Hermanoff Public Relations

Photo Credit: Ikon Images

Thanks to social media, following companies is as easy as watching television. However, the social media world can turn into a cruel one with one wrong move, damaging the reputation you took years to build.

Sarah Skerik of PR Newswire recently gave some good advice on ways to avoid a social media disaster. We’ve tweaked her ideas to focus on avoiding a professional PR crisis:

Keep it clean – While it’s become socially acceptable for TV networks to use language formerly considered vulgar, this is one trend that your business should avoid.
Make sure you want to see it again; it will come back to you – Yes, you’re able to delete any tweet or status update you please. However, there are two reasons doing so is a bad idea: a) someone can still grab a screenshot of your message; and b) backtracking on social media leaves a bad impression on your business.
Consider your stakeholders – If you have any doubts that your message may offend the people you care about – or those you want to respect you – then refrain from posting it. Cool off before you write anything. As your mother probably told you, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.”
Stay classy – Since no one is perfect, you’re likely to have a dissatisfied customer whose mission in life is to damage your company’s reputation. In situations like these, it’s best to admit wrongdoing on your company’s part and offer a solution to the customer – putting out the fire in the process.
Do some scenario planning – This simply involves thinking before you speak. Don’t just think about the positive outcomes of your message, but also think about the negative responses your message could receive.
Divide and conquer (or don’t mix your accounts) – Every company has a few social media savvy employees to manage the social media accounts. Social media managers must keep their personal profiles distant from the company’s profiles to avoid posting to the wrong account.. And always remember to manage your privacy settings carefully.

The ease of sharing information is what makes social media both a blessing and a curse. With social media, what it all boils down to is being cautious of the message you send.

LinkedIn may no longer be “new news” as far as social media networks go, but there are still companies that have yet to join. Whether it’s because they are stuck on old ways and don’t see the potential or they are too busy to create a company profile, they need to take advantage of it.

LinkedIn has several benefits including the ability to connect to employees and customers, post job openings, and promote products and services.

Connecting with your customers and your employees is crucial to the success of your company. Building relationships with your customers is growing harder to do without the help of social media. LinkedIn allows your employees and customers to follow your company and receive news updates.

Employees can connect to your company through their own profiles by adding the company as their employer. This links the company’s profile page to the employees which makes their connections only a click away from your company page.

Since LinkedIn is one of the main resources for job searches and job applicants, what better place to post a job within your company? It is very easy to create a job post and include information such as the experience level and required skills along with the job description. LinkedIn also allows you to choose between accepting applicants resumes internally through LinkedIn or externally which directs them to an outside website.

Your company profile would not be complete without the ability to list your products and services. When adding a product or service, there are several details that you can include such as an image, key features, contact information, and a YouTube URL. LinkedIn even allows you to create a promotion for your product or service. Another benefit of adding your products and services to your profile is that it allows for your clients and customers to write recommendations for them.

Some of the other advantages that LinkedIn has to offer are page statistics and the ability to link your company blog. When you update your blog, the RSS feed will automatically update on your LinkedIn profile. The post will be visible to anyone who looks at your profile and your followers will be notified of the update.

The page statistics provides you the ability to monitor how much activity your profile is getting from page views, unique visitors, and clicks on products and services.

Of course the more active you are through your LinkedIn, blog, and various other social media accounts, the more traffic you are likely to drive to your company’s profile!

Company profiles on LinkedIn are free to make, but you must be authorized by that company in order to create the page. LinkedIn will ask for your email at that company for verification. From there you can add administrators, update the profile, and a logo.

So get connected and join LinkedIn!

Happy networking!