Wondering about the dos and don'ts of social media? Then you are at the right place. The continuous changes in social media marketing can make it difficult to stay on the top and practice the best methods. Each social media platform has its own rules for promotion.
In case, you go out of the box and try something new then your methods might look unprofessional, which might leave a negative impact on your audiences. Therefore, you should know the do's and don'ts of social media platforms, so that you can apply them in your day-to-day promotions.
Without any further delay, let's start!
The quote: 'First impression is the last impression' is applicable everywhere. Think like an audience, would you like to stay for a longer time if the social media account is half updated? A partial account update is totally unprofessional, so you need to complete and update your account first, including attractive cover photos and profile, and contact details.
It is very important to keep your personal and business accounts separately. Never mix up your both accounts. No matter how frequent you are with your personal account's posts, but, when it comes to business, you should post frequently to grab the audience's attention.
You can re-post the business post from your personal account either. Your latest blog post should come from your business account and your latest trip posts from your personal account page.
What you post on social media platforms, represents you and your brand. Be proud of who you are and what you are representing to the world. Share posts that represent your brand and that will be helpful for your audiences.
Before sharing or creating a post, think about who your audiences are, and how you can serve them. Stay connected with them, guide them, and interact with them.
A very important question: how frequently should you post on social media platforms? The posting may vary from business to business, however, it is good to post twice or thrice a week.
If you are establishing your brand, then it is not harmful to post regularly. As it will help your business to establish and gain organic traffic. Posting very rarely may have a negative impact on your business and miss out on the opportunity to establish brand awareness.
It may be a daunting task to be active on every social media platform, however, it also might give a negative effect if you miss out on any top platforms. First, find out the platforms where you will find your audience. For example, Linkedin, Meta, Instagram, Twitter, or maybe Pinterest.
Spend more time on those social media platforms that you are already established in, instead of going for new platforms. Improve your presence on top platforms, which will lead you to establish your online presence and earn more organic traffic.
Providing useful and informative content is important, but interacting with your audience is the key feature of social media platforms.
Reply to every comment, retweet, and tag. Also, Go LIVE or create polls to grab the audience's attention.
Build connections just like you do for your personal account. You can like and comment on your audience account, this process helps you to stay in connection with them.
Should you be the reason to cause criticism on social media, the best way is to handle it in an appropriate way. Instead of replying in an arrogant way or overreacting to criticism, don't ignore them, in fact, handle them so that your audience supports your view.
Reply to negative comments as well and try to represent your point without any abusive words or bullies.
Would you like to see all the posts related to sales? No, right! Though you are in a business to earn money, it doesn't mean that your main focus will be sales. Keep the 80/20 rule in mind while posting on social media platforms, where 80% of the content should be informative, educative, or entertaining, and 20% of the post can be related to your products and services.
If your primary motive is to serve people, your business will grow automatically. Therefore, focus on helping instead of selling.
Each social media holds its own group of audiences with different intentions. So, make your content according to the platform and this will lead you to success.
Here’s how:
Occasional grammatical or spelling errors can be ignored, however, it doesn't mean that you make mistakes in your social media posts every now and then. Check twice or thrice before posting the content, you can also hire a proofreader or install the Grammarly tool in your extensions.
Social media is a vast platform, which means that your brand may not get exposure on your first post. Patience and consistency will pay off. Slow and steady wins the race and this phase perfectly suits the situation, where you start slow at first.
Once you build up your online community on every social media platform, it will be easy for your brand to expand.
Social media etiquette includes giving credit to others, for example giving credit to the designers, writers, photographers, or those who are behind a successful post. Try to give credit to every post and mention their social media handle, so that your audience can find out the creative minds.
In some cases, when your brand gets more organic visits after sharing your posts or stories, do not forget to give them the credits.
Don't be needy while promoting your brand on social media platforms. No need to beg for Likes, comments, and shares, on every post of yours. It's perfectly fine if your audience does not react to your posts someday.
Instead, you can try to improve the quality of your content, so that your followers get engaged with it on a regular basis. By doing this you can maintain your brand's public status and set a standard.
Too much is harmful. Avoid being someone's spammer. If you keep on retweeting, liking, commenting, or posting, your profile will be everywhere on the feeds. This may lead you to unfollow or send you spam.
Just take yourself, would you like to see the same brand's posts all the time? No, right? So, try to be moderate and avoid over-sharing or posting.
All businesses face ups and downs, but it doesn't mean that you will complain about your customer's interactions or blame your co-workers. This only shows your unprofessionalism.
Remember you are here to establish your brand and beat your competitors. Without complaining stay focused on your social media account and work continuously so that your business sees the good phase after a short struggle period.
Stop using your social media posts with all caps. By doing so, you may represent yourself as aggressive or upset in your post, therefore, it's better to avoid it. On any special occasion, you can use all caps in some parts of the post.
Always maintain the tone of your words while posting.
Hashtags related to your post connect it with other posts on the same topic. It's a very convenient way to reach a wide range of audiences on social media platforms. For example, if you are an IT company then you can use hashtags related to web design, development, DevOps, etc. This way you can reach out to your organic audiences who are looking for the same services.
Using appropriate hashtags will increase your followers and visibility while using too many hashtags in your sentence can lead you to spam or be less effective.
Would you like to see the same content again and again? What will it convey, in case you do so? That you are too lazy to write a new post and keep on sharing the same thing every day. Always keep your content and images new and unique.
In case, you want to share the previous content then you can share it by adding some new content along with it. In the same way, we share others' content when we like it.
Social media platforms can easily make you a superstar in a very quick period, as it offers an easy sharing option in every post. In the trending generation, it is obvious that you might share the content you like. However, always remember that all the contents are not good, while some of them may be spam or contain questionable content.
So think before sharing and researching the post, whether it's appropriate or not. Check the sources, and go through the account that had shared the content.
It's important to remember that establishing your brand and growing online is a long-term process. Here, you will need a lot of effort and time to reach your benchmark audiences. Having a lot of followers is a positive point, however, remember quality over quantity.
If you have 10,000 followers, but half of them are inactive or spam accounts, your efforts will be wasted. So if you gain followers more than your expectations, don't get obsessed with it. Still, keep on posting quality content as per your schedules.
Hopefully, this blog will help you to understand 'The Dos and Don'ts of Social Media Marketing.’ We have tried to explain each point in depth so that you can apply it in your social media marketing strategy.
If you want to explore more and want to hire digital marketing experts, then you can contact us. We at Glancesys, a Digital Marketing Company in Indore, India, provide you with solutions related to online marketing and help to raise brand awareness