Page 118 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

FIGURE 5-1:
The Zappos
customer service
Twitter feed.

Choosing the Owner of Your

Organization’s SMM Voice

There’s no question that you need an SMM voice for the social web. It’s instru-
mental to forging relationships with prospects, customers, and expert, positional,
and referential influencers in addition to the industry at large. But setting your
objectives up front is as important as knowing the difference between your SMM
voice and your brand voice. It’s no use participating if you do so in a manner that’s
in conflict with the fundamental ethos of the social web. You invariably do more
damage to your brand and credibility than you may realize. Remember that what-
ever mistake you make in the social web gets quickly amplified, so set your objec-
tives carefully, recognize how different your SMM voice is from your brand, and
choose the right people to play the roles.

If you’re a small company, either the CEO (chief executive officer) or the CMO
(chief marketing officer) should always be your SMM voice or at least one of your
SMM voices. Even Zappos, a mammoth shoe company, uses its CEO, Tony Hsieh,
as its key SMM voice even after its acquisition by Amazon. The strategy works
well, and given that it’s building and establishing the brand primarily through

102 PART 2 Practicing SMM on the Social Web