Adam recently had an interesting experience writing a guest post for an Atlanta restaurant review blog. After discussing the incident with Adam earlier today, I think there are two major lessons to be learned. One is to be applied before you start talking, and the other involves more talking.

1. Know your audience.
2. Engage your audience. 

Know Your Audience: 

If you want to win marketshare using social media you need to start talking to people. However, before you start talking to people you must first listen to them. What happened to Adam is that he wrote a great post for the wrong people. The readers of FoodieBuddha expected a short, succinct review that gave them a clear view of Adam's opinion of the food at Varasano's Pizzeria. Adam gave them an article that focused on the story of the restaurant. Personally, I prefer the type of review Adam wrote, but I'm not who Adam was writing for, so my opinion means absolutely nothing. The important thing to remember is that you engage in social media for anyone besides your audience, you will fail. 

Engage Your Audience:

We've had the pleasure of learning from Adam's mistake. We now have the pleasure of learning from his success. Engaging your audience throughout the process is crucial. It's not over when you hit post, tweet, send, or delete. The people, your customers, are still out there. Adam's comments to the harsh reaction his post received are a quality example of how to engage your audience in a two way conversation; they also teach us a lesson about respect. Respect is the currency of the web, and if you can't keep your cool under criticism you can be sure you won't get any respect.

I'm hungry now, so I'm going to wrap this up. Thanks for today's lesson foodies :-)