With so much information out there, sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you should do and what you shouldn’t do when using social media for business.   Here are some tips that can be helpful to you and your business while using social media platforms.

 

  1. Social media is a great way to connect but let’s not forget to communicate the old fashion way: via mouth. Not everything needs to be a social media post.  ( This is mostly for your personal pages- especially if you are doing the no-no and using it as a business page. We’ll get into that in number 2.)
  2. If you use your personal page to sell leggings, beach body, make up, skin care or whatever else you are selling – STOP using your personal page and create a business page!
    Not only are you NOT getting all that you should be getting out of using social media, but social media for business should be 80% conversational/informational/ fun and 20% sell. Annoying family and friends with constant sell me posts isn’t going to help your cause. Plus you are missing out targeting your actual customers. Personal Facebook Pages are just for that use- personal. You can only have 5,000 friends and you won’t be able to set up ads or boost posts to target your audience as you can do on a business page.
  3. Do not link your LinkedIn blog post to Facebook to cross promote.
    REASON: The general perception from people who might catch you cross-posting/promoting is “that’s just plain lazy” – and they have a point. Cross-posting may appear as a convenient, quick and easy way to save time posting, but if you care about your fans and followers, you should take those extra 5 seconds to tailor your message to not only the platform you’re posting to but your audience too.
  4. When people are searching for such social media accounts, there needs to be an active account waiting for them. If not, you can bet they’ll find your competition’s. At the least, any business needs to spend one hour a week scheduling posts- You may miss important customer service opportunities – but something is better than nothing. One or two consistent accounts have greater value than three or four with sporadic activity. So feel free to jump ship on the ones that aren’t working.
  5. Hashtags are far more useful than serving as a means of helping users find relevant content – they can also be used to foster and build communities of loyal fans and brand advocates. But you should NOT over hashtag on ANY social media site simply because it distracts from the post/key message.  Over hashtagging makes you look like an amateur social media poster (like you just don’t understand the concept)  Plus , too many hashtags can make your post look like spam.  I tell clients to pick the top 7, at most use 10.