Social media marketing has become an essential part of any company’s advertising campaign. With the wealth of benefits it can have, a business could miss out on a significant amount of sales without it. The dos and don’ts of social media marketing, however, can often seem complicated.
That isn’t the case, though, as it can be much easier than you might think. But what is it that you should do? Should you constantly post on your Facebook and Twitter? As you might expect, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Dos And Don’ts Of Social Media Marketing: What To Do
Outside of establishing your social media accounts, the first thing you should do is set clear goals and objectives. These will depend on how your accounts are currently performing. You’ll typically look to increase engagement and traffic to your website, however. These goals can vary depending on what you want to get out of your social media marketing campaign. You’ll need to have these in place to measure your return on investment. Related to this is tracking and analysing your traffic, as this will help you determine how your efforts are performing. You should be adaptable, as you can then change your strategy when you need to. Typically, this will only be if certain areas are over-or under-performing. There are multiple tools you can use to do this, such as Hootsuite and Twitter Analytics.
One common mistake among businesses is a lack of consistency. While that extends beyond social media, it can be most apparent here. Ensuring consistency across all of your marketing campaigns is a priority, regardless of their medium. Look toward your other marketing efforts and make sure that your social media campaign is similar. You shouldn’t just copy and paste, however. Instead, you should adapt your efforts specifically to social media.
We would also encourage employers to make sure their company’s message and tone is properly representing the organisation’s values while also ensuring that it doesn’t alienate or outright put off the potential hires, since those may represent the future of the company one way or another. In a market where employers are not only interviewing the potential employees but are also being interviewed by them, employer branding can make the difference between success and yet-another-company that failed.
What To Avoid
The dos and don’ts of social media marketing contain quite a few things to avoid. One of the more notable of these is using engagement clickbait. These are usually a ‘like and share to get X’ type of campaign. Not only are these against many platforms’ rules, but they also look scammy and unprofessional. Don’t use these, regardless of how appealing they may look in the short term. You also shouldn’t use all social media platforms just because they’re there. Instead, you should identify where your core audience is and tailor your campaign to that.
Finally, you shouldn’t get too hung up on the numbers. While your social media followers can often be important, they’re not the be-all-and-end-all of your business. Quality over quantity should be your focus. It’s better to have 10,000 highly active followers than 1,000,000 that don’t pay attention to your page. What you ultimately want is people who not only follow your accounts or even engage with them, but real people who eventually become clients to your business. Good stats are vanity, leads are sanity, as someone put it.
Wrapping Up
As simple as the dos and don’ts of social media marketing might be, they’re quite effective. Time has shown that all of the above have practical benefits for your company. They will take time, though, and a lot of effort.
The best things never went to people who sat back and waited, so it’s worth spending the time on it now; you can enjoy the fruits of your campaign in the future. You may also be interested to know what was the netiquette for social media back in 2011.
“Dos & Don’ts Of Social Media Marketing” was written by Alan Jones.