Social media is taking over the marketing scene at an extremely rapid pace. It is challenging to keep up with all of the social media tips, guidelines, and rules. Often, business owners, entrepreneurs and their marketing staff jump into social media without taking the necessary time to research and evaluate their needs. Hopefully, the following social media tips will help you put your small business marketing on track for success.
Each social media platform is a bit different in terms of what you can post there or who the audience might be. Taking the time to find the best platforms is well worth the effort. I thought you might find some value in the following social media tips – ‘Dos and Don’ts’ noted below as you move into the online marketing scene of social media platforms.
Easy, Actionable Social Media Tips
Do…
- Consider your business strategies and goals before jumping feet first into social media. Not all social media platforms will work for all situations. Decide first what you want to achieve, who you want to reach, then do some research to decide which platform(s) will be the best fit for reaching your goals.
- Develop a marketing plan for your business — include both traditional marketing channels and social media channels. Set measurable and time-sensitive goals and objectives that you can track and evaluate for ROI.
- Develop relationships with social media contacts. Customers will do business with people they know, like and trust. Let them learn about you as a person and what your interests are as much or more than you let them know about your business, your products and your services. Then, take time to get to know your contacts as real people, not just as potential customers.
- Use whatever analytics are available on the various social media sites to track your success or failure. Twitter, for instance, allows you to track your postings there to see which of your postings got the most attention (clicks) over a period of time, or by individual posting. Google Analytics can be set up for your website or blog, providing a wide range of statistics you can use to improve your marketing efforts.
Don’t…
- Don’t be a spammer. Get permission to send contacts your content and marketing pieces. Spamming does not make for a warm foundation upon which you can build strong business relationships. In fact, it can get you barred forever from contacting someone that might have needed your product or services and become a good customer
- Don’t just post links to your blog or website on social media platforms. Include some information about what your contacts might find there. Give them a reason to leave the SM site. Use a ‘hook’ to capture their interest…the title of your blog post or a few lines of the article your wrote. To create traffic to your blog or website, you need to build interest first.
- Don’t let social media become a huge time suck. It’s too easy to become overly involved in the ‘game’ of social media. Once you’ve determined the best SM platforms for your needs, be focused and follow your plan. Allocate a reasonable amount of time to achieve your goals on each site, then log off.
Wonderful points! I would also suggest to not let social media detract from or completely take the place of other marketing initiatives. This is especially true of small business. Face to face connections and networking are still very valuable…and should not be forsaken for social media connections.
So true, Rishona — social media platforms are merely new tools to add to our marketing channels. A good marketing plan will combine both traditional and newer social media channels. Social media is a great way to meet people far away… and even near to home… that you might not other wise meet at all. It’s building the relationship from that point that really matters.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ken P Smith, Terri L Maurer. Terri L Maurer said: Do's and don'ts of social media marketing: http://ow.ly/3XeLz […]