Social Media is an area that has many divided and mixed opinions. In my role I am actively on Social Media a lot but for my personal life it’s not a necessity. If you decide to stay or try out different platforms, here are our Do’s and Don’ts to it.
1. Do make sure you complete your profile
Incomplete profiles can indicate that you’re still working on your image. A profile that is complete and has an excellent amount of detail on will be favored more because the attention to detail is on a high level.
2. Consistency is key
When creating your profiles you need to ensure you’re consistent across all channels as it streamlines you as a business and a brand. Without to consistency people are unable to tell which profile and company is yours.
3. Do make connections
Connecting with other businesses and potential clients can help build a relationship which can make you more recommendable and could win you customers. Networking events in your local area and social networking hours on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can help.
4. Do adapt content to each platform
Each profile requires different formalities of content. LinkedIn is more professional and should only contain business-like content. Twitter and Facebook are more casual and can include anything from GIFs to business content. Just don’t get too carried away.
5. Engage your audience
Engaging with your audience is essential. If someone comments on your posts the appropriate thing to do is respond because it shows you are active and you like to develop communication with potential customers and other businesses.
6. Appeal to your audience with visuals
Images, GIFs and videos are what helps and attracts people to your profile. Text just puts people off as they get bored of reading it. If you stick to a good balance it will grab the attention quicker and better than what your posts would if it was just text.
7. Do present good behaviour
Being offensive and aggressive will put people off. If you present this behavior online to others, how are they going to feel if you deal with other customers/prospects? You must be as nice as possible and present a friendly atmosphere.
8. Don't ever spam people's timelines
Constantly posting content and taking up a lot of space in so little time on timelines will make people want to unfollow you. Spam isn’t something you want to see, so keep your posting to a minimum (e.g. every hour, every half an hour etc.)
9. Don't use poor grammar and spelling
If you already haven’t been told by your parents, poor spelling and grammar is a sign of sloppiness and lack of attention to detail. Keep your spelling and grammar on point and it will look better on you and your brand.
10. Create a strategy
When you know what kind of content you want to publish on each platform, you need to develop a plan so that you can post targetted content out to your followers. Whether it’s celebrating a specific work period or the build up to something exciting you need to make sure it’s all planned out in a monthly content plan.
11. Direct traffic to your website
Any posts that include you promoting and advertising your products/services, be sure to include your website URL as it directs people to your website with one click. As lazy as it sounds people are more likely to visit your site if the link is there rather than opening a new browser and searching for your website.
12. Schedule your content
Using a content management system helps save time from manually posting your content. Tweetdeck is useful for just sending out tweets but across all platforms one to use is Hootsuite. This means you can then schedule content for out of your normal work hours so you can be publicly active throughout the morning, day and evening.
13. Do not delete any negative comments
When you receive negative comments and reviews about you, it can damage your business’ reputation. This is unless you respond to them in a positive way. The provides you with a way to make them happy in a public place by apologizing and offering to make them happy again. It also gives you the chance to recognize an issue with the business you may not be away of which indicates an area you can work on to improve this area.
14. Measure ROI
If you generate traffic through your social media pages and do not monitor it, you will have anomalies as to where they came from. It needs to be efficiently monitored as you may be spending time on a marketing activity/platform that doesn’t work. Each social media page works differently and more effectively with different businesses – monitoring your ROI on social media can help determine what works and what doesn’t.
15. Use your social media insights and statistics
Social insights allow you to see how your posts perform, what your audience is interested in etc. By looking at these insights, you can see what posts work best and who engages with what kinds of content. From this you can adapt and tailor your posts to suit your audience which will gain more interest and improve the engagement rate. Use them wisely to help attract more attention to your content.
