As the calendar turns over to our last summer month, I figure it’s time for me to put down the ipad (after I finished the quick great read of “Talking to Girls About Duran Duran”) and start getting my thoughts down on paper.  Over the past two months, I have spent a lot of time listening, reading, and learning.  In the past several years, social media space has been full speed ahead on the concord.  Remember when we were poking friends on Facebook? Now we are cheering for groundbreaking campaigns such as Procter and Gamble’s Old Spice Guy Yet I felt like I was losing touch of what social media was meant to be, social. I had to stop myself, unbuckle the seat belt and relax in the back yard with my two Jacks as I grounded myself.  In this process, I came up with 5 tips that seemed to gel with me.

1. Fire Your Marketing Manager…and Hire a Community Manager

This was a recent Harvard Business Review(HBR) hot title of a blog post.  No they didn’t mean it, but it makes a very good point to have internal qualified staff to help manage the company’s social media.  As companies grapple with how to incorporate social media into their business strategy, they may also be struggling with an existing team who may not be fit to play the social media role or assume that all this work can be done externally through the consultant and or agency alone.  Larger companies are slowly recognizing the importance and investing in a hierarchy of internal staff from Director to Analyst level that owns social media with a designated person who plays a champion role. The consultant therefore has an internal dedicated team to work with who executes campaigns and moderates the networks as part of their daily routine.

2. Have a Strategy in Place

As mentioned above,  in any discipline within a business, there should be a strategy and implementation process in place. This is no different for social media.  Step one in building a strategy is listening to your followers and customers. An organization needs to know what the general sentiment about itself is in the social media community, which may take time.  But this is your foundation; make sure it’s a sturdy framework before you start to build a village.

3. Deliver Happiness!

If you have not read the new book Delivering Happiness by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, then stop right now and go ahead and order it for delivery or ebook reader (Just come back here when you’re done). It’s a must read. OK, now that you are done with that, your premise for adding social media should be so that your followers and friends feel good about your company/brand. Tony has examples of customer service that may seem extreme, as his team is encouraged to even field a call asking “where can I find a local pizzeria”. His staff was selected very carefully and was even given a choice to take $3,000 to leave if they wanted to before they were hired. He wanted to make sure that he built a business empire that was true to his beliefs with people that can carry the message in their daily responsibilities and lives. Tony is very well respected by his team and is well known to be just as personable on twitter.  The brand is fun and the company consistently generates great stories with different perspectives from its employees, customers and loyal followers. The company continues to operate successfully and is able to keep its unique culture even after its acquisition by Amazon.

4. Have a Response Team and Plan in Place if Something Should Go Wrong

This goes back to the concept of having a strategy.  Reputation management in companies has been closely controlled as marketing and PR teams deployed traditional one way messages. This means that promotions were typically sent to customers and prospects via traditional marketing channels leaving a small window of opportunity for a disgruntled customer to express his/her comments publicly and potentially leading to a damaging groundswell . Entering social media space opens the avenue both ways. The public’s response and opinion of your brand can now be seen very easily and response to your promotions as well as business practices can be seen almost instantaneously.    The downside of this is an increased risk for a situation that can spiral out of control very quickly if not monitored. This is why having strategies, policies and processes with a proper team in place to manage and maintain your reputation are keys to minimizing this risk.

5. Provide Educational Content Which Represents Your Brand Well

A blog shouldn’t be cumbersome. As in any thriving company, news should be happening every day. These stories can be explained through pictures, video and in print.  Even Old Spice educated us as they took an old stodgy brand and revitalized it. They schooled us by letting us know that this isn’t your father’s Old Spice anymore.

BONUS—Turn That Frown Upside Down

Set good intentions for your followers and friends.  CEO of Twitter @Ev recently tweeted a great example of setting the tone for your followers “Sign in pediatric office: URGENT: Smile until 5:01pm.” Make sure your networks are bright, light and joyful. Visuals usually do this trick, so talk to your creative director and get the creative team involved in how to jazz up the networks.

What do you think? Share your story with us in the comments.

Thanks to Jonathan Tafarella for editing this post.

It is now one week later from the time I toured Zappos’ corporate office and frankly I am sitting here beating myself up for taking way too long to write this blog. But the truth is it was such an overwhelming experience that one blog post couldn’t do justice to capture all that Zappos’ culture has to offer. So the best way to put my thoughts down in writing was to jot down the experience as I witnessed it. Below are some short blurbs in the traditional twitter sense, 140 characters or less:

Twitter success story, Zappos to Keynote #DPFC, Yes Tony the CEO answers his DM’s!

My Twitter conversation with Tony back in January came to fruition in April at #DPFC

From one of Tony’s presentations: heard about Zappos Corp office tour, in Vegas for #DPFC so we jumped at the chance to witness the WOW

Zappos logo covered Escalade picked us up employees were hanging outside in Zappos running gear headed over to run in corporate challenge

Our tour guide Tim worked in the finance division, every employee gets certified to be a tour guide

First Stop: Help Desk where we get a visitor badge to go on the ball of name badges at the end of the tour

Second Stop, Zappos Library: Get to take a business book on our way out(I chose The Long Tail)

Tim gave me a Zappos flag to hold we began our tour of all the depts., marketing, legal, customer service, financial, etc. It was a mini parade

Departments would greet us with their signature welcoming of cow bell ringing, cheerleader pom-poms and other ways, no matter what

There are very few offices at Zappos, one of them is the life coaches, decorated with polaroids of all guests on his wall, throne and crowns

The Zappos Coach, Dr. Vik, helps any employee with their career path

Dr. Vik, gives every guest a gift along with a Polaroid of themselves in the throne, a day planner and his DVD Taking it to the Next Level

Oh a stop at the Tiki Bar, blender and all, ready for 5pm

At HR, Employee App asks “If you were a super hero, who would you be and why?

Meet the Monkeys, Fred (no title) Mossler, Tony and Alfred (COO/CFO) with Monkeys in their cubicle office space

Along with the library book, we were each given a copy of their culture book and a great Zappos Messenger bag

If visiting Vegas, or in Vegas, the Zappos Tour is a must experience for everyone!

Tony, great job and thanks for opening your house up to the world