My client wants me to create/maintain her company's blog and maintain their active social media sites (facebook and twitter). I sent her my Social Media Marketing Client Questionnaire, however her response was she doesn't want any personal info on the sites, but only to put business related content in regards to the services offered by her company. The type of business she runs is a staffing agency. I thought Social Media Marketing is about building relationships with others on a more personalized level to network, not to appear like you are just trying to advertise your services to others. If I am wrong, please correct me. Thank you! I don't think social media marketing is going to be effective for a business if the entire site is treated in a way that others wouldn't be able to connect due to just strictly advertising/promoting services in your company. I would love to hear opionions from other VA's who provide social media marketing to their clients.

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Tishawn
Celestial Caring Enterprises, LLC

You are bang on. Social Marketing is exactly that "Social", it's about building the know, like and trust factor with your audience including that personal connection. If you client chooses to keep it strictly business, without a personal element then the marketing will not work.

That's not to say you can't build a personal business type relationship and not necessarily share stories about you, meaning your family and friends. You can it just takes more work.

Personally, I've stepped away from offering Social Media as a service for the simple reason that the marketing needs to be authentic and with a true voice of who is behind it I let my clients know this and that I'm happy to set up their sites and accounts, but it will be required that they maintain them going forward.

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Renee Shupe, Become a Techie Virtual Assistant
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Social media does work better when there is more of a personal element to it but it can also be used strictly for business as long as it also has an engagement piece with those who are following on Facebook or Twitter. You can still interact with people from a non-personal level to create engagement.

You are correct though if all you do is blast out advertisement and talk AT people instead of WITH people, then she will probably find that she is disappointed with the outcome or rather the lack of outcome.

If she's saying she doesn't want you to interact at all as a person on social networking sites, then again, she's not going to really see any outcome from being on those sites. If she allows you to be a sort of mouthpiece for those business accounts, then it could work because you could help build the relationships with people as the business. It's certainly not ideal because social networking does work so much better when it's person to person, but it's not unheard of that a business "speaks" to it's followers. Also, it's important that you are not impersonating being her directly.

Alternatively, there are accounts that I tweet on that others also tweet on and we just leave our initials to indicate that it's a different person who's tweeting from the others. This is also common on shared business accounts.

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Kimberly
Facebook Marketing Magic!

Thank you Renee and Kimberly! Your feedback was VERY helpful so I could explain to my client with confidence:-)

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Tishawn
Celestial Caring Enterprises, LLC

Okay, here's an update after explaining to my client about Social Media Marketing. She doesn't want any content from others that do not have anything to do with her services therefore, she doesn't want any personal interaction on her social media sites. She only wants to use it specifically for her clients only for updates on what is going on in her company or in the industry her company is in. She doesn't want others to have any personal conversations nor wants any of her clients or anyone else to state their own opinions. Furthermore, she doesn't feel that anyone needs to know who is behind the company. Wow, this is all against what Social Media Network is all about. Having Social Media sites, but DO NOT want anyone to socialize. Now I need to figure out how I am going to proceed.

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Tishawn
Celestial Caring Enterprises, LLC

Then she shouldn't be using social media at all in that event. She should just use a closed network or her own forum. Social networking platforms are all indexed by the search engines and so she could actually damage her online reputation by using it this way.

Social networks are not closed networks. True, she can make her Twitter profile private and there is a way to keep her Facebook page from being indexed by the search engines, but when her clients or others see how she is using social media and compare it to how they see others use it, then they'll form their own opinions about her use of social media, which may not be positive.

When people search for her company or for keywords where her company might come up then it's very likely that her social networks will come up and people will check them out quite possibly before they ever check out her website.

But, if she wants to do it this way, then just ahead and take her direction and be sure to write up your thoughts in an email so that you are not held responsible for any negative results.

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Kimberly
Facebook Marketing Magic!

Thank you so much! I really didn't even think this deep. I did tell her that I was glad we both had an understanding that her social media sites were not being used for marketing purposes, but to only update current clients. I did state that I would be willing to provide an update once a week only because I would rather focus on other effective marketing avenues. Still I kept thinking about how there are other ways to update clients without using Social Media sites, but I didn't explain that yet. Anyhow, your post is VERY helpful and I am going to bring that to her attention. You made valid points that just cannot be ignored, especially since I am providing marketing support, results and lack of results may fall back on me so therefore, I do need to cover myself as well. Thanks again!

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Tishawn
Celestial Caring Enterprises, LLC