The social media giants, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google, are an attractive source for all businesses and marketers due to the massive amount of free traffic that they can generate for your business. Any business that is not taking full advantage of these mediums is missing out on a ton of revenue. However, in order to actually get something out of these sites, you need to know how to properly market yourself or business so that customers will want to engage with you. If you go at it the wrong way and simply annoy or harass potential customers, you may end up being banned from the social networks, thus flushing all your hard work down the drain.
If you want to create an effective social media presence, you need to follow these simple do’s and don’ts. Following these guidelines will ensure that people will genuinely want to see what you have to offer and not just ignore all of your attempts.
DO: Post Original Thoughts, Posts
You want to promote your business website as much as possible by sharing with others what you have to offer them. Write blog posts that are engaging and that people will want to share, such as top 10 lists or reviews of products. Just try to add value to your site first, and then share that on all the social accounts to hopefully expose your brand to a large audience.
DON’T: Post Scraped, Copyrighted, Stolen Content
This is especially true on sites like Pinterest. If you are pinning copyrighted material, make sure you have the permission to share it or credit the owner. You can easily get an account banned for posting copyrighted material as your own.
Scraped content is where you set a tool to go out and fetch posts that meet a certain criteria and then it posts it to your blog as your own. People use scraped content to upload a ton of content quickly, but it can quickly get a blog and social account taken down. Stolen content is where you blatantly go to another blog and just re-post it yourself on your blog without ever crediting the author. Using stolen/scraped content can also get your website taken down.
DO: Get People to Like, Follow, Share, Pin Your Pages
The ultimate goal of social media is to build trust and engagement with loyal, potential customers that will someday become customers of yours. In order to build followers and engagement, you need to add some sort of value. Whether you do that with insightful, informative posts or through humour, you need to do it someway. Pick your method that best suits your style and stick with it. Also, you need to make sure to share your social accounts are best suited to your industry, pinterest would probably not work for an accountant.
Pick the right platform for your audience.
DON’T: Buy Likes, Followers, Fan
Nothing will kill an account faster than using a service to buy fake likes/fans/followers. First off, it will often look fake, especially if you have 10,000 likes but you are just a small business in a town no one has ever heard of. Also, all of the social media sites have triggers in them that indicates if you are adding followers or fans in an unnatural manner. If you hire a company to get you 10,000 followers on Twitter and they do it in two days, that is an unnatural pattern and you will get booted from Twitter and have to start all over again
DO: Share Your Services, Content
When you start to get a strong following, you will want to showcase your products and services to your potential customers so that they start to buy. People expect you to post about your business when they like or follow you, so do so on a daily basis at least to keep your company in their head. Just make sure to mix in some social interaction as well. Polls and surveys are a great way to get people involved, talking and sharing, so make sure to mix them in your postings.
DON’T: Spam from Your Account
Spamming is the worst possible thing that you can do on a business page, as it will not only make people not want to buy/follow you, it will get your account banned as well. Social media accounts do not put up with spamming, and this is the #1 reason why accounts get banned from them.
DO: Join Groups
Joining a group of like-minded individuals and businesses is an amazing way to network with others in your industry. These groups are great for open discussions about trends and problems in your industry, so make sure to be active in them and offer insightful thoughts and posts. The more you are active, the more other people will look to you as a leader in the industry.
DON’T: Join Groups Just to Promote
This falls back into the spamming rule. In groups, you are expected to promote yourself through your advice, not by constantly sharing what products you sell. It is okay to tell people you offer a service or product when they are asking for help, but don’t just go into groups, post a link about a service and then leave. You will get banned from the group and possibly the entire site if all you do in groups is promote yourself in this manner.
DO: Connect with People that You Have Worked With
These social media giants are all about networking with people you know, so make sure that you are adding and engaging with people who you really do know. Find people from your childhood and past jobs so that you can let them know what you are doing now to see if they might have some need for your services. Don’t be pushy, but these are direct contacts that will already trust you.
DON’T: Spam People You Don’t Know
People do this all the time in the business world, and it will get your account banned in an instant, especially on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. When people sign up for these sites, they think they need to add as many people as possible to get the most out of it. That is not true, and if you add someone who you do not know, they may report you. That will result in getting banned from the site, and again, you will have to start your efforts all over again. If you are trying to connect with someone who you want to know in the industry but haven’t formally met yet, it is better to just send them a message first explaining why you want to have a connection with them.