10 Rules of Social Media Marketing

10 Rules of Social Media Marketing

When it comes to social media, there are some general rules or best practices that will help you succeed in reaching and engaging with your audience. Each of these ten social media marketing rules is designed to help make your business more visible and accessible to the demographic you’re trying to reach.

#1: Be Consistent

Your social media presence is the only contact some customers will have with you. Your social media account must be updated regularly to ensure visibility with your social media-only customers, not to mention a more active and visible profile increases your chances for customer engagement.

#2: Provide Value

You cannot promote sales on your social media accounts without providing real value to your customers. Customers are more likely to shop with you if they are learning something from your business. This includes behind the scenes access, a look at up-coming product launches, entertaining or informative content, answering customer inquiries and resolving any issues.

#3: Be Accessible

Ensure that all contact initiated by customers is returned within 24 hours (or less). Your customers are contacting you on social media because they need help, and you must respond as quickly as you can. People are less likely to call an 800 number these days. Social media is now considered a customer service channel.

#4: Be Polite

Social media can be the first stop for complaints and rude behavior from disgruntled customers, but you should always be polite and keep your cool. Your social media account should be a kind place where customers can get assistance with any issues.

#5: Choose A Proper Name

The name of each social media account needs to be consistent. Using the same name across all your social media accounts is important, and you should choose a name people can easily search. Using abbreviations or too many underscores or other symbols will only cause confusion among your customers.

#6: Share Across Platforms

You can share across social media platforms when you are using them, but put some thought into it. Make sure your posts are optimized for the social media channels you’re using. Don’t share the same item from one social media account to another multiple times. Your customers will catch on to an overwhelming amount of content if they think it looks like spam.

#7: Allow For Sharing

You want people to enjoy and share your content, right? The more eyeballs the better! The pages and products on your site should have a share button that allows customers to share your content on their social media accounts.

#8: Be Human

Your social media account must be run by a real person. If customers engage and are ignored, they will quickly go elsewhere. Joking with customers and being fun is part of the charm of social media! Your social profile shouldn’t replicate an RSS feed.

#9: Interact With Other Companies

Having online conversations with other companies allows you to grab a bit of the spotlight. These conversations amount to free publicity on the other company’s social media feed. Of course, use caution when communicating with your competitors.

#10: Expand Your Operation

You need to expand to new social media sites when they appear on the landscape, but only when that platform is appropriate to the demographic you target. Go where your demographic is!