Social Media Marketing Best Practices

Using social media to market your brand requires an understanding of how the online, mobile, and digital tools and networks work. Social media tools facilitate interactions between people and encourage content sharing, collaboration, and participation.

As a company, you can engage with others in conversation and information exchange, but social media marketing starts with listening. You can then disseminate messages and stimulate conversations with your customers and prospects as well as the general public online.

The key to making the best use of social media is to understand that most people use these tools for personal connections and information gathering and sharing. Most individuals are more likely socializing online than making business connections or engaging with companies.

As a business owner, start by using social media to find out what others are doing, thinking, and saying, based on what they publish online and share publicly. You can perform organic market research by paying attention to what people are posting and talking about on popular social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

While most companies want to sell products and services through social media marketing, most experts agree that social media is not a direct selling tool. Social media can be more effective to:

• Generate awareness for your company, organization, product or service.
• Build your brand and enhance your profile and credibility.
• Engage customers and prospects to build loyalty for your brand.
• Identify customer issues and provide customer service.
• Turn loyal customers into brand evangelists.
• Enhance traditional websites with interactive features.
• Provide insights into consumer behavior and preferences.
• Drive traffic to a website or online store.

Here are a few important ways to use social media tools:

Listen. Anyone who is a great conversationalist will tell you that the secret to any conversation is listening. With social media, listening means reading what others are saying online to understand what they’re thinking and how you can enter online conversations thoughtfully.

Respond. On social networks, people often post because they want to be heard, and they expect a timely response. Monitoring helps you become aware when people are reaching out to you, and you have the opportunity to respond. Timely, useful, and transparent communications online can help build your reputation as someone who provides value. The way you respond on behalf of your company can help generate positive reactions and build relationships.

Engage. Engagement consists of getting the attention of others followed by reactions (likes, favorites), interactions (comments) and actions (sign up, share, buy). Look beyond broadcasting a message, and instead, find ways to start conversations and encourage others to participate.

Connect. Social media tools allow others to follow you, friend you, or otherwise connect with you, but then what? The connections you gain in social media aren’t just numbers to accumulate. Look for ways to provide value to your following on a regular basis so they want to stay connected to you and your company online.

Keep in mind that it is better to have 100 friends, fans, or followers who pay attention and respond than 1000 or 10,000 who ignore you. Effective social media is more about what those who follow you actually do in response to your messages i.e. the actions they take. The meaningful actions of a devoted few can have a much larger impact on your business than the inaction of many.

Social media marketing is not a brief campaign – it’s an ongoing commitment.