Whilst many businesses have taken the plunge into the social media world, there are so many that have little clue how to use it, nor understand how to use it to its full potential. So, here we explain 10 correct ways to use social media.
1. Yes, the first step is showing up. But we’re afraid it’s not enough.
Many businesses are stuck at just showing up. Lonely Facebook pages, stagnant twitter profiles and Linked in profiles with few connections. Business people set-up accounts, experiment for a few weeks, and lose motivation as they fail to see any results. The problem is not that social media can’t get results; it’s that business owners don’t know how to get them. Meanwhile, people who stumble on those accounts see no content and see the business as dead as they account itself.
Before you embark on social media, make a clear plan of how it will be managed – gain expert advice (yep, there’s a such thing as social media experts), establish the core objectives of the activity, and commit to the process.
2. Keep your personal profiles separate to business
Don’t fall in the trap of combining your personal and business profiles, as the objectives for the two are totally different. Your business profile should have list of business related objectives. E.g. building brand awareness, driving traffic to your site, promoting events etc. Establish the purpose for the account and stick to it. This of course means your personal account is just that – you can continue to say and do exactly as you like, with the privacy of your friends and family.
3. Stop inundating your ‘friends’ with spam
Regular updates to your accounts are important, but spread sale-like posts out to avoid spamming your network contacts. Inundating your contacts with too much sales guff is going to annoy them very quickly – they’ll lose interest, hide your posts or simply stop following you all together.
4. Adopt some ying and yang
For every sale-like post, or plug for your business, balance that with something a little more light-hearted. It doesn’t have to be personal – just a rest from business guff. This also helps contacts to get to know the professional you – and all the while, you’re building rapport and trust with your contacts. Suggestions might be to comment on a major issue in your local area that affects business owners, or post an experience you had in another business today (create conversations about others and you’ll find they’ll start to do the same).
5. Leverage off links
If you visited a website and every point of advice linked to another site – you would begin to feel that the site was just regurgitating from other resources right? Well social media is much the same. You should leverage off links to drive traffic to your own site and appear like an expert. As opposed to just reposting other people’s links, explain in your own opinion why you recommend it. Better still, write a blog post about it, add their link in your post and then and link to your blog in the social media post – this way you’re positioning yourself as the expert and driving traffic to your site, and not theirs.
6. Consolidate for manageability
Use social media management programs to post to multiple sites as once and manage multiple sites with just 1 log-in. Hootsuite is great one that we use, recommend and love! You can also schedule posts in advance to ensure that your content is regular and consistent.
7. Don’t just talk, listen.
Social media is all about conversing and interacting. It’s most affective when you’re not only posting, but participating in other conversations. Letting your contacts know that you’re reading their posts shows that there really is a human behind the business and helps to build rapport with that contact. It’s these direct conversations that usually lead to a long-term business relationship.
8. Up the anti with multimedia.
Let’s face it, words alone can get boring. We all love the odd photo, Youtube video and even the occasional slide show with music. Mixing it up with multimedia will keep your contacts interested. Some suggestions might be posting a photo from a latest buying trip (sneak peak from a buying trip), posting a pic of you and a client on site visit, or distributing a video blog.
9. Target strangers with come paid advertising
Facebook is becoming an increasingly popular medium for paid advertising – allowing you to target users on demographics, keywords in their profile and location.
10. Just because you build it, that doesn’t mean they’ll come
Finally, remember that just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they’ll come! Social media should be an integrated part of your marketing – promote it in your website, email signatures and marketing collateral. Also, make business profiles should be as open as possible – choose privacy settings that allow you to be found.
If you would like to be shown in just one day EXACTLY how you can get started the RIGHT way online and positively FLOURISH from the word GO by using social media, come along to our ‘Become a Social Media Super Hero’ workshop in Newcastle on Tuesday 22 March 2011. Click here for more details.
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