The most important rule in social media is this:

You have to care about your customers.

If you don’t care about your customers, then don’t get involved with social media. If you can’t own up to your mistakes, forget it. If you don’t plan on really engaging with people, and having actual conversations, stop wasting your time.

The biggest thing about social media that is different from traditional media or marketing is that it is no longer a one-way conversation. If you’re not out there participating in the discussion of your brand already, I guarantee you someone is. Consumers are talking to each other, sharing their complaints about bad interactions and sharing their stellar reviews of good ones. But if you can’t be real and address the complaints when they happen (as well as share in broadcasting the successes) then you won’t succeed in social media marketing.

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