Social Media is with us to stay, so how do you manage your brand message effectively?  Control yourself.

You can't avoid the social media tsunami.  Your prospects, your customers, your employees, and your detractors, all have access.  In the past you could carefully control your brand message, yet even then a problem would occasionally crop up that would test the best PR skills.  Today you have to step up to a much higher level. 

Today's web society is used to an active conversation and it's not always civil.  How you respond reveals a lot about your organization and its culture.  Everything you say and do should be treated like a public conversation.  It's a conversation that's right there in writing for all to read.  You need tact, diplomacy, and restraint.  You can't control what someone says to you or about you, but you can control how you respond. 

You need policies.  You need awareness.  You need social skills. 

In the past your brand could have more of a one-way message.  Today, you need to be ready to respond effectively.  You can't stop negativity, but you can control the conversation by how you respond.

In early 2008, Comcast realized they had a problem when people were posting negative info about their service online.  Most brands would run for the hills, bury their head, or call their attorneys.  Comcast tackled it head on and won.  They put a team of customer service people on it.  They contacted the disgruntled customers directly online, and they addressed their problems.  This resulted in a lot of positive results.  These customers who were willing to complain publicly, were also willing to report their newfound admiration for Comcast publicly.

Today, many other brands are monitoring what the public is saying and responding.  They use various search tools to check on postings at places like twitter, and Facebook.  They use those same tools to get a

And real-world, off-line efforts often make their way back to the online conversations too.  GoDaddy recently started a campaign of proactively calling customers to see if they needed any help with anything.  I got one of these calls myself.  I was very impressed.  They actually helped me trim some unneeded services and save some money!  They also helped me figure out a feature that I had wanted to use, but did not have the time to explore.  All at no charge.  I was very impressed.

Then I noticed a major online personality posted a message on Twitter recounting the same experience.  Now that's the way to handle customer service in the era of social media. 

Here's a helpful post on the subject of managing social media.