That's because a lot of business people who post forget Emily Post.
Lacking in basic social graces, they push out one boorish self-promo after the other. They succeed only in making it clear to the world that they put profits before people.
What do successful social media marketers do differently?
In their article in the latest issue of Communication World, "The Return of the Hyper-Social Organization," Francois Gossieaux and Ed Moran (coauthors of a new book on the subject) answer the question.
Successful social media marketers turn business processes into social processes.
While that sounds pretty cool, Gossieaux and Moran warn that success in social media marketing won't come from "taking a business process and layering it on top of social media."
"Social media PR does not mean distributing your press release via social media channels, and social media marketing is not about pimping your wares through social media," they write. "Turning a business process into a social process has to be steeped in humanity and recriprocity: You give, you take, you share, you help, you enable, you empower. We recommend that you start by giving. If you don't, people will not only shut you off, they will punish you for not respecting the basic social rules that have existed in human societies for thousands of years. People are no more likely to enjoy a Twitter feed that constantly spews company information than they are to enjoy a person at a party who only talks about himself."
