This is my first personal blog!

Recently I was asked if I could supply social media management services. As it transpired, the lady I was speaking with, who by the way has a claim to fame that she is a bossy northerner. Wanted me to provide a social media management service where I am posting Tweets on behalf of her clients. This point raised my concerns. Firstly, she said that she was missing out on business and wanted to make some revenue out of her clients need for social media services. Secondly, I wasn’t to be involved with strategy, as she did that. And Oh, don’t worry about responding to Tweets the client will do that. So what the hell use was my services I thought.

But hey, I’d got a prospective client interested so ‘play the tart’ I thought. Sell my soul and say yes! When in fact all of my internal voices were screaming at me to shout ” tell this bossy northerner to go and Tweet off”. That sounds great coming from a fellow northerner, but hey, she’d got my back up. This loverly lady with a great personality revealed by her picture on Twitter and her blog page, along with an outstanding soft but persuasive voice on the phone, honed by her bossy northern nature. Had got me hooked yet intrigued! So I took time to investigate her own Twitter feed.

Wow, I thought, what a great chatty person, how well she uses Twitter for conversation, tempting prompts, humour, inquisitive use of Pinterest, and creative Tweets with excellent web links to content. So why did this professional communicator want me to run her clients social media accounts? Because it was beneath her? Because she was lazy? Because she did not trust her clients discipline to deliver content to their own Twitter feed? Either way, I got it, it is wrong! It won’t work and it won’t last long either, particularly as a successful working relationship.

So here is my view. If you are to encourage clients to have a social media activity, backed by a sound strategy and content creation fuelled by creative ideas, along with an engaging and personal quality. Why the hell not coach, teach and nurture your clients to do the whole thing for themselves?

You see, your business is you and your staff, it is your culture, personality and environment. You set the tone of the place, the ambient and visual style. You create your service values and discuss and deliver how to help clients feel served valued and appreciated, constantly. You go to great lengths to treat clients in such a way that they will return day after day, month after month even year on year to do business with you. You create great rapport and affinity with them, they are your mates. Until they sod off somewhere else of course! So why hand such personal and company relationships where humanistic values are at the core of what you do, to complete strangers? It doesn’t make sense does it! Come on agree with me, argue it out, tell me I’m right or even wrong!

Surely social media is about an intimate and personal relationship with your audience, followers, mates and buddies, brand advocates, customers and the like. So as social media practitioners, we have to deliver a humanist and personal service, where we help people to communicate from all parts of the company; from themselves. Where managers and directors begin to learn to trust and develop a real voice from their staff right across the company. From service departments to marketing, R&D to customer service and van driver to account managers. Heck, even all types of  staff! Surely, your fabulous ambassadors of your business called “staff” should be taught nurtured and educated in all aspects of representing the company. Their brand, their place of existence and day by day toil!

Make life fun I shout out, trust your staff, educate them and give them time to share all company values and communications across social media platforms. Help them to express their joy at working in an environment they spend many hours a day, week after week. So bossy Northerner, with your loverly voice and persuasive tone that said subtly to me “I will get my own way”. Sorry I don’t agree! Do you?