Give social media your full attention

Before we send out a marketing email or publish a new brochure, the number of things we need to check is incredible.

It seems every man and his dog has to read the message, check the spelling, make sure the tone is right, ensure we’re not offending anyone, then double check that all the apostrophes are in the right places.

Once all the checks are done, we re-read everything until we are absolutely sure we’ve got it right.

After the furore with the York Butter Factory’s disgusting tweet, I tried to find out who performs the same checks on our tweets and Facebook posts.

“What do you mean? We get Alicia to do it all,” our marketing person told me.

“She’s been on social media for ages.”

Of course Alicia has. She’s a smart cookie and trusted staff member.

But as I’ve gently pointed out, the goose at the York Butter Factory was entrusted with social media responsibilities too.

Entrusted with representing the company in a very public forum.

Entrusted with publishing every single day on the company’s behalf.

So here’s my message. If you think it’s smart to read over every piece of marketing collateral that goes out, maybe it’s also smart to have a second pair of eyes go over every social media message you send too.

Get it done – today!