This morning I wrote 10 Essential Tips for Social Media Brand Engagement but realized over the course of the day that I need to be even more explicit when it comes to helping you all engage most effectively with the denizens of the Internet, be it on blogs, social networks, message boards and forums, via email, email lists, or groups. Here are another five, all dealing with follow-through, accountability, follow-up, attentiveness, under-promising, and over-delivering (via Marketing Conversation):

1. Do what you say you’re going to do: I keep on telling people that social media marketing and digital PR is equal parts logistics, organization, and hospitality. Everyone focuses on the charm part of the relationship but a man is judged on keeping his word. Keep your word.
2. Over-communicate online to let your customer know what’s going on: the first thing a visitor should hear, almost immediately, is “@chrisabraham Hi, I just saw this. Let me see what I can do. I’ll get back to you in a few with more information.” Then, “@chrisabraham I just spoke to my manager and he’s getting approval for the refund. I will be back to you soon.” If you don’t over-communicate, visitors may feel dismissed
3. Private messages and DMs are only for private information, bring the conversation back into the spotlight: don’t just impress your single guest with your mad skills and your ability to solve problems and deliver results. Once you get the account info, name, address, and phone, bring it back into the light and solve the problem
4. Only mention solutions that you are empowered and authorized to offer: even if you unintentionally lead a visitor on with promises of a full refund or over-nighting a replacement, if you are not authorized to solve a problem, don’t even mention it until you get an express OK from whomever is authorized to make the decision — just keep the customer in the loop every step of the way (see #2)
5. After all the charming, responding, communicating, and authorizing, you are not off the hook until you provide a solution: always beware to offer the solution that your visitor or customer wants rather than the solution you want to give because someone who’s mad just gets madder if they don’t get satisfaction. Be willing to give ’til it hurts

OK, that’s it for now. For your convenience, I will include the original 10 Essential Tips for Social Media Brand Engagement below:

1. Don’t play favorites in social media: everyone germane to your brand now has a platform and a voice online.  The “A-list” is just one constituency, and not always the most influential.  The “B-to-Z List” is enormous, active, and very influential to their audiences; treat them with full respect
2. People are busy online so respect their time and respond to their requests immediately: respond to anyone who engages within the hour, no matter who they are, if possible. If they’re being neutral or positive, it shows respect; if they’re hostile or contentious, an immediate response can prevent a war and win them over
3. Do not pour all of your resources into top influencers: find a way to engage through the long-tail
4. Remember that you’re always in public when you’re online: not only your tweets and blog posts are public; whenever you email someone or  connect with them via DM or via private message, it just takes a simple copy-and-paste for any and all of your correspondence to go public online.  (always assume everything you do might very well end up on the front page of the New York Times)
5. Always be responsive, timely, generous, and friendly: always engage horns with hugs. Irony and snark does not work. If you are every accused of anything untoward, accept, apologize, and move back to solving the issue
6. Keep as much of the conversation online and in public as possible: while you may be tempted to bring the conversation offline, keep all of it online until the point you need to exchange personal data and account numbers
7. The primary value of online customer support is being publicly generous and responsive: don’t just pop in and pull everyone who engages with you onto the phone, into email, or over to a private direct message but take the opportunity to spend as much time as you can having a public, open, friendly, and helpful conversational back and forth.
8. Engage online and in the public eye for for as long as you can: great advice from Zappos’ Thomas Knoll: why rush the open ticket to closed? Why not spend the time to actually build rapport? This isn’t a call center proper. Why not keep folks chatting back and forth for as long as they’re interested?
9. Never turf any question or query: never drop someone a link when you can write/talk them through it and please, never, ever, tell them to look it up on Google or send them to an FAQ. Each question is an opportunity to engage and teach (and also be seen engaging and teaching)
10. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”: this is a quote from the philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 AD) that we at Abraham Harrison live by.  When folks online snap, are mean, short or even angry, we know it is never really at us. Everyone’s busy and has a first life and we just wander into somebody else’s messes. Our only job is to be as helpful, responsive, nice, generous, patient, and friendly as humanly possible

I have been really learning and enjoying all the posts about Twitter today coming through my newsreader, including one from Stephen Collins of AcidLabs, Is it brandjacking if you come in late and don’t ask nicely? While the post is about Brandjacking, which is interesting, I responded to this little excerpt:

With all the attention now surrounding Twitter, it seems that every brand and celebrity under the sun suddenly is or wants to be represented on it and every other social network. It seems as if the business world has finally read Cluetrain and wants to be in the bazaar engaging in the conversation.

But the fact is that while some brands have been engaging in the conversation for quite some time – Zappos, Dell, Comcast and others come to mind – others have only recently realised that this conversation even exists. And worse, they don’t seem to realise that there are a few rules that define how you engage in that conversation.

That was awesome — that is awesome! I have been a fan of The Cluetrain Manifesto and also The Cathedral and the Bazaar for for a decade and I think it is really important to return all of this Twitter hype back to basics.  Here are the first 6 theses of 99 of the Cluetrain Manifesto:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
6. The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.

Here’s some fresh news from AdAdge that Barack Obama has been awarded the AdAge Marketer of the Year award, edging out Apple and Zappos. 36.1% of all votes went to Obama, compared toApple’s 27.3% and Zappo’s 14.1%. (Via Marketing Conversation)

Just weeks before he demonstrates whether his campaign’s blend of grass-roots appeal and big media-budget know-how has converted the American electorate, Sen. Barack Obama has shown he’s already won over the nation’s brand builders. He’s been named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008.

Mr. Obama won the vote of hundreds of marketers, agency heads and marketing-services vendors gathered here at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual conference. He edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. The rest of the shortlist, selected by Ad Age’s editorial staff, was rounded out by megabrand Nike, turnaround story Coors and Mr. Obama’s rival, Sen. John McCain.

I don’t know but this all sounds like “grassroots” campaigning and politics to me; that said, the Barack Obama campaign has a certain level of religiosity and passion that might just have welled into campaigning, using AdAge as a platform.

I wonder.  I might be wrong.

It’s just a little fishy. Sounds a little bit of memetic engineering mixed in with a high passion base rolled into a high probability that modern ad men and ad women are urban liberals and might use the awards to make a vocal statement.

Again, I might be wrong.

Mind you, if this is a conspiracy of Barack Obama campaigning and pro-Obama activation, then the success in fact proves and reinforces the award as rightfully — and with passion — belonging to the Obama/Biden ticket.

What do you think?