I didn’t set out to be a social media rule-breaker. I’ve always been more of a teacher’s pet type, honestly. But the more I get to know what some in the social media industry are pushing as doctrine, the more rebellious I get.

Social media guidelines are nice, but there’s no reason to accept them as gospel. Your brand isn’t average, so the average social media plan isn’t going to cut it. What works for a local brand may not work for an international one. What works for B2C may not work for B2B. You get the idea.

So with that in mind, here are 10 social media rules worth breaking – and what to do instead.

1. The best time to post is …

Plenty of studies will give you a “best time to post” figure. The best time to tweet is 5 pm because you’ll get the most retweets. No, it’s noon so you can get a higher click-through rate. And depending on which studies you read, you should either be posting on Facebook every 3 hours or every other day.

Instead of running around trying to plan your posts for industry averages, you’re better off determining the right timing for you. Experiment with Facebook posts of similar content at varying times on (try for the same day of the week if you want to be slightly more scientific about it) and then compare your traffic back to site, virality rate and engagement rate. Do similar exercises for frequency. Heck, on Twitter you can even post the same thing twice at different times and see which time sees a higher click-through rate. But now I’m skipping ahead to No. 7.

2. Be on every social network

Really? That sounds like a recipe for cross-posting disaster to me. While I’m all for using a service like KnowEm to lock down your brand name on services that matter to you, that doesn’t mean you have to be spending time on all these networks. Instead, get to know your customers and where they’re hanging out and talking. If they’re all on LinkedIn, why are you spending all your time on Pinterest? Good social media monitoring tools will let you find relevant conversations wherever they’re happening so you’re not chasing your tail on the wrong networks.

3. Respond to every comment and mention

I’m all for engagement and lively conversation, sometimes it’s important for a brand to know when to keep its virtual mouth shut. In cases where you’re getting abused or berated online, stay out of the fray for your own well-being as well as your brand’s. But the happier flip side of that coin is when you’ve built such a strong community that members are able to answer each other’s questions and drive the conversation on their own. If you’re lucky enough to be in that situation, you may find stepping back sometimes makes your community even stronger.

4. Follow everyone who follows you

Some people say this Twitter quid pro quo is just part of being polite online. I say there’s plenty of ways to use Twitter and while I respect anyone’s right to tweet Foursquare checkins all day long, that doesn’t mean I have to sign up to read them all. Social media for business is just that – for business. Follow accounts that provide you useful information and don’t apologize for it. Or if you really feel you must reciprocate, at least make liberal use of Twitter lists (don’t forget private lists, too!)

5. Ask for the action

You hear this all the time: If you want people to like the post, ask them. If you want them to share, suggest it. While I’m not opposed to this in moderation – say, asking Facebook fans to share a really important announcement – be careful with how often you’re doing it. Then make sure you balance it out with fun stuff and conversation with no ulterior motive. The same way you’d get fed up with a friend who’s always asking for help without giving you much in return, fans will get fed up with a brand taking lots and giving little. Don’t be that brand.

Starting now and lasting well, forever, technology and empathy are now part of your business strategy. To what extent disruptive technology impacts your markets, will depend on your industry and the rate of adoption within it.

Your priority areas include understanding…

1. Social Networks from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ and how they’re connecting to influencers and businesses

2. Geolocation check-in services such as Foursquare and Facebook location updates to share locations and earn rewards or opportunities for discounts

3. Crowdsourced discounts and deals including Groupon and LivingSocial and what’s valued and why

4. Social commerce services like Shopkick and Armadealo and how they create personalized experiences that are worth sharing

5. Referral based solutions like Yelp, Service Magic, and Angie’s List to make informed decisions and how shared experiences can improve your business, products, and services

6. Gamification platforms such as Badgeville and Fangager, and why rewarding engagement improves commerce and loyalty

Starting now and lasting … well … forever, technology and empathy are now part of your business strategy. To what extent disruptive technology impacts your markets, will depend on your industry and the rate of adoption within it.

Your priority areas include understanding these 10 trends:

1. Social Networks from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ and how they’re connecting to influencers and businesses.
2. Geolocation check-in services such as Foursquare and Facebook location updates to share locations and earn rewards or opportunities for discounts.
3. Crowdsourced discounts and deals including Groupon and LivingSocial and what’s valued and why.
4. Social commerce services like Shopkick and Armadealo and how they create personalized experiences that are worth sharing.
5. Referral based solutions like Yelp, Service Magic, and Angie’s List to make informed decisions and how shared experiences can improve your business, products, and services.

How should employees behave as company representatives on social media platforms?

