NOTE: This post was originally published on the AMEX Open Forum website, where I write a weekly piece on marketing advice for small business owners.

Whether you believe in karma or not, using social media successfully for your small business often has a lot to do with a series of seemingly disconnected events.  Every comment you post online, every person you contact and every piece of content you upload adds to the sum total of your efforts in the blogosphere.  Building relationships is important in any industry, but social media karma is the idea that what you do and how you behave will ultimately have an effect on you directly or indirectly. 

Social media karma is not often written about, but very often spoken about by bloggers, especially successful ones.  Here are 10 ways you can improve your social media karma:  

1. Be real.  This is the first and foremost principle of furthering your social media karma that I could think of.  Being real involves not lying, being transparent about who you are and what you believe, and sharing an honest voice.  People trust others that have an authentic voice, and are more likely to refer them to others or help when asked. 
2. Respond to emails. This is tough when you have a high volume of unsolicited emails, but the idea that someone took time to write directly to you should make it enough of a priority to respond.  Obviously, this applies to personally written messages, and not to email blasts of press releases.  Those are rarely worth a response.
3. Offer exclusives.  Maybe you aren't breaking "news" online, but the idea of exclusives is not limited to that.  If you are going to write about or post something interesting, whether related to your business or not, offer a preview to others in your network.  Share ideas as they happen and offer the chance for others to say it first.  Exclusives are gold in the blogosphere … everyone wants them.
4. Make connections. In social settings, the gold standard for making connections is introducing two people to one another who later get married.  Social media is no different.  If you can be the person making these connections between individuals that may not have met otherwise, you will be remembered by both for your efforts.
5. Join networks.  This is not just about publishing networks, but about social networks of people who are interested in the same things you are.  Joining groups like this, and actively participating adds value to the group.  As a member, it probably won't be long before you take something useful from the group – and hopefully add something useful as well.
6. Avoid snark. Snarkiness is the enemy of good karma.  Being rude, uselessly opinionated or arrogant are all rising behaviours from people in social media that add to the sea of needless commentary online.  The price for this may not be apparent, as unfortunately, snarkiness does sometimes result in conversation sometimes (who can't avoid watching a car crash?) — but eventually the snark will catch up to you.
7. Forgive mistakes. Most bloggers or others in social media are not journalists and don't have the time or necessity for checking every fact or argument before making it.  This does result in mistakes, and people do screw up.  Correcting them without holding a grudge is a big deal.  Mistakes are made, people are sorry.  If they fixed the error, then get over it.
8. Post to contact. Email is not the only way to get in touch with someone.  Posting about something they have written and linking to their blog offers an indirect route to contact, as most bloggers pay attention to who is linking to them.  Writing about one of my posts is still the best way to get onto my radar, and I suspect most bloggers are the same way.  Communicating in this way avoids the email filter and starts the dialogue.
9. Comment and participate.  This may be part of earlier suggestions, however the idea that you need to be a participant online rather than just an observer is key to this belief.  If you expect others to communicate and add comments to your blog, you need to be online doing the same for others.  Without participation, it is difficult to belong to a community online or build relationships with others.
10. Show gratitude. Often mentioned as an important factor in connecting with users, showing gratitude for someone interacting with some content you have posted or a comment you have shared, linking to you, or offering some other effort on your behalf is vital.  Appreciation makes someone more likely to believe that you think their efforts are significant and as a result, connect more strongly with you and your blog.

Posted via email from rohitbhargava’s posterous

Social media is not a robot. In fact, there could hardly be a more opposing idea to social media than that of robotic automation. I start this post by sharing that because the idea that any job could be "replaced" by social media is contentious idea. There are plenty of market forces displacing people from jobs … do we really need to add social media to the list? Actually, the truth is that social media is already supplanting many jobs. Marketers, politicians, government officials, athletes and librarians are all using social media to varying levels to add context to what they do every day. Social media is a part of their new roles and will continue to be moving forward.

There are a smaller number of jobs, however, that I believe will very shortly REQUIRE SOCIAL MEDIA in order to be done effectively. These are not jobs where logging in online can help to add dimension or offer a useful outlet. In this category of social media enabled jobs, the people doing those jobs who are NOT using social media will find themselves falling behind. Here are a few of these types of jobs that come to mind for me:

1. Customer Service Representative: It is already a part of many customer service groups to allow people to interact with a company by email. More and more, social networks and social media tools are offering a chance for companies to offer proactive customer service. In some cases, like Comcast, there is an entire channel of customer service professionals who are responding to customers. In others, a company may be using a social media community through a service such as Get Satisfaction to offer this type of service. People are talking about their experiences online, and increasingly they will expect companies to be listening to them there. We are at the beginning of a large trend that in the next few years may become as ordinary and expected as being able to call a phone number to receive customer service.

2. Concierge. The sad fact of many hotels (even 5 star properties) is that the individuals they have sitting behind the concierge desk are little more than glorified order takers and bellman (or women). Think I'm being unfair? Unfortunately, my consistent travel schedule (more than 100 days a year) has led me to the truth that a good concierge who actually is an expert at knowing their own city and how to get just about anything done is few and far between. There are, of course, those concierges still available on occasion and nothing can replace their expertise. But for 95% of hotels in America (and perhaps even that percentage is too low), social media can offer the one thing that those concierges alone cannot. Through social media, you can have instant access to real restaurant reviews, shopping recommendations, direct connections with small businesses and more. All the things that a great concierge would spend years learning are now available through social media to the savvy web user.

Any other jobs come to mind that should make this list?

Posted via email from rohitbhargava’s posterous

If you are not Indian, chances are when I say Chacha you will think of a type of latin dance. Although it is technically called the "cha-cha-cha" it's the more widespread meaning. If you WERE Indian, however, you would know that Chacha means Uncle. Actually, it means a lot more than Uncle. When I call someone Chacha, anyone who heard me would know not only that that person was my Uncle, but that my relation to him was on my father's side, and that he was younger than my father. All that information is transferred in a single word. Tau or Tauji is similar, but used as the word for what to call the same Uncle if he is older than my father.  Similar names exist on the mother's side and for the older generation of grandparents. Even siblings use the words "bhaiyya" (for older brother) and "didi" (for older sister).

Sound like a foreign and confusing system? Consider that the next time you walk into a Starbucks and order a Grande instead of a medium or a Venti instead of a small. Starbucks is one retail outlet that has their own lingo. Sit down at any Waffle House in a Southern US state and you can order your hash browns "scattered, smothered, and covered." If you've been there, you'll know what that means. 

The point is, there is a power in creating your own language that relates deeply to having your own culture. Countries and cultures have their own words that exist as a part their cultural identity. They signify a shared knowledge and basis for communication. Starbucks, on a smaller scale, has created the same thing.  What types of words does your company use that are unique to it? More importantly, are those used as a part of your company's culture internally or are they used to share an insider's language with your customers as well? Only brands with loyal and passionate customers come close to having their own language. What are you doing to create yours?

Posted via email from rohitbhargava’s posterous