Social media is no doubt a powerful tool for marketing. But, it only works if you know how to take advantage of it effectively and properly. By knowing the do’s and don’ts, you’ll be able to avoid the most common mistakes of other small business owners when using social media for business and you will also know the right tactics that work.
What You Should Do
- Start by Knowing Your Customers
Your social media must be tailored to your targeted customer base and not based on your personal interests. Your customers do not really care about you. They care on what you can do for them. So, post some stories that they can relate to. If you deal with providing SEO services, share posts on how they can benefit from such services. But, when writing a post, you should follow 80/20 rule. The 80% of your content must be relevant to your customers and the 20% should be about your business.
- Maintain a Single Voice
Social media is good for sharing, yet ensure that your message is consistent and clear across every channel including social media, public, website, and so on.
- Be Active Yet Don’t Overdo It
It’s important to be active on all social media channels, yet do not post often that you annoy or overwhelm people. This might just lead to some issues. One of these is that too much information could cause your followers to stop following the posts. The other posts may get lost within their newsfeeds and they will not see the content that might be really valuable.
- Keep Track of Your Progress
For you to know if your strategies are working, keeping track of your progress can make a difference.
- Follow Your Checklist
Having a checklist is good for many aspects of life and this also includes social media. Make a checklist to check for grammar issues and ensure the information you are sharing can be shared and keep in mind the time you posted it so all your readers will see it.
What You Should NOT Do
- Avoid liking your own posts. Encourage your employees to share and like the material that’s posted. Your workers can be the greatest ambassadors of your brand.
- Do not share too much and be careful of the things you share. For instance, if you’re launching a product and pos pictures too early, it might destroy the whole product launch that some worked so hard to build.
- Never neglect your social media provide. Once you created your profile, update it regularly and make sure that you’re always active.
- Do not forget to go networking. Just as you would in reality, always consider working to make connections and grow your brand through building quality relationships and networking on social media.
- Don’t rely on automation. You won’t get the trust of your customers if they think that all of your posts are automated.
Knowing what you should and not do when using social media for your small business can help you get results. Just make sure to do it right.
