In a recent post on pammarketingnut.com entitled Social Return on Relationships: 13 Tips to Ignite Relevant Value, Pam Moore outlined her suggestions for companies that are failing to make that critical relationship connection through their social media presences. Some of the article’s highlights include:

• R-E-S-P-E-C-T, that’s what social means to me…
  One of the best tips Moore makes and one that is not often bandied about on similar lists is the necessity to exercise respect in your social media dealings. This reliance on respect is not only to be exercised on your customer and follower base, but also to other communities. Now that social media is maturing, many communities have been the subject of continuous nurturing for nearly a decade and neither their management nor their frequenters will appreciate your unwanted invasion, as it will be seen as social spamming. Mutual respect and ample applications of the Golden Rule are the best ways to conduct your social media cross-community forays.
• Be only one of you
  I nearly fell off my chair when I was on an anonymous special interest forum recently and another participant opined “You write just like a guy named Hal Licino…” This should be a lesson to all online marketers active on social media that you should establish one personality and stick to it. There is no value in creating different social network accounts to reflect particular parts of your brand messaging as if it were originating from different employees, managers or (gasp!) customers. You’ll be discovered sooner or later and the backfire may be conflagrant. Oh, yes, it really helps if that one personality you establish on social networks is the real you as very few people are creative or schizoid enough to pull off multiple personalities unless you’re Sybil.
• Influencer scores are great: Now ignore them
  There are various influence rating services, such as Klout, that provide a running score of how any social network participant is succeeding at being “An Influencer.” These scores are so well regarded by many online brands that the entire company’s social media focus can be skewed towards attracting and rewarding these influencers to the detraction of everyone else. News Flash: You’re not the only one checking Klout scores and your competitors are just as ardently chasing these people up, so you’re best off to adopt a diametrically opposed strategy. Provide outstanding value to all of your social media followers and customers and let your good works be the driving force behind the viralization and dissemination of your content, not a guileful and shady approach to top influencers.
• Shut off your motormouth
  We’ve all been to a party or other social gathering where some long-winded motormouth monopolizes the entire conversation to the point where no one else can get a word in edgewise. Just like you’ve headed for the exits, you can count on your social media participants to react in a similar manner when you try to make your presence be all about you. The optimal social media discussion focuses on the customer, not the brand, so shift the focus to them and maintain their interest.
• Get a Face you can trust
  The person running your social media content on a day to day basis may be the single most critical person in your company next to the CEO as there is no one else who can shape your entire brand’s public persona in a positive or negative fashion so quickly as your social media manager. All it takes is for one misbegotten tweet or post to be issued and your entire company will either become an online pariah, and just one brilliant 140 character composition to be forever identified as one of the great gurus of the internet. If you don’t think that there’s no way that a single post or tweet can shape an entire company’s online persona, check out what happened when Chrysler impetuously tweeted that in Detroit no one “knows how to (expletive) drive.”

Moore’s key points are central to any online marketer’s social media strategy, and if you’re violating them you’re on the fast track to becoming irrelevant!