What are your best practices for Social Media?

I recently sat in on a webinar with Geoff Ramsey the CEO of eMarketer and he put up on the screen his 10 best practices for social media. Overall, some good thoughts for these media platforms.

1) Think social marketing, not media - love this one
2) Know your objectives - an easy head nod here
3) Leverage TRUST - absolutely
4) Listening comes first - yes we have two ears
5) Join the conversation - but add value - totally agree
6) Be Authentic. Humble. Transparent - right on the bull's-eye
7) Recruit from your core - yep
8) Target the influentials - always the right thing to do
9) Adopt a long-term, real-time approach - makes sense but things are changing rather quickly so what exactly is long-term?
10) Integrate with other communications - YES

The great thing about social media is that everything is so fluid and changing every day and every hour it does make sense to have some guidelines as we help clients get a foothold in the social space.

From my perspective THE most important thing for any brand or person in social media is to be authentic and transparent. Social media is a two-way conversation and if you are not authentic and transparent with your audience you will be sorry. You will tarnish your brand and your personal brand and who wants to do that.

Be authentic and transparent and if you follow that lead you will be on the road to success in the social media stratosphere.

So step back and look at what you're doing - are you authentic? Are you transparent?