In today’s edition of Tips from the Experts, we asked five business professionals to tell us their top social media do’s and don’ts.
Iona St Joseph, Head of Social Media at A Social Media Agency
1. DO – Share Visual Content
The phrase ‘content is king’ has been the mantra of social media professionals for a while now, but it’s still true. People are more likely to share an update that is accompanied by a picture, which is why sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram are so popular. Visual content is easier to digest, and a number of people would much rather watch a 3 minute video than read a 2,500 word article. Look at how many people did the Ice Bucket challenge videos; would the same have happened if it was just a written status with no video?
2. DO – Update Regularly
You need to be updating your accounts every day or you’re going to lose followers. Sites like Twitter need to be updated at least 5 times a day with relevant, interesting content, or people are going to unfollow you, because you’re just not interesting. Potential new followers or fans also won’t bother, because they don’t think there’s any point if you’re not updating.
3. DO – Branding
Make sure all your accounts are branded and that all your design work is to the right specifications. There’s nothing less attractive than a pixelated cover image because you can’t be bothered to work out the measurements. A designer can do this for you if you give them a brief and relevant images; it won’t take them long at all.
4. DON’T – Stretch Yourself Too Thin
Don’t concern yourself with having active accounts on every social media platform, but rather choose the ones that will benefit your business. Some businesses probably only need to use Twitter and concentrate on growing that, and can leave everything else. Sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram are great for image heavy businesses, like those in the food or fashion industry, but if you’re a scaffolding business, you probably don’t need to have a presence on all channels. Look at what works for similar brands.
5. DON’T – Listen to Your CEO
A big problem a number of businesses have is that the person/people at the top don’t understand how social media works. All they want is numbers, but having 25,000 people like your page isn’t going to make any difference to your bottom line. However, if you have 500 people who you’re interacting with regularly and who you know use your brand, which one do you think is more valuable? Some managers still don’t see social media as an important part of a brand’s marketing strategy, so how are they in a good position to tell you what to do?
Lance Concannon, Head of Digital and Social Media at Hudson Sandler
1. DON’T – Expect An Audience
To magically flock to your door the minute you create branded social media channels. You need to fill those channels with great content and work hard to make sure people see it – they need a solid reason to follow you.
2. DO – Create Great Content
It takes time, talent and resources to create great content – it’s not something that just happens by itself. If you treat content as an afterthought, that’s how audiences will view your brand – an afterthought.
3. DON’T – Be Afraid to Spend Money
As you’re building up an audience, you might need to spend money to promote your best content on social media platforms to make sure that the right people get to see it. As your audience grows larger, they will help distribute your content virally, so you’ll be able to spend less time promoting it.
4. DO – Be Realistic
If you’re a highly specialised B2B company with a very narrow customer base, don’t expect to have the same volume of fans and interactions as the likes of Red Bull or Nike. Remember that it’s about the quality of your interactions with fans – 100 highly engaged, relevant followers are far more valuable than 1,000,000 fans that have no real interest in your business proposition.
5. DON’T – Be Afraid Of Failure
Even today, social media is still evolving and businesses are learning new lessons all the time. Experiment and learn from others, take calculated risks and accept that not everything you try will work. Take each failure as one step closer to success.
Charlie Southwell, Digital Marketing Consultant at Transmute
1. DO – Know Why You Are Using Social Media
Set meaningful objectives upfront, before you start anything – I don’t just mean follower numbers either. Are you using social media to recruit better staff? To get the attention of your target market? To deliver better customer service? Let these objectives guide the way you use social media for your business. Also set solid numbers and time limits so that you can measure your progress.
2. DO – Listen to What People Are Saying
All good social media strategies include some element of listening and monitoring built in so you can make informed choices. This could mean you are listening to what your target audience, your competitors, or your industry press are talking about, or just looking at a range of keywords. Make sure you are listening to the right things to make the biggest impact for your objective.
3. DO – Be More Human & Don’t Be Afraid to Talk Off Topic
One of the most important mantras for social media is ‘be more human’. We tend to warm to people after building rapport, and sharing common interests and appropriate jokes. Try to forget that you are a business, and try strike up conversations just as you would in a coffee shop, the office or at a meeting.
4. DON’T – Just Broadcast (Or Share Links Constantly)
An awful lot of companies still curate links in order to become thought leaders. However, with so many companies sourcing third party links – it’s worth trying to stand out using imagery and starting real conversations with your audience (and hopefully your audience are connected enough to start a real community).
5. DON’T – Measure Everything But Measure What Matters
In all things social media and digital it is awfully easy to measure a lot of things. Make sure you are measuring what makes a difference to your marketing efforts and not just the easy things to measure. Social media is NOT about the follower numbers. If you are a customer service channel on Twitter and you have 10,000,000 followers – you’re probably doing it wrong. Think instead about customer response times and the number of people who have had issues resolved.
Carla Bradman, Marketing Manager at Paramount Properties
1. DO – Audit Your Social Media Channels Every Quarter
It is important to consistently do a social media audit across the networks you use. Customers aren’t monogamous when it comes to social media, so make sure they see the same branding across networks. It’s also a good opportunity to check that unofficial business accounts haven’t been created.
2. DO – Emphasise Staff Behaviour On Social Media
Ensure everyone in the company is aware of your social media presence. It’s imperative that everyone in the business understands how social media is used by the company and that they recognise that offline behaviour can quickly move online.
3. DO – Mix Digital Marketing & Offline Marketing
Online isn’t another world; social media has integrated itself into our daily lives and different types of marketing can complement each other. This is a tactic that is especially successful with local businesses.
4. DON’T – Post Duplicate Content
Try not to post the same content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, etc. Different social networks require different types of content, and you need to incentivise followers with different content to build relationships with them across networks.
5. DON’T – Just Collect Statistics
Ensure all information you’re collating is relevant to your social media marketing goals. Collect reports, analyse them and use that information to improve what you do.
Kim Townend, Freelance Senior Social Media Strategist at kimtownend.com
1. DO – Remember To Listen
Social has been around for a while now and it seems that people are forgetting the basics. So it bears repeating that listening should always be your step one. It allows you to learn who your community is, what they’re interested in and can also help you go on to create a strong content plan, relevant to both your interests.
2. DON’T – Post too Much
Social media is massively overpopulated these days; there are thousands of brands vying for attention at any given moment. Don’t annoy your would-be community by posting too frequently on any channel.
3. DO – Create Unique Content That’s Relevant to Your Story
Consistency is a big part of social media success. Create a content strategy that outlines what you will or won’t post about, and then stick to it. Your brand probably doesn’t have anything relevant to say about the royal baby!
4. DON’T – Post All At Once
There’s nothing that looks more like poor social media practice than seeing 4 or 5 posts/retweets pop up in a row and then nothing for the rest of the day. There are many tools you can use to find out when your audience are most likely to be online (Tweriod, Social Bro, SproutSocial’s queue). Twitter’s own analytics will let you know which of your content is getting the most impressions. Look at this data and use it to create a schedule that will ensure the maximum amount of people see your posts.
5. DO – Have Fun!
Social media works best when used by real human beings. Develop a tone of voice that works for you and don’t be afraid to interact with your community. This is true for most online interaction, but especially when dealing with customer complaints. It’s my experience that people want to know that they’re being heard – assuring them that this is the case is a great first step.
Thanks to all our contributors for their valuable advice. Do you have any social media do’s or don’ts that you would like to share? Feel free to leave a comment in the section below.