Risk & Business Magazine Miller Winter 2019 | Page 21

SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
locally sourced food or community-
centered activism. Or perhaps you’re just
an advocate of embracing the simple joys in
life. It could be anything. What matters is
that it’s simply true.
(I almost wrote “What matters is that it’s
authentic.” But “authentic” has become one
of those social buzzwords that has had all
the color and life drained out of it, leaving
an empty husk of meaning behind. So, I
didn’t.)
PERSONALIZED, NOT PERSONAL.
Social platforms do present an opportunity
to show more of the people behind a
company. But there’s a fine line between
sharing yourself and sharing a little too
much of yourself. Actually, I walk this line
on both of my accounts.
Think of personalizing your brand, not
getting personal.
The former means showing that you’re
a real human being, with actual blood
flowing through actual veins. You have a
point of view, real character, a personality.
The latter is sharing details that are
intimate or too specific to you to have
relevance for the larger community you are
trying to build.
Exactly where that line is varies according
to your own brand and that of your
company. But to give a broad example: It’s
one thing to mention feeling under the
weather—that’s personalized. It’s another
to say you have an irritating rash in a
sensitive spot.
ALLERGIC TO TOO MUCH AUTOMATION.
Obviously, there are many tools that
can help manage and scale your social
presence. IFTTT (If This Then That)
automates tasks such as auto-saving
Instagram photos to Dropbox. Buffer, dlvr.
it and others can help you manage multiple
accounts and multiple users, as well as
see the analytics behind your efforts. For
growing companies, these tools can be
handy time savers.
But I don’t rely on automation tools as
social shortcuts. And more generally, that
day on stage, I suggested that people use
them to extend and ease their efforts… not
supplant them.
I’d like to say that everyone understands
this already. But if I had a nickel for every
time I got a robo-sent automated direct
messages to greet me as a new Twitter
follower… well, I’d never fly coach again.
(I get a lot every day, on both accounts. Do
you do it? OMG. Stop.)
IN SOCIAL MEDIA (AND
IN LIFE, I SUPPOSE), TRUE
ENGAGEMENT TRUMPS
TECHNOLOGY.
And by the way, I realize that I’m talking
mostly about Twitter here. Probably
because Twitter seems less constrained,
less boxed-in than most other social
networks, at least to me.
Despite its longevity, Twitter persists as
a bit of the Wild West (thank god)—with
fewer implied rules and a broader mix
of people hanging out there, from teens
and Walking Dead to March Madness fans
to news outlets.
So that’s how I approach it. I suppose some
people do all this from one account; I just
happen to do it from two.
But what about you? I’d love to know how
you work it out. +
Ann Handley is a Wall Street Journal best-selling author who speaks worldwide about how
businesses can escape marketing mediocrity to ignite tangible results. IBM named her one of the
seven people shaping modern marketing.
Ann is a digital marketing pioneer and the Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs, the leading
marketing training company with more than 600,000 subscribers.
She is the Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to
Creating Ridiculously Good Content , and co-author of Content Rules: How to Create Killer
Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your
Business . Her books have been translated into 19 languages, including Turkish, Korean, Italian,
Chinese, and Japanese.
A LinkedIn Influencer, she has more than 420,000 followers on Twitter and is consistently named
one of the more influential marketers on social media.
She has contributed commentary and bylines to Entrepreneur magazine, IBM’s Think Marketing,
Inc. magazine, Mashable, Huffington Post, American Express, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal.
Ann lives in Boston, where she is Mom to creatures two- and four-legged. She is an E.B. White
Superfan, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel enthusiast, and a novice tap dancer. She escapes it all
by retreating to her tiny-house office, which houses her vintage typewriter collection.
annhandley.com
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