1. Transparency. Should employees acting as company agents identify themselves? Should they use their own names? Should they list their job title? Should there be specific rules that apply their use of photographs or avatars?
2. Confidentiality. What information are employees allowed to disclose? Is this information already public? If not, does it require specific approvals? Who gives permission for release of non-public information? Is the information of competitive value?
3. Financials. How should employees discuss corporate results or financial situation? This is particularly important for publically traded companies where regulatory agencies are involved.
4. Copyright. How are intellectual property (aka IP) issues to be handled? What are the internal procedures? To whom should employees address their questions?
5. Competitors. Since social media forums tend to be open to the public, how should employees treat competitors and their representatives? Are there specific procedures that they should follow?

You must decide – as an organization and as an individual team leader – what spirit you intend to convey with the participation of your employees in social media.

If your intention is for them to be simply mechanical amplification vehicles for a very carefully crafted marketing message, that can work. You’ll likely see some results in terms of absolute reach and volume of short-term message resonance. You will sacrifice a degree of credibility on behalf of your individual representatives and personality and genuineness on behalf of your brand in favor of a consistent, safe(-r) message. You will also likely sacrifice culturally, since your employees will realize they’re part of a marketing machine, not someone who is entrusted to help build and shape a brand.

If your intention is for employees to become individual voices for your organization and unique representatives of your company’s values, personality and diversity, that can work too. You’ll likely see results in terms of trust and affinity for your brand as well as better identification of your advocates, both internal and external. You will sacrifice a certain amount of stability and potential consistency of message in favor of communications that are more unique and individual. You’ll also sacrifice some predictability around outcomes and need to rely on strong education and culture initiatives to guide your teams and hone their own sense of good judgment.

The bottom line: governance and guidance is important. But it’s a means to more scalable social media, not the end.

We’ve said many times here — and will continue to — that social business transformation is far more cultural than it is operational. Getting your employees involved is no different, and your policies and guidelines need to consider not just what you don’t want to happen, but instead what values, vision and intent you want your teams’ social media participation to convey.

Number 1. Special Offers

We live in a society that is as distracted as it is informed. People are making decisions on what to read, view, purchase, visit, and sample based on the information that filters through their attention dashboards. At best, even the most qualified information sourced from the most trusted contacts will receive only a cursory overview. The trick is to concisely introduce the value up front. If the offer is compelling and affiliated with their interests, the consumer will make the connection to personal value and benefits and click-through to redeem the special or coupon when ready or so inclined.

For example, @delloutlet uses Twitter and Facebook to send coupons to customers. In just one year, Dell recorded upward of $3 million in sales directly sourced from Twitter.

California Tortilla (@caltort), a chain of 39 casual Mexican restaurants based in Rockville, MD, sends coupon passwords via Twitter, which customers must say at checkout to redeem the offer.

Number 2. Ordering

While the distance between introduction and action is only separated by a link, many businesses are using Twitter to log orders. Coffee Groundz (@coffeegroundz) uses the direct message channel on Twitter to receive and prepare orders. Using Twitter as a promotion and marketing channel, Coffee Groundz reports 20 to 30% increased sales and market share.

As an aside, Pizza Hut offers an iPhone and Facebook application that allow hungry patrons to order pizza directly from Facebook and their mobile phone.

Number 3. Word of Mouth Marketing

Moonfruit offered 11 Macbook Pros and 10 iPod Touches to celebrate its 10th anniversary. In order to qualify, contestants had to send a tweet using the hashtag #moonfruit. One month following the completion of the contest, Moonfruit site traffic was up 300% and sales also increased by 20%–and all because of a meager investment of $15,000. The company also realized SEO benefits, by landing on the first results page on Google for “free Web site builder.”

Wendy White, Moonfruit’s CEO, realizes that there’s a fine line between effective and destructive #tweetowin campaigns: “Such campaigns must be courteous and fit with a company’s brand, lest you draw the ire of the Twitter-sphere.”

 

Keeping content fresh and interesting is key to capturing an audience for your company’s blog, but it’s easy to fall into a rut when it comes to generating new posts. Janet Aronica offers a sampling of excellent ideas for creating interesting new content from the ebook 100 Content Ideas for Community Managers at oneforty.com to get those blogging juices flowing and keep your clients coming back for more.

You don’t have to be in the market for a Super Bowl ad to learn who the world’s biggest marketers are. In fact, as a quick visit to Facebook illustrates, social media has a leveling effect: Whether you’re Coca-Cola or Jones Soda, your Facebook page looks pretty much the same. Coke’s billions won’t buy a dedicated wing on Twitter, either.

With this in mind, the following social media campaigns from marketers big and small are designed to be idea generators. This isn’t a ranking of the most effective social media campaigns of the year, but rather the ones that have the most to offer a small-business owner with big ideas and a not-so-big marketing budget.

