I had a little bit of a rock star moment last week. Well, social media rock star that is. Our editor-in-chief hired a new personal assistant and was going from office to office introducing her.
When she was introduced to me, the one who handles my magazine as well as two of the Facebook pages, the new PAs face lit up.
"THAT'S YOU?!" she exclaimed. I was slightly taken aback.
"Um...yes? That's me..."
"Ohmigod, you do such a good job!"
You can't BUY that kind of praise to happen right in front of my boss if you tried. Seriously.
Facebook is some serious business, y'all.
Especially when you're handling the Facebook of a company, as I learned this week. When I started this position almost six months ago (wow, it's really been that long already?), one of the things I was most looking forward to was the chance to get my hands on the social media accounts and find ways to grow the content and build the fan base.
On one page, we just broke 8,000 fans - it started just below 7,000 when I first took charge of it. The others, despite being major suburb areas, have taken a bit longer to grow, but slow and steady wins the race, right?
One of the things I've been tasked with since taking charge is managing the content on our page - that posted by me, as well as our advertisers and fans. Over time I've found it's a delicate balance.
Very delicate.
Especially when you delete someone who spams your page with ads, then e-mails you to find out why they were removed when all they were posting was "pictures of my grand baby."
This is a question I was faced with this week. Initially, the reader didn't offer any information to identify themselves, so I had no way of knowing who it was and what the circumstances might have been. Once we got that sorted out, I realized that no, you weren't posting cute pictures of your grandbaby - you were repeatedly posting the same thing about your local business.
When you post the same thing once a day, nearly every day of the week, that's considered spam.
The reader explained it innocently enough: they were a new business and just trying to get the word out. So I explained right back: we view our Facebook as an extension of our editorial content, so we try to keep the space free of advertising as much as possible so readers have an easy time accessing information, finding useful links or communicating with each other. Sure, we post the occasional ad or allow another business to - but those are print advertisers and their posts are approved through a process.
She was very understanding once I spelled out our guidelines - which is probably something I should spell out more clearly across the board. At my previous job, we actually had a social media guidelines book, of sorts, with our parameters for managing content. It would probably be helpful for my current employer to have the same - a project I'll gladly take on when assigned. (Because hey - if I suggest it, I'm going to have to do it.)
In the end, I granted her access to the page again and asked her to keep the guidelines in mind. She, in turn, inquired about print advertising. So all in all, I guess it worked out. I've had no more spam posts and gained a sales lead out of the conversation.
And encounters like this are exactly why I love managing a print publication's social media. It's all still so new and really just being fully embraced that every post, conversation and day is a learning experience. Lots of hits and misses, but if it's one more way to engage our readers then it's all worth it.
And besides - this is highly valuable experience and know-how that I'm excited to take on with me.
Side note: Someone I really admire who runs an excellent social media campaign is my buddy Paul, manager for Quiet Company. He always keeps their Twitter and Facebook pages up-to-date and entertaining. In addition to recently being nominated for a Texas Social Media Award and making it into the top 25 contenders, as well as hosting a badass Twitter show I'm STILL upset a migraine kept me from, he just got some major props for his work from Volacci, a SEO company in Austin where the band is based. Check it out here.
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