Adapting to social media
Communication in social media requires some additional skills and adaptations in style. Because social media is interactive, it requires a personal and engaging mode of writing instead of a didactic, authoritative approach. Large organisations, but also SME-s often struggle with these characteristics.
Interactive Communication
The tone of social media writing, particularly in micro-blogging, is informal and conversational. When writing posts for blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn or other sites and social networks, companies have to prepare to write responses to incoming comments and reactions.
First and foremost, these responses must be timely, because social media has a 24/7 dynamic. Responding to a question or inquiry a week or even several days late is unacceptable here. Organisations, mostly governmental, that have policies of responding to correspondence within 14 or even 21 days are forced to revise their work practices in order to respond to the social media reality.
Some companies and government organisations have communication staff monitoring social media on the weekends. These teams representatives have authority to reply, or at least post an initial response (e.g. acknowledgement) even when more time is required to prepare a detailed answer or comment.
Human Interactions
These responses should also be respectful of users’ opinions, even when they are disagreeing with them. Organisations and corporations need to remember that there are no ‘gatekeepers’, or control mechanisms to intervene, remove or even stop others from posting their unedited comments and opinions online.
If a response comes off as rude, aggressive or arrogant, the organisation can be on the receiving end of ‘flaming’. It is an online outburst of angry sentiment, usually on social media. On the other hand, positive, friendly participation can result in organisations joining the online conversation to have their views known, communicate their point of view and build networks of trust and influence.
But not only of text and written content makes up the online world. An abundance of digital media has the capability to include interactive features. The term for these is ‘rich’ media content. This refers to content other than text – in particular, semantically sophisticated content such as infographics, video, animations and sound.