Social Media Basics

Social media has become an essential aspect of any company’s marketing strategies over the past few years. 70% of the U.S. population has at least one social networking profile according to Statista. Social media can help you to improve your brand awareness and increase your customer reach through shared content. You can easily drive traffic to your website or place of business using affordable marketing campaigns that focus on the customer, not the promotion. Remember, creating a social media account for your business needs to be about the brand, not a personal page or account.

When using social media, there are a few simple rules to follow for successful interaction with your audience.

1. First and foremost is to listen to your audience. Monitor what they like, comment on, and share.
2. Respond to your audience when they comment on or share your posts. At the very least,
   “like” their comment.
3. Add value with unique and customer-centric content, not just selling or sending promotional marketing.
4. Remember that quality will always beat quantity.

Social media accounts are not all the same, nor should they be treated the same. Posting relevant content on Facebook is not always the same as relevant content on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter. Make sure that what you post is relevant for all accounts or only post it in the accounts where it is relevant to do so. For example, LinkedIn is more B2B, Facebook more B2C, and Twitter can be for both B2B and B2C, and then Pinterest and Instagram are more for visual content.

Your target audience is more than likely using multiple social media accounts. Know where your target audience is and be there. Unless you have a full marketing team, it is better to focus on a few social media accounts where your audience is and do them well, than trying to be everywhere just to be everywhere.

Internet users have an average of 5.54  social media accounts. Use more than one social media outlet to ensure that you maximize your reach and link to your social media accounts to and from your website. Choose the two or three platforms that best fit your target audience.

No matter which type of social media account you use, posting has some basic rules that apply to all of them.

• Use a variety of posting styles; Pictures, text, videos, links …
• Use a variety of content: Informative (value-based), Promotional, Inspirational, and Humorous (mix it up so that the audience does not know what is coming, but all should be related to your business). Use the 60-30-10 rule or even 70-20-10 where the majority, 70% of all content is Informative, 20% promotional, and the last 10% Inspiration, humorous, or personality (employee photos…)
• Spread your posts out over time; never send multiple posts out together and then none for the next few days.
• Be brief and to the point. If you have a lot to say, then say it somewhere else, like a blog, and then link to that content with a brief teaser to make your audience curious enough to click on the link.
• Limit the use of abbreviations and aim for concise ideas instead.
• Scheduling content in advance will allow you to post more often with better consistency and well thought out content, but remember that some spontaneous content can also be very engaging.
• Ask probing questions.
• Use #Hashtags and @Tagging symbols strategically.