If you’re in charge of a company or a brand’s Facebook presence, you’re probably getting hammered from all sides to post this item or that offer or some other somethingorother to the account.

“Post this discount: We really need to boost sales.”

“Post this news, our this-and-such department really needs to spread the word.”

You probably know the drill.

So here’s the one and only question you need ask yourself each and every time before clicking that “Share” button:

Is this something my customers want to know?

Answering that question means you have to step out of the company’s mindset and into the customer’s mindset. It also means that social media managers have an extremely unique position in the company: Not only do they have to protect the company’s interests and advance the company’s goals, they have to maintain the customers’ interest and keep the customer-audience growing.

Which means that any social media manager worth their pixels will be having a lot of discussions along the lines of: “I know this isn’t something that explicitly sells our product or disseminates our messaging or contains a call to action, but it’s something that will interest the audience we’ve amassed.”

As anyone who has been in the business world for more than about seven minutes can attest, the Venn diagram of company and customer interests is not a 100-percent overlap. Beyond the overlap, though, is where the social media manager needs to be prepared to wear many hats, including marketer, communicator, editor, consumer advocate, customer service representative, crisis manager and diplomat … for starters.

Takeaway for marketers: It ain’t just about posting a bunch of stuff to the Facebook Wall.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 24th, 2011 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, Social Media.