Social Media: 27 Lessons Learned / Advice You Should Take

1. Answer your own questions and seek your own ways to communicate with your audiences – Brian Solis
2. Social Media is about sociology not technology – Brian Solis
3. Content is spread by people not portals therefore is not reliant upon the social graph – Angela Courtin, MySpace
4. Understand what your brand stands for then how to communicate in the associated spaces your audience gives you permission to be in
5. When you give your brand to the consumer (it’s scary) because the consumer will mold it and shape it
6. Everyone in your company is accessible, create Social Media Guidelines for employees to suggest how to talk about your company, outline things they can talk about about the company, etc. – Chris Heuer
7. Know what your goals are then build metrics into everything to measure against those goals
8. Be careful if you use your traditional agency to get into this space – Randy Sprenger, Harley-Davidson (Amen, Randy!)
9. Be intentional. – Jeremy Holley, Warner Bros.
10. Objectives make you money. – Billy Sanez, American Airlines
11. Facebook is not the only game in town. – Ziv Navoth, Bebo
12. Take the bad with the good – social will correct itself. – Billy Sanez (I love this.)
13. Build small success stories to build internal buy-in and morale.
14. There are many ways to skin a cat, don’t rely on case studies. Listen and learn from other companies, then find what’s right for your company.
15. Social Media Marketing is a tactic in support of your objectives.
16. Everything in moderation.
17. Figure out how to build sustainable relationships vs. traditional campaign relationships where you start from zero, build base, then abandon).
18. Empower your employees – train them to be conversationalists and not marketers. – Chris Barger, GM
19. Be there before a crisis happens to have earned credibility.
20. Live up to the follow up.
21. Think through the logistics ahead of time – if you have something that is really fabulous be prepared for it to take you to a new level and be as prepared as possible and ready for the unexpected.
22. Listen! Don’t be afraid to stop or change course if your audience doesn’t like something. It’s okay to reverse tactics.
23. Integrate and embed social media early on. Social is Word of Mouth so it should be entwined in everything and not looked at as a channel.
24. When you are right, don’t be afraid to fight for it.
25. Don’t be afraid to say no, your community will back you up if it is what they want and agree with.
26. Give yourself time and permission to think big. At the same time, the idea is not enough, it must be well executed – be prepared for a great campaign to take you place you weren’t prepared for. – Chris Chambers
27. Digital and Social are not add-ons, they are starting points.

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