Building Social Media Relationships? Keep it Real.

How do you build better social media relationships? Keep it real. Or in different terms, remember to always remain human. Create content in the way in which you would say it to a friend or colleague. Find a tone that fits your brand, but also fits your audience.

Many brands struggle with this because they don’t want to be seen as unprofessional, but being conversational doesn’t equate to unprofessional. Brands need to relate to their audience. So, the first step is knowing your audience. Are you listening to them? Do you know what content they are sharing? Do you know how to respond to their questions or concerns? You need to be able to say “yes” to these questions in order to create content followers will find valuable and engaging.

At my organization, Carilion Clinic, finding a brand voice on social media has been a journey. As a healthcare organization, like many in the U.S., our overall focus has shifted away from promoting clinical services and physicians to being seen as a resource for health and wellness information. Due to healthcare reform, we are in a place where we want to keep people healthy and out of the hospital, by helping them manage chronic health conditions. If these types of conditions (diabetes, heart failure, COPD) are not addressed early on, they will end up costing us more down the road and lessen a patient’s quality of life. Both of those things are not what we want. This shift to a health and wellness focus has actually helped us find a brand voice on social media.

Beyond Facebook and Twitter, social platforms like Pinterest have enabled us to better create content our audience (significantly female) will want to use and share. We’ve created boards for Healthy Foods, Child Safety, Adolescent & Student Health, among others. This type of content isn’t just about promoting our services or providers, although they are sometimes highlighted, it’s more about raising awareness of health conditions, consumer recalls, safety tips, easy recipes, etc. — all things a female audience may relate to.

On Facebook and Twitter, health and wellness tips (posts and videos), links, and infographics far outperform our posts highlighting new physicians or community events. Due to this, we have decreased those promotional posts and increased health information content. I think developing our brand voice over the last few months has been easier for our social media team because our organization’s overall brand voice is clearer.

Companies that have a clear vision/mission will make it easier for that voice to coincide with social media strategy, which ultimately builds relationships and trust amongst followers. If you “keep it real” on social media, followers will see your brand as a real person and want to connect with you. Keep it social. Keep it real.

Pinterest Terms of Service: More Simply Put

I’ll start this blog post with a disclaimer: I love Pinterest.

Now, that we’ve gotten that out of the way. I’d like to share one of the many reasons I love Pinterest. No, it’s not all the amazing DIY projects I can look at, or the recipes I can be inspired by, or the wedding I can dream of… it’s the social networks ‘Terms of Service.”  Say, what?

I’m serious. After reading many of the major social networks Terms and Conditions, I was often left blurry-eyed and confused. What were they trying to say? Do I have a reason to be concerned about where my content is being shared or tracked? Or should I be checking my privacy settings more often? Well, on Pinterest navigating the Terms of Service was pretty easy. Actually it was “more simply put” literally.

In the screenshots below, you’ll see how the social network includes call-out boxes next to each service term, providing a more user-friendly explanation. Hallelujah!

This is genius! Okay, maybe that’s giving Pinterest a little too much credit. But the truth of the matter is, why aren’t more social networks doing this? They really should be. In a matter of minutes, I was able to read through these terms and actually understand them.

That being said, it doesn’t mean all of the terms aren’t controversial. The social network came under fire a couple of years ago because of it’s copyright terms. In 2012, the social network decided to tweak it’s terms of service, as well as, made it easier for users to report copyright or trademark infringement. Now the policy reads as follows:

It still puts the onus on users to not pin copyrighted materials. Which in a sense goes against the purpose of the platform. I mean the goal is to share content and view it easily. We all know how easy it is to pin and re-pin content. I think one way that users can protect themselves, and  how Pinterest can in turn protect itself, is to not initially pin copyrighted materials.

So, as a user I should not go onto a photographer’s website, find an image I like and take it upon myself to pin it on Pinterest for the world to see and re-pin time and time again. But, if that photographer has a business account with Pinterest and he/she pins their work, I am free to re-pin as I want. That seems reasonable, although I’m sure it doesn’t always happen.

Inevitably, new social platforms are going to have growing pains. Pinterest is not alone and won’t be the last to come under scrutiny, but similarly to Instagram after controversy erupted the company responded. Listening and responding to your audience is key to success for any social network.

My advice to anyone as addicted to Pinterest as I am: Stay away from pinning someone else’s work and you should be good to go. Happy Pinning!

 Do Pinterest’s Terms of Service concern you? Which social network do you think is nailing it when it comes to Terms and Conditions (in terms of being user-friendly)?