Social Media Management: 10 Rules for managing the organization's voice

• Write like a human would speak. Corporate speak will bore people and they’ll dismiss your conversation stream as a waste of time.

• Deliver a recipe of information that’s valuable to the reader. If you spend too much time trying to sell people products, you’ll be regarded as spam.

• Be ready to interact with people who comment or reply to you. The worst thing you can do is connect with people and then not answer their comments or questions.

• Don’t be a lurker. Engage in conversations when people are talking about you and your products. But only if you have something meaningful to add.

• Have a sense of humor. Nothing makes information more interesting or seem more
human than having a little fun with things.

• Don’t whine or complain. Someone is going to say something negative about your
organization at some point. If you choose to engage them, do so professionally. Admit
you’re wrong if you are, then apologize. Or correct them if they’re mistaken.

• Don’t spin the truth, tell lies of omission, or flat out lie. This seems obvious, but do this in front of several million people, and someone will find out and tell the rest of the world.

• Stay consistent with the tone and style of the organizational voice. It confuses and
annoys people if it changes every week.

• Never engage in flame wars with competitors or angry constituents. This makes everyone look immature.

• If you don’t have anything valuable to say, don’t say anything at all. It’s better to be
silent than obviously filling space because you feel you should. By the way, go find

something valuable to say!