffed and overworked.

These staffs are rated on how many issues they resolve, and nothing is easier for them to resolve than a clear-cut violation of a written policy related to account usage. This is a numbers game and one that’s very easy to lose.

In short, it’s easier for them to just close your account than to write to you asking you to fix the defect in your account — especially if someone files a complaint taking just a minute or two to cite the precise chapter, section and item in the TOS that your profile is contravening.

They won’t bat the ball back and forth over the net with you because they simply don’t have the time. Their motivation is to work through the queue as quickly as possible. With one click, they’re done (and you account is toast!) and they’re on to the next complaint — a win for them, but a loss for you.

Why would someone file a complaint about your account? You may have enemies. You may have disappointed someone. You may have rubbed someone the wrong way with an off-hand comment. Or you may be in a market and segment so highly competitive that cut-throat would be an understatement.

(There’s also the philosophical view that eliminating social media competition from players — often upstarts or unethical operatiors — who can’t or won’t read and follow the TOS is actually in the best interests of both the prospective clients and the industry. That’s a larger can of worms outside the scope of this already-long article.)

There’s also the risk that some smart engineer or manager working at that social media company (IT is loaded with them) will one day write a simple script to look for all the non-personal names used on accounts and provide a way to automatically deactivate or delete them.

It’s a long list of potential reasons why another party might bring your non-compliant account to the attention of The People With The Power. The best defense is… just don’t give them the opening in the first place! Your social media accounts are important business assets and you should treat them as such.

Here are the mistakes I see many of my colleagues making (and these do include some that I made as a social media newbie):

1) On LinkedIn, don’t use you firm’s logo as the image on your personal page! LinkedIn requires that you use only a picture of yourself and/or a headshot. While the wording is unclear, it is written in such a way as precludes a logo or trademark.

FYI, nothing seems to prevent you from putting your logo into one corner of the image so long as it doesn’t obscure your face. And should you care not to have your image on LinkedIn, they allow you to delete your profile image entirely.

2) Again on LinkedIn, your user profile cannot be the name of your firm. Your user profile is intended to be about you, not the company you work for or own. In LinkedIn’s own words:

“Don’t undertake the following: Create a user profile for anyone other than a natural person”.

They are deadly serious about removing user profiles that violate this particular rule.

You can create a company page for your firm — it’s easy and painless. Doing that not only preserves your user profile but also increases your exposure. Many other LinkedIn users search by company specialty and location rather than searching user profiles when they are seeking a partner, sub-contractor or vendor. (And, yes, this would be the perfect place for your logo.)

But for your user profile, use your personal name and only your personal name. Don’t even risk a hybridization such as “Jane Smith – Smith Investigations LLC”. Again from the LinkedIn TOS:

“Don’t undertake the following: Upload, post, email, InMail, transmit or otherwise make available or initiate any content that: Adds to a content field content that is not intended for such field”.

Name means your personal name and only that, not your name and that of your business.

3) Taking a look now at Facebook, the one critical mistake to avoid is that of using a Profile as a Page. Just don’t do it! A “profile” is of a user, an individual, natural person. Not a business, club, organization, etc.

The fact that there are many doing this does not in anyway make the Rights and Responsibilities less binding on you. Just because everybody else is doing 70 on the freeway won’t stop the cops from giving you a speeding ticket…

Instead make your Facebook Profile about you, the individual, then take a few moments to create a company Page for your organization. Again it’s more exposure and makes you that much more bulletproof.

If you’ve already run afoul of this rule, Facebook is your friend: they have a fairly simple tool that allows you to convert your Profile to a Page so there’s a minimum of wasted effort in recreating content.

4) Google+ is not something I’ve experimented with yet, but the same rules apply as for Facebook. Until Google+ opens its doors to business pages, use your Google+ account only for your personal name.

They’ve already temporarily deactivated many business-related pages (not deleted, fortunately) and did that service-wide and proactively without demand from users. If Facebook did that, millions of Profiles would suddenly be locked or gone; I hope yours wouldn’t be among them.

5) Twitter: there’s very little you can do wrong here to run afoul of the fairly benign Terms of Service. I’d just encourage everyone to keep in mind a few simple principles:

• Don’t use Tweets solely to broadcast commercial messages (nobody loves a spambot).
• Mix in personal comments but remember you are speaking as a professional, too.
• Cultivate relationships with your Followers and those you Follow because business may come from it later on.
• Take time to thank people for Following you with a Direct Message.
• Be free with reciprocal Follows because, let’s face it, you aren’t Lady Gaga or Ashton Kutcher, and most reasonable people don’t see a Follow as being a warranty of any sort.

(Twitter will in fact delete accounts which send out exceptionally high volumes of spam Tweets, but it takes a fair amount of engineering acumen to create and implement such a spambot.)

But the most important thing you can do to get a better degree of engagement and more Follows on Twitter is also one of the simplest: upload a profile image (a headshot or your logo — anything is better than that egg-shaped placeholder) and take just a minute to provide a little profile info.

Summing it up, whichever social media platform gets a majority of your time and effort, buy yourself some insurance by learning the rules of the road and living by them.

With best regards,

T.J. Altman
Director of Operations
Thai-Spy.com Thailand Private Investigators

 

Posted: 16 August 2011 in Shop Talk.
Tags: Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, marketing, social media, twitter