What Social Media Tone Is Best for Your Business?

Global B2B buy sell website: www.bytrade.com

There’s many ways for your small business to stand out -- fancy branding, clever advertising, catchy slogans and of course, a solid mission statement. And in the realm of social media, tone is one of the most important (and often trickiest) pieces of branding.

Some rules of social media delivery seem like common sense: keep it appropriate, professional, polite, factual—and yes, even spell and grammar check posts. But when businesses delve deeper, picking a tone raises a number of complex questions: should businesses use corporate jargon to stay true to their serious core mission or should they inject playful questions to invite conversation among customers?

There is no one answer; the right solution is customized to each business. And as with anything, finding the right tone for a business involves a degree of trial and error.

Below is a sampling of different social media tones that the featured entrepreneurs say are doing the trick for their business. Think your business deserves to be featured? Just follow @fbsmallbiz and tweet #mysbc to participate.

@The_Foundary
The Foundary

Comparable to Gilt Groupe or Rue La La, this members-only home-and-lifestyle products flash-sale site started in November 2010. The Foundary says it distinguishes itself from the plethora of other flash sale sites in its loyalty to emerging designers. For this reason, the company says it employs a serious and curious tone in its social media. In fact, the Foundary even used social media to launch a national search competition, which helped them find a talented artisan named Shawn B. Riley who will be featured in a special sales event March 14.

According to the Foundary’s social media manager, Angie Kubiceck, social media remains the company’s prime source of growth.

“Members referring members through social media has fueled the Foundary’s membership,” she said.

@bluechipcookies
Blue Chip Cookies

With the motto ‘Life is sweet. Enjoy every morsel!’ Blue Chip Cookies warmly invites people around the country — and the world -- to enjoy a staple comfort food. After working for twenty years at a blue chip company as a sales director for Proctor & Gamble, founder Donna Drury said she was confident she knew the process of successful branding. In 2005, Drury and her husband had the “sweet” opportunity to purchase a small cookie company called Blue Chip Cookies, founded in 1983 in San Francisco.

Originally, Blue Chip Cookies planned to expand the brand through franchising, but when the recession hit, Drury shifted her focus to ....read more http://lindazengyuanqun.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/what-social-media-tone-is-best-for-your-business.html