When formulating your social media strategy, it pays to consider some social media best practices, and how you can work these tactics into your social media strategy. Here are a few tactics that have proven successful for other businesses. Although these may sound obvious, surprisingly many businesses that are active in social media violate these best practices, sometimes with disastrous results.
Social Media Strategy Tips
Make a commitment. If your social media strategy is important to your overall marketing strategy, use social media regularly. By being active on different social media platforms, you take advantage of the power of social media. If, on the other hand, you only post something once a month or less, you leave a bad impression on your customers, potential customers and visitors. If you intend to incorporate social media into your marketing strategy, make a commitment to this practice.
Use the present tense. One of the true strengths of social media is that it takes place in the “here and now.” Your social media input should always be timely. If something of interest happens, use your social media platforms when it is happening. Posting well after the fact diminishes the power of audience engagement and makes your social media efforts look like they’ve come “after-the-fact.” By using the present effectively, you can engage people in the moment.
Be careful with the details. Being timely is a best practice, but so is being right. It does you no good to use social media to distribute inaccurate, old, or erroneous information. Your followers will quickly dismiss the information you’ve provided if they can’t trust what you’re saying.
Your mic is always on. Being “accurate” with social media is only one side of the coin. Your errors tend to live on, even after you’ve deleted them from your feed. Flippant or insensitive output or responses, poorly timed posts, ill-conceived attempts at humor and just plain bad judgment can come back to haunt your business forever, so be very careful that what goes out onto your social media feed is what you really want to be known for!
If you would like more information about crafting a social media strategy for your business, but don’t know where to start, please contact our Creative Director, Dave Ramsell or give Dave a call at (330) 243-0651 to set up a consultation. We can help you establish a successful social media strategy for your business!
Photo Credit: magicmarie, via FreeImages.com
