Social Media for Business 101

We all know how important social media is for business. You’ll find a lot of sites telling you all bout the excellent social media networks for you to build your business on. But mere knowledge of these sites, and some bit of efficiency in using them, is not enough to get the best out of them. A few simple tips on using them better is what you need if you really have to get the maximum out of them, from a business perspective.

One way of being guided in this matter is to check out sites such as Social Media Business Blueprint, which explains in an easily navigable manner how you can make your social media presence beneficial for your business. But here are some more tips that will help you along the way if you’re looking to give a leg-up to your business by taking the social media route.

Make it 360 degrees

It’s important to have a holistic campaign, not limited to mere posting and promoting but also encompassing regular tracking and monitoring, responding to queries, and building relationships with your customers. The idea is that you should interact with them, and be there to address their concerns and inquiries, and to accept and welcome their feedback.

Keep a check on frequency

The world of social media might appear to be packed with updates and posts, but remember, there’s a method to this madness. You should be cognizant of how often and when to post or repost, which differs from medium to medium.

Posting on Facebook more than once a day is not good for your business but less than twice a week is detrimental too. One Twitter, you should ensure multiple tweets a day, but do keep a gap of an hour between two tweets. Google+ is ideally good if updated once a day, as is LinkedIn.

80-20 posting rule

This rule will help guide you on what content to post on your social media sites. As per this rule, 80% of the posts should be engaging, which means they should be image-led, should be interactive and should be neutral. Only 20% should be related to your business, product or service.

Stick to one username

Though it does depend on your personal needs, there are tips to help you figure out which social media to go for. But whichever ones you use, make sure that your username is the same across all of them so that it becomes easy for your customers to locate you. And even then, there’s really no need for you to be present on all the networks; choose the ones where your TG is. And remember, there are primary networks and secondary networks, followed by local ones.

Go for the primary ones first, and then move on to the others, because the audience base on the primary networks is bigger. You can, of course, make an exception with niche social  networks, which are more relevant to your business.

Quick and professional response

The faster and more professionally you respond to your customers, the better for your business promotion. Listen to your customers and value their feedback, whether negative or positive. If the feedback is negative, tell them how you propose to address their concern, and if it’s positive, extend your appreciation and gratitude.

Opt for a good social media dashboard

Scheduling and other social media tools will help you track and update your posts effectively and smoothly even when you’re too busy to manage it otherwise. Buffer, HootSuite etc are some such dashboards that you can use to automate your scheduling and updating process.

Connect with industry leaders

Industry and thought leaders are major influencers when it comes to determining your course of marketing and the approach you should adopt. For this, it’s important for you to keep tabs on industry developments and to continuously update your social media sites with such information.

Conclusion

In addition to this, do take out the time to check what other companies in your business space are doing on the social media. You’re bound to learn a few lessons from there. If nothing else, it may teach you what not to do on these sites.

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