10 Social media dos and don’ts - Webfactory

Social Media is becoming of growing importance to businesses in this modern era. To help you make the most out of this great marketing tool, we bring you our top ten dos and don'ts of social media.

Social Media Dos:-

Be Active
If you sign up to any social media platform then you need to commit. Obviously some people have more time than others and you don’t need to be posting 24/7, but it's a good idea to be generating a regular feed to keep things ticking over. Like with anything else, the more you put in, the more you’ll get back out. If you think won’t have the time, let us know and we can help you by producing content to post to these sites.

Interact
It’s called social media after all, so be social. It's one of the great advantages; you can speak to your demographic directly. Use this to your advantage, get honest feedback, find out what your customers like and what they don’t. Even just engaging them and acknowledging them can really help build up a great relationship.

Know your audience
Research you’re demographic. What kinds of people are following you? Are they mainly men or women? What age group are they? You can usually find this information in the platforms’ statistics section. Once you have a better understanding of your audience you can specifically aim content at them and make it more relevant.

Be relevant
Always link back to what it is your business does in your posts. You can post amusing content in small doses, and it's fine if you can’t make it relevant all the time, just don't overdo it. Make sure there is plenty of content and links to information relevant to your business, whether it is directly related to you or maybe just more information and tricks regarding your industry as a whole.

Keep Informed
Check out your competitors and their social media feeds. Especially those with longer established businesses, you’ll soon be able to get an idea of what they might be doing right as well as what they might be doing wrong. Obviously don’t copy, but get a feel for the qualities that make them stand out and reflect back on your own pages to see how you can improve them yourself.

Network
Get yourself out there! Connect with clients and businesses that may be relevant to yours. You’ll establish a sense of community and will find it can lead to potential collaborations and recommendations. Remember to return the favour.

Stay professional
Sometime you may encounter negative feedback, and no matter what you do they still remain unhappy. Even worse you may come across a troll. These are people who deliberately set out with the intention of causing upset and arguments. Always remain calm and professional and try resolving the situation. By showing others you are doing all you can to resolve an issue, they’ll see for themselves that you care about your customers concerns. If negative comments cause major issues then there is always the option to delete posts and even block them but it’s by far better to demonstrate your high levels of customer service when things don’t go as planned.

Keep them interested and make the laugh
Not everything you post should be about selling and self promotion. Too much me, me, me can annoy your audience and result in them unliking and unfollowing you. Post interesting articles you think your audience may be interested in, or why not celebrate the end of the working week or lighten those Mondays with something light-hearted and amusing. You can find a wide selection of amusing posts just by searching the web.

Have character
Social media audiences love to see personality. Use your posts to communicate the kind of business you are and the way you work. Social media is a great way to humanise your business.

Use visuals
Try to use pictures and videos where you can. If you have a lot of text in your post, add an image. You’ll find these posts get more likes and shares as they grab people’s attention. Photos on posts for instance get 53% more likes, 104% more comments and 84% more link clicks than the average text post.

Social Media Don’t:-

Over share
Although it’s great to keep active, be careful not to bombard people with information. Constantly sharing will overcrowd people’s news feeds and they will soon tire of it and you will start to lose followers. You must find the right balance that suits you and your demographic.

Ignore negative comments
Sometimes you may receive negative feedback or comments on your account. The worst thing you can do is ignore them. Remember these comments are public and anyone can see them. You can sometimes turn this around and make yourselves look great by showing that you take criticism seriously and deal with it head on.

Forget about profile images
Make sure you use cover pictures and profile pictures to effect. Your logo defines your company and so is ideal for a profile image. With regards to cover and background images, consider using these to go along with seasons and events or advertise your latest promotion or product. These are the first things your followers see, so make sure they look great.

Forget about accounts
It’s easy to get carried away and find yourself signing up to a vast amount of social media platforms attempting to find out what works best for your business or in the vague hope that by having an account it will only generate business, wrong! You’re better off concentrating on relevant platforms and committing your valuable efforts to them. Forgotten, dusty old accounts will have no value except to make you look inactive.

Spam
Don’t spam your audience with irrelevant information or to promote a non related business which will have no value for your audience. They have liked, or followed your profile for a reason so bare that in mind. You’re trying to promote yourself, the last thing you want to do is clog up their feeds with information of no interest to them which will probably lead them to stop following you.

Upload Risky Content
Be careful not to post anything containing profanities or provocative content. Remember who your audience is, you don’t want to offend anyone. Unless there’s a very good reason, stay family friendly.

Go crazy over #Hashtags
Hash tags organise tweets. When you click on a hash tag you can see all the tweets containing that tag in one place. It’s a good way of seeing what’s going on in real time on a specific subject. It’s always great if you can use a trending (currently popular) hash tag, but make sure they have a relevant link to what you are posting. Don’t hash tag every word. Think about which ones are the key words in your post and which ones people may search for online.

Buy love
Money really can’t buy you love. Don’t get tempted into buying likes and followers or paying someone to get them either. These are false contacts and though you may end up with more likes, none of them will have any value to your business. It’s a waste of money and many genuine contacts will see through it and may be put off following you. Work to build your audience with real people who genuinely appreciate and have interest in your business, that way they become valuable contacts and could in turn increase your revenue.

Upload something you wouldn't want everyone to see
Be careful what you put out. Always think and double check before you post. Once it’s out there, it’s really out there. You can obviously delete, but people may have already seen it. Also remember you can never know for sure that something is truly deleted off the internet.

Like your own posts
This is the equivalent of laughing at your own joke, and people will find it extremely annoying. Just don’t even try it.

So there you have our top 10 social media dos and don’ts. If you need help getting your social media working for your business please get in touch.

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