Are there ‘rules’ to social media engagement?

One of the interesting debates that took place at the recent Alt.Conference in Cape Town revolved around social media and the “rules” (or “guidelines”) of engagement. This discussion was initiated by a great presentation that Shawn Jooste gave about social media. Essentially what he said was that so little is known about this medium that most social media experiments fail. Of course, failure is not a bad thing – provided you learn from the experience (I think Oprah may have said that).

He also alluded to whether we are asking the right questions? And questioned whether there is a measurable return on investement from social media? All very provocative questions and well worth considering.

I suppose the answer to the latter really depends on how you assess return. Is there a tangible financial return that you can easily track back to social media marketing efforts? Possibly not. However, as Tim Shier had mentioned in his previous talk about Online PR and reputation management – much of a business’ value these days is in intangible assets. So how do you value a good reputation, a buzz and interaction with customers? This undoubtedly requires a massive paradigm shift.

Something else, while we’re on the topic, that Shaun mentioned in his talk and I think is well worth bearing in mind is that experience and perspective are important in social media.

But all of this is part of a much larger and more complex issue which perhaps I will attempt to unpack in an article at a later stage. What really piqued my interest was the discussion about corporate social media strategies – and the rules or guidelines that should be imposed upon the employees doing the tweeting, blogging or Facebook-ing.

The very idea of placing constraints upon employees who are the social media “face” of an organisation totally flies in the face of what social media is primarily about: conversations. How can you possibly engage with a customer in a medium which is supposed to connect people when you are being censored? Of course, a company has a certain brand identity to maintain and manage, and one would assume that whomever is responsible for social media communication would be aware of these boundaries. But you know what they say about assumption…

I just feel that to have authentic conversations and engagement with customers, whoever is overseeing a corporate social media programme should embody the brand and understand its guiding principles – but primarily, they need to be someone who customers can relate to and identify with. If there are too many “rules” these communications run the risk of starting to sound a little trite and forced – this is surely a recipe for a social media suicide.

In an ideal world, these brand ambassadors would have engaging conversations with clients and customers and provide feedback so that products and services can be improved or adapted to meet consumer demand. Of course, it’s still marketing, so one does have a bit of an obligation to “create” a demand too.

But this is where it gets interesting. Is there really a need to lay ground-rules? Aren’t these “conventions” just inherent? In a space which is almost completely self-regulated, the community decides what is acceptable and what isn’t. You can simply de-friend or unfollow someone if you don’t like what they’re saying or if you feel you’re being bombarded. In fact, I would argue that it’s not so difficult to get followers or fans or friends as it is to keep them and keep them engaged. So, with this in mind, I really don’t think it’s necessary to formalise rules. I think that you run the risk of sounding contrived and unnatural, and that is surely off-putting in the social media space.

Although, that’s just my gut feel.