Thou Shalt Not Tweet Thy Breakfast: The TWELVE Commandments of #Social #Media #Marketing

This summer, seven MBA students, most of whom were working during the day, gathered together twice a week from 6 to 10 pm to discuss SMM for organizations.

In one of the final sessions of the course I asked the class to generate "Ten principles of Social Media Marketing" that I could use as a starting point for classes. Below are the ELEVEN they came up with - #2 through #12 - with very little prompting or comment from their usually assertive professor. The only major changes were to break their first principle into two (#2 and #3) and to realize that they may be more than just principles... maybe commandments! Commandment #1 was added after the initial posting, based on comments from Fabian Colon, Jennifer Wasilik and others. I stressed goal setting and planning in class, but it somehow did not make my students initial list... The commandments follow!

Thou shalt:

1. Determine thy organization's goals for social media. Social media shall be employed under a flexible plan to meet those goals.
2. Know thy target audience and community.
3. Know thy organizational culture and voice. Speak to your audience in your voice.
4. Listen. If you do nothing else, listen to what people are saying about your organization, products or services, competitors and environment.
5. Be social. It is called SOCIAL media: Engage your community.
6. Be patient but measure results! Progress takes time but must be monitored.
7. Not attempt to be on every platform. Be on the social platforms that your target audience or community use most.
8. Be authentic 24/7/52.
9. Show thy passion. Involve your stakeholders emotionally.
10. Be consistent with message, principles and tone.
11. Produce great targeted content.
12. Use good manners. If you are angry delay your post or tweet and read it again before posting.

Authoritative?

Go forward and engage using these commandments as guidelines!

The commandments seem authoritative to me... but I may be biased.

Do you think they nailed it?

Are any of the 12 not really necessary?

What is number 13?? The illustrator of this piece, @kikischirr , suggested "Thou shalt not Tweet thy breakfast." Over thirty readers have suggested additions - which do you agree with?

What would you add???