Business owners are always told that they need to put their business on social media. But with so many social media platforms out there, how are businesses supposed to keep track of current social media marketing trends?
While having social media pages for your business is an important aspect of your overall digital marketing strategy, many businesses fail to get social media right, either coming across as too personal or as too robotic.
Here are the top 3 do’s, and the biggest don’t, your business should consider when using social media.
Do:
Know Your Target Audience – As with any form of marketing, if you don’t know who you are targeting, you message will not have any impact. Before you post anything on social media think about who you want to be engaging. When you create content for social media, ask yourself this question:
would my target audience find this engaging;
If the answer is yes, post away. If the answer is no, take a step back and see if you can refine the content to make it more engaging.
Stick to 3 platforms – There are hundreds of social media platforms available for businesses to use today, and most of them are free. However, that doesn’t mean that a business should put themselves on every single platform they can. Usually three platforms is enough because when you consider how much time you have to spend creating content for each profile you don’t want to be overworked. You should stick to the platforms that will help you achieve your goals, whether it’s increasing your customer base or giving you more brand awareness. If you think you can achieve all your goals only using one platform, then go for it.
Develop a Strategy – You cannot just post on social media sporadically and expect it to be successful and engaging for your audience. As with other aspects of digital marketing, businesses must create a social media strategy that outlines the types of content they will post, when they will post it and who the target audience is. Once the strategy has been developed, then businesses can start actually creating and posting content on social media.
Don’t:
Bombard Your Followers – Posting too often will overwhelm and annoy your followers. This will lead to people unfollowing you and your posts getting lost in the social media algorithms. Posting multiple times a day can also come across as spammy, and nobody likes to be spammed on social media or otherwise.
So there you have it, the do’s and don’ts of social media. Social media will always be a slippery slope for businesses to navigate because it is an important part of digital marketing, but you need to ensure you have the right balance of personal and professional.
You won’t always get it right the first time, but hopefully these tips will help you ensure you don’t lose the followers you’ve worked so hard to gain.