A lot of people are sharing tips and advice about social media. I am one of them.

This is all good, apart from in one aspect.

We always focus on how to take from social media. What we can get.

Yes, we will say that you should focus on your audience, share good stuff, engage, interact. But it comes down to getting out of social media whatever benefits you are looking for.

When you realize that followers and friends are people, it makes me think that perhaps we are potentially creating pretty bad relationships.

Once in a while, just share something just because.

Every now and then, just give stuff away without thinking about getting anything back, reciprocity, or future responsiveness.

See followers as friends, not a contact list to throw links at.

When someone asks you a question, or asks for a favor, do not look up their profile or history, just do it.

Rather than accept that freebie, ask if you can offer it to your contacts instead.

You might be riding high right now but you know the saying …

“Be nice to folks on the way up, you might just need them on the way back down”

Social media is a lot of things to a lot of people.

Entrepreneurs look to social media for visibility, traffic and audience. Small business might see it as a source of customers and long term relationship building. Other businesses can use it for increasing sales through offers and coupons. For individuals who are taking a break it might be chatting with friends, procrastinating, finding a date or catching up on the news.

An area big brands are increasingly turning to social media for, is the “listening station”. Their scale means they are not as close to the customer sentiment as smaller businesses. Social media provides an opportunity to “listen out” for problems and plaudits, and react as necessary before issues fester.

Seth Godin’s recent article though reminds me how some social media users have twigged that this is happening and are using it to their advantage.

We have all at one time or another complained about a product or service. Normally the only people unfortunate enough to have to listen are those who are close by, family, co-workers or friends. Now we have an audience of thousands for our complaints who get instant, bl0w-by-blow accounts of your misery.

Sometimes a Twitter rant can get you noticed by the appropriate people and have a satisfactory or amazing outcome. I complained about my broadband continuously cutting out at the worst times, causing me productivity problems, and British Telecom got a technical guru on the phone with me and sent out a replacement router. Again with the same company, I complained about my 3g dongle and again a replacement was sent out to me. So complaining can work.

What we are seeing now though is that expectations have been raised. People hear about results like the above and decide they want some of that too.

This is fine if the company representative is

1. Listening out for problems
2. Sees the complaint as valid
3. Can do something about it

These criteria are obviously not met as often as people would hope. What problems are these cases going to cause? When peole do not feel their grievances are being listened to or are not getting the results they were after they are going amplify their complaint, repeat it, and get others to share it. Then you go from customer service task to reputation management issue.

Going back to Seth’s article linked above, the customer and those listening go from remembering the good stuff about the company and product, to focusing on the problem, percieved or real, and that is what gets the publicity.

If you are not using social media to listen out for brand problems and customer service issues, you had better start. Go get yourself some listening.