Social Media Etiquette: The Dos and Don’ts
Just like other social situations, there is a social media etiquette that you need to follow. Come on strong and you’ll scare potential leads away. Don’t engage enough and you won’t be able to secure potential leads. Finding the right balance of sales, communication, research, and engagement is essential. To find your balance follow these dos and don’ts on your social media accounts.
DO
Set Goals
Before you jump headfirst into posting, you need to have a goal in mind. Otherwise, how do you know if your efforts are successful? Decide if your goal is to gain followers, increase brand awareness, or gain leads.
Engage
Social media has the term in the title. You need to interact with other people on a one-on-one level. Pretend as if you’re at a virtual cocktail party or networking event and reach out to people.
Be Authentic
Your followers can tell when you’re authentic. Just be yourself and show your brand’s personality. The more open and honest you are, the easier it is to build trust and relationships. Over automation can lead to spamming your target audience. This doesn’t look authentic. Create a persona for your business page.
Add Value
Ever notice how social media posts that add value perform better? Your posts need to add value to your followers and customers. Answer their questions, solve a problem, or give a new insight. This will establish you as a thought leader and trusted resource.
Listen
You have a wealth of information at your fingertips. Your customers are talking about you and your competitors. So use that information to better your product or service. Fulfill your customer’s needs by giving them what they ask for. Pay attention to pain points, praising, and positioning.
Build Trust
Focus on building trust through social media. This will be a stronger path to the eventual sale. Once you build a stay level of trust, convincing someone to buy later on becomes a lot easier.
Proper Spelling and Grammer
Nothing ruins your professionalism and credibility like spelling and grammar mistakes. You ruin your first impressions and look untrustworthy to social media users. Thankfully, this is an easy thing to address. Always proofread your social media posts before you publish them. It can help to have someone else read them.
DON’T
Wing It
Randomly posting with no plan can handicap your efforts from the start. Without a defined goal you have nothing to judge your efforts against. This means you have no way of adjusting your strategy to obtain better results.
Broadcast
Don’t just randomly shout into the virtual space. Broadcasting your marketing messages as you would on other platforms isn’t the most effective method of marketing on social media.
Be Fake
Followers and potential leads will see right through your facade. If you aren’t genuine then you won’t build genuine relationships. If you’re only half committed, then you’re efforts will come across that way.
Just Sell
Do you enjoy feeling like someone is constantly pumping you for money? No? Neither do your customers and social media followers. If you constantly and only sell, sell sell, your message gets tuned out. Focusing only on the sale also ignores the rest of the sales funnel.
Blast Messages
If you do all of the talking, then you can’t do any listening. It’s good to stay vocal and active, but you shouldn’t be talking nonstop. This isn’t a conversation but a diatribe.
Try to Close
Don’t try to close the deal over social media. This will lose all of the credibility you’ve built up. Instead, take the conversation off of social media and have a conversation in person or over the phone instead.
Over Use Hashtags
Using hashtags is an effective way of getting your posts more visibility on social media platforms. However, you don’t want to load up your posts with tons of hashtags that has nothing to do with your business. Use common sense when choosing your hashtags.
Create Your Social Media Plan
It’s important to follow these rules of social media etiquette so that you can get the most from your social media. If you need help getting started posting on your social media accounts, I can help. We’ll start by assessing your current performance and goals. Then we’ll create a plan with achievable short and long term goals. With continual activity and assessment, we’ll ensure that your profiles add value to your business. So let me help you put your social media to work.
