My husband Brian, who knows firsthand how much I eat, drink, and sleep social media, pointed me to an interesting critique by ExpertCruiser on a 2007 social media marketing campaign by Royal Caribbean.  That year, the cruise line launched a brand ambassador program.  Using market intelligence, Royal Caribbean identified supporters of the cruise line via social networking sites and took the opportunity to give fifty of the most ardent supporters, called Royal Champions, special privileges, including free paid cruises and invitations to special events with company executives.

In my upcoming book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web (Amazon link), which is slated to be released in late Spring, I talk about the importance of brand evangelism as part of an effective community management strategy. Individuals who are passionate and who have never been previously incentivized to promote your product are already talking positively about you on the web. If they’re already raving about your awesome product and promoting your service for free, why not show them that you appreciate all they are doing and offer them additional perks? Why not encourage the spread of goodwill?

Social media mimics real relationships — in many cases. Would you do the following within real face-to-face relationships?

• Jump on the friendship bandwagon without properly introducing yourself?
• Consistently talk about yourself and promote only yourself without regard for those around you?
• Randomly approach a friend you barely talk to and simply ask for favors — repeatedly?
• Introduce yourself to another person as “Pink House Gardening?”

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may need a refresher course on social media etiquette — and perhaps real-life etiquette also. Here are some egregious sins that you must not perform on social media sites. Avoid these violations and learn how to manage and maintain online relationships on a variety of popular social media sites.

Facebook

• Adding users as friends without proper introductions. If you’re looking to make friends, tell people who you are. Don’t assume they know you — especially if they, well, don’t.
• Abuse application invites and consistently invite friends to participate in vampire games. Many call this spam.
• Abusing group invites. If your friends are interested, they’ll likely join without your “encouragement.” And if they don’t accept, don’t send the group request more than once by asking them to join via email, wall post, or Facebook message.

This is a guest post by search engine optimization expert Gab Goldenberg, who actually spends a good chunk of his time in a classroom: he’s a law student!

I’m taking two seminar courses at school this term, and they each resemble a particular form of social media. A seminar is different from a regular course in that it necessarily involves interaction with the students — a seminar is to a regular lecture course as web 2.0 is to web 1.0. What is interesting about these two seminars I’m taking is the difference in the teaching styles and the relationships that result.

Professor Daniel Jutras’ classes begin with him and/or students covering some current events relating to the seminar’s topic. Then, Professor Jutras lectures for about an hour, covering the principal ideas in the week’s readings. We pause for 10 minutes, and when we return, the class asks questions or makes comments, to which Professor Jutras responds.

I see this seminar as a blog. The blogger (Professor Jutras) posts his ideas, occasionally throws in some editorial and takes some light, widget-fed microblogging (the current events some students share). As an aside, Professor Jutras makes it obvious when he’s editorializing, which makes it easy to take it for what it’s worth: an informed opinion, but not necessarily fact.

This is a guest post from kd kelly. kd kelly, aka dotlizard, who has learned a harsh lesson or two in her time on the internets, and wants to warn us about the dangers of social media as it relates to trusting relationships that end in lies, deception, and hurt. She’s a very social creature and is known as “dotlizard” pretty much everywhere.

Smile, I’m sending you some sunshine. Did your room just light up?

What can you say about a beautiful girl who died? In the words of noted internet hedonist Halcyon Styn, from a Flash animation he created in her honor: “I want to introduce you to the bravest person I know / She is a warrior of the finest sort / She shoots sunbeams from her fingertips / makes rainbows shine on sunny days / and leaves a wake of smiles in her path / Kaycee, warrior supreme”. Kaycee Nicole Swenson brought her sparkly brand of wholesome, flirtatious courage to a wide audience on the internet from 1999 through May 14, 2001, when her mother Debbie announced that Kaycee had passed away suddenly. At a family gathering in celebration of her remission from leukemia, sometime around sunset, a blood vessel burst in Kaycee’s chemotherapy-weakened body; she died peacefully in the arms of her loved ones.

With many individuals finding great success with social media (and as an aside, a basic understanding of search engine optimization), they immediately consider themselves social media marketers and consultants (as well as seasoned SEOs) and offer to sell their promotional services. What skills, though, do successful social media marketers have that put these individuals above the average (or addicted) social media user, and better yet, above the traditional marketer? I asked several social media consultants, bloggers, marketers, search engine optimizers, and social media addicts about what they considered to be essential skills and characteristics of the most efficient and results-driven social media consultants. In the many paragraphs that follow, learn from many of the experts and hear what they consider success when using social media to engage with consumers about products and services.

Maki, Internet Marketing and Social Media Blogger: The main characteristic [social media marketers] need to have is a genuine curiosity/interest in social media, particularly on how it influences human relationships and business practices. This is not just standard required job skills but rather a deep interest that pervades one’s day to day life. One needs to constantly be informed of the latest technologies while striving always to learn and improve one’s knowledge levels. In order to do well when marketing, one should have tactical knowledge and ideally, first-hand experience of the specific social media platform. This will help a great deal in planning and managing successful marketing campaigns.