Best practices in Social Media: forging relationships

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My friend Sylwia tagged me last week in a very interesting discussion meme about the best social media practices.

The social media space is evolving quickly, and each community has its own unwritten set of rules, but these rules can only be learnt if you become part of the community. Think for instance about Plurk vs. Twitter - although they may look similar, the interactions on each of these sites are very different indeed… No wonder why traditional marketers don’t get it!

Gavin Heaton cleverly summed up some of the answers going around the blogosphere:

• Mitch Joel - Consistency
• Jason Falls - Embrace your audience 
• Kipp Bodnar - Listen and add value
• Chris Brogan – Listen
• Kristie Wells – Be human
• Morriss Partee – Reach out to others
• Paisno – Honesty and respect
• Liz Strauss – Watch what people actually do 
• Beth Harte – Provide a platform
• Gavin Heaton – Tell a Story

My piece of advice is forge relationships… Humans are social beasts. We use social media to communicate, share and exchange ideas with people from different backgrounds we would have never otherwise met. Relationships are hard to forge and maintain, but it’s definitely worth the effort! My community inspires me to keep blogging

I regularly talk to a number of bloggers and we are connected through many different ways:

• My blog was how I started forging my community
• Facebook is to prove that I am not a geek
• LinkedIn is for business networking in the hope that someone might give me a green card
• Twitter makes our interactions a lots more human and it also helps me strengthen these relationships

Now it is your turn to share a best practice:  

1. Blog it or add it to the comments here.
2. Link to Mitch’s blog
3. Tag it “social media marketing best practices project”
4. And then tag someone else with the meme.

I’d like to tag – Willem, Mack, Sandrine,  Cedric and James