Looking for some quick tips to maximise your social media marketing efforts this year? Social media marketing is essential for any business these days. You’re already at a disadvantage if you don’t have an online presence. For a lot of businesses, nailing down the right social strategy may be difficult. There’s a lot of advice out there, and some may seem contradictory. The thing to remember is that social media marketing is all about finding the right balance. To show you what we mean, we’ve compiled a list of dos and don’ts to help get you on the right track and ensure you’re making the most of your efforts.
THE DOs
DO: Create a Posting Schedule.
We’ve seen far too many small business owners take it upon themselves to run their own social media channels, come out of the gate with an intense posting routine, and then quickly lose interest and eventually abandon their profiles. This is a recipe for disaster, and it proves the essentiality of having a posting schedule. Social media tools like Buffer, Hootsuite and Sendible can take much of the legwork of remembering when to post.
DO: Engage And Post Regularly
The point of a social network is to socialise. So, share great content regularly to give your followers something to share and get excited about. Don’t forget to engage with their content, too. Make sure to follow the industry leaders in your niche and try to give more than you receive. Consider setting a schedule for yourself to ensure you keep up with social media marketing. Even 10 minutes spent sharing and engaging daily goes a long way toward boosting your web presence.
DO: Have A Strategy
The most important part of social media management happens before you sign up for Facebook or publish your first Tweet. Each social media marketing campaign should start with clearly outlined goals and a battle plan that will help you achieve those goals. Typical start-up social media management strategies will look a little different. These strategies revolve around assessing your strengths and weaknesses as a company and finding opportunities to turn your early customers into brand loyalists. Of course, your perfect strategy won’t be a carbon copy of some other brand’s goals. So, when building your social media management strategy, set realistic goals to impact your business.
DO: Provide Value
Consider what types of content your followers may find the most valuable. Depending on your brand, you might choose to create educational or informative content. For example, you could create simple how-to videos or share tips to help your followers. Another way to provide value is to create entertaining content that people enjoy. For example, you could create a series of comedic videos or share interesting blog posts with your audience. Focusing on what you can offer your followers can help you increase your post engagement rate and improve your return on investment (ROI).
DO: Use Multiple Posting
Most platforms today have multiple posting features that allow you to show your content in different areas. In addition to posting content on the main feed of the platform, you can also create live videos, stories and reels. Familiarise yourself with each of these features. The more areas you upload your content to, the more people you can engage with on your designated social media platforms.
DO: Form a Right Frequency.
Finding a sustainable posting frequency is one of the most important aspects of building a social media marketing brand. Although conventional wisdom has long held that posting at least once every day is the gold standard, there is no hard-and-fast rule to optimising your frequency. Rather, you should simply commit to a frequency that you can reliably sustain long-term. If you’re running a full-time business, you may not have time to create seven days’ worth of original content for publication every week. If you can only manage two pieces of content, commit to merely posting twice a week.
DO: Include Visuals
Make your posts engaging by including visuals with your text. Experiment with a variety of posts, such as graphics, photos and videos in different sizes, to keep your content looking unique. Using these types of visuals allows your posts to take up more screen space, which can help you capture your audience’s attention. It also gives you more opportunities to be creative in how you promote your products, services and brand.
DO: Have Fun
Boring brands don’t make for worthwhile social media follows. That’s why it’s crucial that you get creative with your posts and establish a fun brand identity that isn’t afraid to take risks and show some personality or humour. Spicing up your page with unoffensive humorous captions or an original meme (especially in your tweets or Instagram Stories) can help improve your retention rate.
DO: Address Issues Professionally
If you receive constructive criticism on one of your social media pages, respond to it gracefully. Review your response in another app or offline first, and start by acknowledging the individual’s statement. If you need more information to address their concerns, ask them to send you a direct message so you can learn more. This is a great way to show the rest of your followers that you care about resolving the issue while moving the rest of your conversation to a private location. Remember to treat your followers with respect and strive to provide excellent customer service.
DO: Join Outside Conversations
Another way to engage members of your target audience is to enter conversations they’re having online. For example, if a consumer posts that they love a product they purchased from a brand you’re promoting, respond to the comment and inform them that the brand is launching similar products in the future. Joining current conversations can bring attention to your social media pages, and you can attract potential followers.
THE DON’Ts
DON’T: Try To Please Everyone
Understanding your audience is one of the most critical parts of your strategy. If you try to please everyone, you’ll offer nothing unique, and nobody will be satisfied. On the other hand, if you know your audience and understand their pain points, you can tailor your services to solve their specific problems. Do that better than any of your competitors, and you’ll have a loyal following in no time.
DON’T: Give Into Trolls.
Naturally, popular social media accounts are bound to run into troublemakers who post inflammatory content merely to get a rise out of the account owner. If you encounter a social media troll who makes disparaging or offensive comments, delete the comment and report the user. If left unattended — or, worse, if they are approached with retaliatory comments — then the reputation of your business can be put in jeopardy.
DON’T: Delete Negative Reviews
When you see every mention of your brand, it can be tempting to purge negative experiences from the web. Resist that urge. Instead, reach out to people who leave a negative review. Ask how you can improve their experience and work hard to regain their trust. Doing this may not only salvage a bad situation but also show other potential leads how far you’re willing to go for your customers. Responding to both positive and negative reviews is a helpful way to gain insight into your business and target market.
DON’T: Overuse Hashtags
Before you include a string of hashtags at the end of your post copy, make sure the social media platform you’re using supports them. This can help you create posts that look organic and native to each platform. Research how many hashtags are appropriate to include in posts on different social media platforms and choose which ones you use carefully. Selecting a few relevant and niche hashtags instead of several generic ones can help you appeal to people interested in your brand.
DON’T: Buy Your Followers
While it might be tempting to purchase social media followers through a third-party organisation to improve your brand’s online image, professional social media marketing experts choose not to use this tactic for several reasons. Purchased followers are typically bots or fake accounts, which means that after they follow your social media page, it’s unlikely they can engage with any of the content you post. Instead of purchasing followers, develop a well-rounded advertising strategy and create valuable content.
DON’T: Make Grammar Mistakes
This may sound like a given, but far too few business-owned social media accounts have their posts proofread by a second pair of eyes. Before firing off a post or update, ensure that at least one proofreader has checked it over. Alternatively, apps like Grammarly can help reduce your typo rate.
DON’T: Become Complacent
Finding your audience on all the bustling social media platforms and watching them respond enthusiastically whenever you post new content isn’t enough. So, the best social media strategists plan – and they’re always experimenting. The truth is that social media management is never done. There’s always a better way to reach your target audience, a new platform waiting to be discovered, and more avenues for you to engage with your customers. Stay ahead of the curve, and never let your current strategy be good enough.
Conclusion
It’s the responsibility of business owners to use their social media presence as the marketing tool that it is. Social media marketing is about developing visibility, personality and community for your brand. Hopefully, this article helped you understand the Dos and Don’ts in Social Media Marketing. By abiding by the do’s and don’ts listed above, you can put together a set of basic ground rules for your business’s next social media marketing strategy.
