Five Dos and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing
The internet has provided every business in the world with an opportunity to approach an international audience. In the digital world, you don’t have any excuse even as a small business as to why you can’t compete with big businesses. Many small businesses have become huge corporations by making the right use of media. They grasped the idea of what worked on social media and what did not. On the other hand, some big companies are still struggling to this day when it comes to their social media presence. Their content is not appealing and they are not as popular on social media as they are in the real world.
Let’s take a look at the five big dos and don’ts of social media marketing that should help market your business the right way.
The Dos of Social Media Marketing
1. Be Present on the Big Social Networks
The first thing you want to do is to be present on the big social networking websites. When you browse the internet, you will find many small and budding social networks as well. While creating a profile there won’t hurt you, it is not best to focus too much on them. To this day, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest are the biggest social networks on the internet. The first thing you want to do is to create your business pages on these major social networking websites. You might not know but taking care of your social networking accounts is a full-time job.
2. Create Unique Content
The most important thing for any business to get the attention of the audience is to create unique content. While the word “unique” is thrown around casually by people, it means a lot when you are on social media. You have to realize that tons of new content is created on social networks not only by companies but other users as well. Using any stock content or sticking to the clichéd ideas might not help you gain the attention that you need. You have to create unique, colorful, attention-grabbing, and valuable content.
3. Stay on Top of the Latest Trends
The social media world moves faster than you can imagine. Things are happening here all the time. For that reason, social networks came up with the idea of trends. Now, when people use social networks, they look for the latest trends and talk about them. That’s what you have to do in order to stay relevant. You have to give people what is most relevant at any given time. To know what is relevant and relatable, you have to know the latest trends. However, you have to make sure that your content offers some value to your followers and customers. Do not create content just for the sake of it.
4. Create a Persona
You can notice this trend if you look at the social networking accounts of most of the chain restaurants today. These companies have come up with the most appealing ideas for gaining attention on social media. They assume personas and stick to them. Personas are like characters and they are consistent with their habits. If an account created by a company is there to roast people on their tweets, it will continue to do so consistently until people start to recognize it that way. You have to create a persona just like that.
5. Improve Interaction
Irrespective of the type and quality of content you are creating, you can’t get much out of it until you are interacting with your audience. You can interact with your audience in many ways. First, you want to talk to them in your content. If you have talked about a particular topic, ask them to leave their comments and opinions about that topic. Secondly, respond to their comments underneath your content. If you are sharing content quietly, your audience will soon get bored of you.
The Don’ts of Social Media Marketing
1. Forget Your Audience
How can you forget your audience when you are interacting with them in the first place? Of course, you will not forget your audience, but you can definitely forget some parts of it. If your company is located in many countries, you have to care for the time zone differences as well. You have to make sure that you share your content at different times so everyone in your audience can see what you have shared. In a similar fashion, you want to create some content in a language other than English as well if your audience belongs to a non-English speaking country.
2. Try to Sell
The worst mistake you can make on social media is sounding like you are selling something. People do not like sales pitches on social networks. They are there for the content, information, entertainment, and fun. The whole purpose of marketing on social media is to become like your audience. Be a part of them and interact with them as they interact with each other. Keep creating new content and stick to a particular topic consistently. Find creative ways to get people’s attention to your product rather than directly selling it to them.
3. Post without Research
A lot of companies have made these mistakes in the past and paid the heavy price for doing so. When you talk about a trending topic, you want to research it completely before saying anything about it. Controversies can often arise when you share content related to hashtags. Hashtags can be misleading at times. They are a string of words that denote a trend on social networks. You never want to assume something only from the words in the hashtag. Click on the tag, see the posts from other people to know what the topic is, and then you can post your response.
4. Be Controversial
Controversies can be a big blow to the companies. Such cases have happened several times in the past. In some cases, you are only trying to take a side because you know what you are siding with is right. However, you are a company that serves people with its products and services. Be sensible with your favors and animosities. If you think some part of your audience promotes and the other rejects a particular topic, keep your mum and don’t talk about it.
5. Take Things Personally
You are not supposed to take things personally on social media. When you create a company page, you are reflecting the company, not the manager or the CEO of the company. You will almost always face some hatred and animosity from people when you post something. In fact, there is a thing called “trolling” on social media where people will deliberately say things to provoke you. The biggest mistake you can make is falling for that provocation.
Final Thoughts
Now you understand what works on social media and what does not. Keep in mind that just like any other task in the world, this one has a learning curve as well. Always analyze the responses from your audiences when you share something. See what they like from you and what it is that they don’t pay attention to. Give them what they want and put a cork on things that they don’t want. Interact with your audience and have fun with them. Avoid controversies as much as you can and do not make comments on people’s looks.
