Your company is not a person. When you use services like Facebook or LinkedIn to promote it, your company has to play by different rules.

People connect with other people. We crave authenticity. Social media can be powerful ways to reach out to your audience when you allow your people to be themselves – to put a real face on your company like the sun breaking through an otherwise cloudy sky.

When you get started using social media to market your company or organization, don’t make the mistake of starting a personal profile – the same kind that a regular person would – and slap your company’s name on it.
For starters, this is probably against the rules on the service. It is for Facebook and LinkedIn, to name a couple. Facebook has created Fan pages and LinkedIn has created Groups to accommodate companies and to keep them from creating personal profiles.

More importantly, though, it pays to be honest. Who wants to be friends with a faceless entity? Fan pages and groups give people the chance to connect with your company, to show others this connection, and – the most exciting part – interact with other people that also identify with your company and with your social media “faces.”

These “faces” are the real people with real faces that monitor the conversations, interact with people, and provide your company’s point of view. They give your social media marketing efforts authenticity. A “face” is a real person that your audience can relate to.

When you go forth into social media, you shouldn’t set out to make your company into a person. You should set out to make it a place.