1. Kraft Macaroni & Cheese’s Jinx

Last March, the venerable Kraft brand launched an interesting campaign on Twitter: Whenever two people individually used the phrase “mac & cheese” in a tweet, Kraft sent both a link pointing out the “Mac & Jinx” (as in the childhood game Jinx.) The first one to reply back got five free boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese and a t-shirt.

What you can learn from this: This is a very low-cost way to track down potential fans on Twitter. All you have to do is search a given term and identify two people who tweet the same phrase at (roughly) the same time. In return, you’ll gain goodwill, a likely follower and probably some good word-of-mouth buzz on the social network.

• Highlight how not to do things; attacking ideas, not people.
• Create a video blog post by interviewing a successful client – this can a powerful providing authentic evidence of authority and credibility for both you and the client.
• Write articles for the different types of customers that are relevant for each of  your vertical markets.
• Brainstorm blog post topics with colleagues and management and create a list for future reference and planning.
• Subscribe to the top industry blogs in your market, both company blogs and personal blogs for ideas.
• Look through your latest news releases for ideas.
• Enlist your colleagues to write on topics in your industry or market that they are passionate about.
• Develop a series of “how-to” blog posts.
• Turn the “how to” blog posts into short videos.
• When you have a great idea, go straight to your “add new” button and write the headline and save it as a draft or write it down before you forget it.
• Include a great iconic image at the start of the blog that catches the eye.
• Place Powerpoint presentations on your blog by embedding links from Slideshare.

If you’re the sole champion of social business in your organization, it can be a daunting place to stand.

Where should you focus your time and energy? What should your priorities be? How do you keep your programs moving forward while building a business case for carrying those initiatives deeper into the company? What things can you focus on that are always necessary and can help you stay on track?

We’ve got a few ideas. Six, to be exact.

1. Vision/Goals

It might seem obvious, but having clear vision and goals for social business becomes your anchor. That’s the stuff you come back to when things get off track or seem like they’re not aligned.

The most important element here is not to build the goals for social business itself. First, work with leadership to outline and understand the business-level goals for revenue, market growth, research and development, culture and talent retention, partnerships. What is the C-level committed to in terms of the company overall? Once you understand that, build your social business goals so that each one can be tied to the larger goals of the organization.

Consider what social business practices will enable, make possible, or accelerate? Speak in terms of business outcomes, not social media program objectives. If you can speak to people about the things they will always want to achieve and how social supports those objectives, you’ll always have a strong foundation for support and forward momentum.

And all of that together helps you illustrate a very important picture: the one that describes what your organization will look like 6 months, 12 months, 3 years from now. The picture of your company as a social business.

2. Finding Champions

You can’t do this yourself forever.

While you’re the lone solider leading the charge, you’ve got to find the people in your organization that believe as you do or at least have a curiosity and an interest in learning how to build social programs within the company. They don’t have to be seasoned social professionals. They can come from anywhere in the organization, and they can be at pretty much any level of responsibility. The key factor is their desire to help establish roots for social business practices because they can help them do their jobs better, further their department goals, build a better business in which to work, or all of the above.

Finding internal advocates is the first step to establishing things like social business councils or building a Center of Gravity. The more invested people are in social’s potential in the organization, the more they’re willing to lend their time and expertise to the cause and eventually help build a case for more devoted staff. Plus, the volunteer/unofficial approach to finding social advocates across the organization time and again proves itself as a strong foundation for collaborative work that transcends hierarchies and silos. It just works.

3. Education

Education is perhaps the most critical piece is socializing knowledge about social, the context for your initiatives, and your intent with the programs you hope to build around the organization. Over time, methodical outreach and education is is how you build a case for additional budget and resources and create enthusiasm and curiosity around this “whole social business thing”. That’s what creates upward momentum among the people in your company, and grabs the attention of the decision-makers.

What about convincing the skeptics?

If you address them openly, honestly, and patiently (including admitting what you don’t know yet), they’re much more likely to support your approach, which is what you need at first. The goal isn’t necessarily to convince them immediately that you’re right. Your job is to instill enough confidence that you’ve thought things through and have a plan. Because leadership doesn’t really shy away from risk; most of them have become leaders because they understand the inherent value of taking risks.

What they shy away from is risk without a plan that addresses it realistically. That’s the difference between calculated risk and unmitigated, messy risk. Illustrate that your approach to social is well-reasoned, and you’ll buy yourself enough breathing room and support to execute on the plan and be accountable for it (more on that in a moment). That should be your goal. Not to convince the people that don’t yet buy what you’re selling, but to earn the chance to prove it to them.