Social media has become a major part of our lives. It permeates through every fiber of our culture. We use it every day for various reasons, it shows up on the media we consume, and more. Naturally, this has led to businesses becoming involved with social media. Its power to reach a world-wide audience and levels of engagement make it appealing for businesses to grow their exposure using social media.
However, not everyone marketing their business on social media knows all the right tricks to use social media effectively. More importantly, some businesses have no clue what not to do on social media. This stagnates their social media presence, or worse, leads customers to seeking social media engagement from other businesses. We’re going to help everyone out by giving you a list of six social media do’s and don’ts
Social Media Do’s
1. Repurpose Content
This will be the biggest time saver available to you. Strategically updating and reusing your old content can shave off so many hours of the week that normally would be devoted to creating new content. You can use the new time you’ve saved to focus on other key areas of your business strategy. The trick here is to be smart about how you repurpose the content. Reusing the same exact posts is guaranteed to lessen the engagement and interaction with your followers. Be sure to change elements of your posts in order to either highlight different information within the post or target a different segment within your audience.
2. Engage with Your Followers
One of the best things that social media platforms offer is the ability to engage directly with customers and fans of your businesses in a way that’s never been seen before. If you see that people are leaving comments on your posts (good or bad), don’t be afraid to comment yourself. If people are leaving negative comments, never attack them or be negative back. Being clear, understanding, and friendly is the best way to handle these types of comments. Being a business that your customers can interact with and being visible to them shows that you care about what they have to say and that it matters to you.
3. Have Clear and Measurable Goals
The point of most, if not all, social media campaigns is to use them to promote and expand your business. Adopting a social media strategy that has clear and measurable goals will allow you to test your various ideas and see what works and what doesn’t. this constant funnel of testing and refining is the heart of your social media strategy. Now every platform is different, finding the ones that work best for your business is also a vital component to ensuring your business’ social media success. Finding the right platforms and testing and adapting your social media campaigns can ensure that your business continues to thrive in the social media scene.
Social Media Don’ts
1. Stay Away
The worst thing you could possibly do on social media is stay away. Not having a consistent presence is as good as being dead as far as the platforms are concerned. If you’re too busy to keep up with engaging on your social platforms, its okay. It’s completely understandable. But make sure that you have someone that is devoted to staying engaged on your business’ social media accounts. This can take the form of agencies that specialize in this or hiring an in-house social media specialist. Also, if negative comments are troubling you, whatever you do, don’t delete negative comments. This is a terrible idea and will only make your business look bad in the eyes of the internet.
2. Don’t Have Social Media Meltdowns
You’ve probably noticed by now that the internet can be a wonderful place full of humor, knowledge, friendliness. It also has a dark side, though. People use the internet to be nasty, mean and hurtful. Someone leaving a negative comment on your page is inevitable and commonplace on social media platforms. It is the reality we live in. However, seeing the comments and responding with your own nastiness in return is a surefire way to lose business, get negative reviews, and more unpleasantness. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with audience members, colleagues, or competitors but there is no need to be impolite. Handling these comments in a polite, calm, and understanding manner will save you a lot of damage control and will improve the way people perceive your business online.
3. Spread Yourself Thin
It seems like these days there’s a new social media platform launching all the time. Now you may think to yourself that you need to jump onto every social media train to capitalize on potential customers. Please, don’t do that. The last thing you want to do for your business is to sign up on X amount of social media platforms and then never use them or choose one that doesn’t represent your brand or business in the best possible way. Instead, focus on one or two platforms (three tops, if you can handle it) that work best for the social media goals you’ve outlined for yourself and that can showcase your business in the most effective manner.
Social media is a huge part of the modern age. Though it can be tricky to get started and become a social media master, these tips will hopefully get you started on the right path. After all, social media is a powerful marketing tool and using it effectively can help your business to reach new customers. This in turn, will lead your business to thrive and grow to ongoing success.
