This document provides best practices for using social media for business purposes. It recommends keeping personal and professional accounts separate, focusing posts on bringing value to your target audience, monitoring your communities and competitors, and maintaining appropriate ratios of broadcasted information versus engagement. It also lists specific dos and don'ts, such as giving credit when reposting others' work, correcting mistakes promptly, and avoiding self-promotion in comment sections.

1. BOSS
CREATIVE
BEST PRACTICES
© 2010 Boss Creative

2. The following is not intended to be a complete list of social
media best practices. It is a starting point to help you create
your own. Please review the following and customize these
concepts to meet your specific goals and objectives. Review
them with the appropriate stakeholders within your
organization before instituting any social media campaign.
P ER S O N A L A N D PR I VA T E A C C O U N T S
If you have a social media account in your name for the express purpose of promoting the
company, you should keep in mind that this is not a personal account. This is a
professional account and should adhere to company policies. You should only follow and
friend people who will deliver value to the company. This will usually not include personal
friends.
If you maintain a personal social media account or blog, prominently state that the
opinions expressed by you do not reflect the views or opinions of the company. Consider
© 2010 Boss Creative

3. what you or others on your blog are saying about the company, your coworkers and our
clients. Non-disclosure policies apply to social media. Also review company policies
regarding personal accounts or blogs for additional guidelines.
Never combine personal and professional accounts.
Understand what’s important to your target
audience and bring value to them every
day.
Don’t be one-dimensional. Try a variety of
tactics and determine which ones are
working best. Drop tactics that don’t work
and embrace the ones that do. Your
community will show you the way.
C O MM U N IT I E S
Some people are not going to follow you
back. Some people are going to unfriend
you. Don’t make a stink about it.
Never follow someone and then unfollow
them as soon as they start following you.
Very uncool.
No one wants to follow a non-celebrity with
10 followers and friends. Continue to friend
and follow back everyone until you reach a
modest number of followers. Every few
months your community should be
strategically evaluated. Consider which
followers meet your criteria and move them
into lists.
© 2010 Boss Creative

4. Add yourself to directories so people can more easily find you.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10199077-2.html
Categorize your community of fans, friends and followers into one of three groups:
Targeted as someone who we would like following us
(A business lead)
Targeted as an influencer
(One who influences business leads)
Targeted as a content provider
PPO S T S
You’re playing with live ammo. There are real
Be clear. people reading what you post. Respect them
and their values.
Be concise.
Be clear. (Just wanted to remind you.)
Shorter posts are more easily reposted.
Add links.
Test a link before you post it.
Consider whether what you are posting is bringing value to your community.
If you are about to post something that everyone is posting, are you really adding value or
just giving your followers something they can get anywhere? Be different. Add a unique
perspective or voice. Think about how to bring more to the conversation.
Announcing that you are about to get to 1,000 followers brings no value to the people
already following you. If this need to announce is as part of a larger strategy, then think of
some way to post this while still bringing value to your community.
© 2010 Boss Creative

5. If you’re not sure about
posting something, pause.
Listen to that little voice in
your head. It’s telling you
something. You might want to
ask for a second opinion.
Give context to your
responses so everyone will
understand what you’re
talking about. That way they’ll
be able to join the
conversation.
In Twitter use a period before
the @ symbol so that
everyone can follow the
conversation.
If you are going to repost or
retweet someone’s work, read
it first.
Give others credit if you are
reposting their work.
Disclose your relationship with a partner or client when discussing them.
Correct mistakes promptly. Be quick to apologize if you make a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes. The
difference is in how we deal with them.
Stick to your area of expertise.
If you are going to be away for a while, make sure your last post (the first thing that someone is going to
see while you’re away) is a good one.
If you’re going to be away for an extended period of time, announce that you’ll be gone. People will
wonder what happened to you if you post regularly and then suddenly stop.
Post frequently but don’t post them all at once. Consider when this information will be useful to your
community. Spread posts throughout the day. And only repeat important ones.
Don’t repost anything more than twice in one day unless you are trapped in a hole filled with snakes and
you are begging for someone to throw you a rope.
Ask questions to spark engagement.
Twitter is not Facebook. And Facebook is not Twitter. It’s rare that it makes sense to post the exact same thing on
oth sites. For example, Facebook users don’t appreciate or understand Twitter shorthand and symbols.2010 Boss Creative
©
n Twitter use hashtags that identify you and the subject matter in your post. People find others by searching
ashtags.
inks will get you rated higher in the Facebook algorithm than just a status update. Video and photos will trump
nks.

6. O PP O R TU N I T I ES
Humanize your profile and bio info. No one wants a
relationship with a robot.
Humanize your posts. Show some personality.
Turn on geolocation.
Have a consistent profile picture across all sites.
If someone asks for help, then please help them. This is
an opportunity for you to be a hero.
Be transparent about your identity. If someone seems
confused about who you are or whom you represent,
this might be a good opportunity to explain.
On Facebook, if someone comments on your post,
comment back. It increases the number of comments
on your post (one of the factors in the Facebook
algorithm.) It will raise your status and visibility to other
Facebook users.
© 2010 Boss Creative

7. D IR EC T M E S SA G E S
Think about what you are about to post and consider whether it is bringing value to your
community. If not, then it might be better sent as a direct message.
Publicly correcting someone can be embarrassing to them—even if you think you are
helping. Direct message them with help.
Private matters should be handled privately, not posted publicly.
If you set up an auto message to send to new followers make sure it brings value. And
don’t ask for people to click on a link in an auto message. First you need to develop a
relationship with them.
© 2010 Boss Creative

8. BAD IDEAS
Do not pitch.
You should probably ask for permission before talking about coworkers.
Never disclose personal information.
Never lose your cool. Don’t let it become personal.
Don’t tell others how they should be using social media.
Tagging photos should only be done as part of a bigger marketing strategy. It’s fraught
with issues. Be very careful about tagging any photos.
The comment section is not a good place to put a link to your services. It’s a good place
to recommend others, but not yourself. It’s too self-serving. Direct message them with an
offer to help if you think it is appropriate.
© 2010 Boss Creative

9. W H A T T O W A TC H
Set up alerts so that you can monitor what people are saying about your brand.
Monitor people using names that are similar to your brand. If there is confusion out there,
clarify that they do not represent your brand.
Monitor posts by other companies in your category. Don’t sabotage them. Learn from their
mistakes and successes.
Follow and friend people and businesses that could potentially give you content to repost.
Note how often you retweet others. This number should be high.
Note how often you ask people to retweet something you said. This number should be low.
Monitor the ratio of how often you broadcast information and how
often you are engaging with your fans, friends and followers.
Most businesses should follow a 70:25:05 ratio: information
targeted to the psychographic lifestyle of your audience (70%),
engagement (25%) and information about your products/services
(5%).
Celebrities should follow a similar ratio: engagement (70%),
information about themselves (25%) and information about their
products/services (5%).
© 2010 Boss Creative

10. CONTACT: Mike Johnston
Boss Creative
206.250.7915
mike@bosscreative.net
twitter.com/bossseattle
twitter.com/johnstonmike
facebook.com/mikejohnston
linkedin/in/4mikejohnston
© 2010 Boss Creative