Contents of CPA Practice Advisor - MAR 2012

Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.

Page 26 of 38

GOLDEN RULES OF SOCIAL MEDIA
tricky. Outsource only if you carefully qualify the vendor and assure they follow your protocol for interacting on your behalf. Reputations can be harmed more than helped by ill- qualifi ed employees or vendors. To understand some risks, see "Why Outsourcing Social Media Isn't Always the Best Step" (http://bit.ly/out- source). To monitor for mentions, I like Google Reader to automatically aggregate results for search parameters that relate to you and your firm. Hubspot, a social media service company, has a great instructional webinar (www.hubspot.com/archive/ monitor-social-media-presence-daily) on how to set up monitoring so it takes less than ten minutes (they say daily, but once or twice a week is suffi cient). You might want to track mentions
to see if your presence is growing and if the right things are being noticed. Track: •Where did it appear & who said it? •What was said? Categorize the nature of the mention and keep a clip fi le.
•Who responded and how fast? Keep the response in a clip fi le, too. T e last item is the most important.
Respond with thanks to positive mentions and if you fi nd a negative mention, seek to resolve it. Don't be overly concerned about the occasional problem aired online. It's actually pret y easy to look good, even in a complaint situation. Handle it exactly as you should handle a face-to-face complaint:
LEARNING
Leveraging social media just for learning is a great goal. But reading and reposting is passive as far as marketing's concerned; don't expect new business to result. Simply set ing up Twit er or LinkedIn accounts won't suddenly (or ever) drive up your revenues. To get started fi nding great content,
1) "I'm sorry about your experience," 2) "I'm going to make it right," and 3) you take it offl ine: "Let's talk by
[phone or email]." When others
see this reply trail they see that you're reasonable, own mistakes, and resolve them. To normal people, it's not whether you make a mistake, it's how you handle it that mat ers. Studies show that customer loyalty is stronger aſt er mistakes are resolved well than when no mistake occurred; credibility can be gained through fallibility.
follow other CPAs and industry thought leaders on Twit er. For a head start, my CPA-related twit er lists will direct you to many: ▶ twitter.com/michellegolden/ cpas-cas-who-tweet
▶ twitter.com/michellegolden/ accounting-news-info
▶ twitter.com/michellegolden/ accounting-awesomeness
▶ twitter.com/michellegolden/ accounting-fi rms-corp
IT'S ABOUT CONVERSATION
Social media tools are simply com- munication channels, they're never strategies in and of themselves. Tools
SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS ARE SIMPLY
COMMUNICATION CHANNELS, THEY'RE NEVER STRATEGIES IN AND OF THEMSELVES.
like LinkedIn, Twit er, Facebook, and blogs are for conversations within specifi c marketing strategies. T e word "conversation" is key. Social media channels aren't
appropriate for the one-way broad- casting typical of corporate marketing. It's okay to occasionally mention what you're doing or have been recognized for, but no more than once in, say, ten interactions, just like you would converse at a ball game or dinner with your client or prospect. As long as you treat your digital conversations the way you treat personal conversations, you'll be golden.
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March 2012 • www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com 27