The do’s and don’ts of Social Media Marketing
Social media is mainly used to post an occasional selfie, keep up with friends and family, and follow your favourite celebrities’ daily lives. But for businesses and brands, social media has become a valuable tool. Business owners can use the various platforms to promote businesses and brands, direct consumers to websites, and build a connection with customers and potential customers. Besides this, social media marketing is also able to collect consumer data which marketers can use to improve the marketing, it can offer more information about industry competitors, and it can even increase market share. To do social media marketing in the correct way, business owners and marketers need to know the do’s and don’ts of social media marketing.
The do’s of social media marketing
- Make use of a posting schedule.
Many business owners choose to do their social media themselves and make the mistake of over-posting in the beginning. This is understandable as they are likely excited to get started and get their brand’s name out there. But this technique often leads to burnout or depletion of content to share. To prevent this, business owners and social media marketers should make use of a posting schedule. There is a range of applications, such as Buffer and Hootsuite, which you can use to curate a posting schedule. - Determine a posting frequency.
Business owners and social media marketers should create a posting frequency which works for the business or brand. Many believe that posting once a day is the golden rule, but this doesn’t apply to every business or brand. Many businesses operate seven days a week, and this creates a challenge for business owners as they may not have the time to create content and post daily. If this is the case, business owners or social media marketers should determine a frequency which fits in their schedule and which is sustainable. - Be fun and relatable.
Seeing that social media is flooded with content, businesses and brands need to stand out from the crowd to catch the attention of people. Business owners and social media marketers should strive to be creative and original with their content. Creating an interesting and fun brand identity will increase engagement which is sure to increase sales.
The don’ts of social media marketing
- Don’t come across as unprofessional.
One way to ensure that your social media content is professional is to not make spelling or grammar mistakes. This is an unspoken rule, but many people make these mistakes if they are rushing to complete a deadline or if they want to take shortcuts when creating content. Before posting content, ensure that another person has reviewed it or even run it through a proofreader online. An example of an application that would be useful is Grammarly. - Don’t forget that your stories are important.
Stories are a good way to keep and heighten engagement with the social media accounts’ followers. They are also useful if the posting schedule doesn’t schedule posts for every day. Besides this, stories can be used to celebrate little milestones and make announcements that are not important enough to be a post on the social media account. - Don’t forget about the followers.
Many business owners focus on posting content about the business’s products and services that they forget to cater to their target audience. When creating social media content, business owners and social media marketers should ensure to create the content to be geared towards the interests of their target market. Business owners and social media marketers should also make it worthwhile to follow their social media accounts by providing incentives, such as giveaways or special discounts only available to their followers.