Social Media for Startups: “Less is More”

November 7th, 2009 Sean Murphy

There has been a lot written about various aspects of social media: what tools to use, how disruptive it is, how to develop and/or demonstrate expertise. Here are four rules of thumb we follow.

1. To establish a reputation you have to be visible or reasonably well known, but it’s more important to be known for meeting your commitments and giving good advice.
2. Active participation in a community should be with a view not only to making yourself visible but also allowing you a chance to demonstrate appropriate expertise. “Less is more” is a good guideline here, in that it’s better to have folks asking for your opinion than asking for you to stop repeating yourself.
3. You should be making these same assessments of expertise and reliability of potential customers and/or partners, which means far more listening than talking.
4. Focus is on narrowcasting information to select groups, sending appropriate information to different sets of recipients.

Entry Filed under: Rules of Thumb, skmurphy