The unspoken rules on how to present your company, respond to feedback and engage with your audience on social media.
Social media is an effective way to promote your business. It allows you to advertise your goods and services, build brand awareness, and communicate with your customers. You can educate, entertain and engage with your audience at a heavily reduced marketing cost.
ARE YOU READY TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA?
Whether you’re a small business owner or freelancer, social media is essential for marketing and connecting with customers. But it can be daunting to know where to start. That’s why we’ve compiled the top five rules for using social media for business.
The Dos and Don’t of Social Media for Business
When it comes to developing proficiency in social media etiquette for businesses, understanding the appropriate behavior to display and the dos and don’ts requires a bit of practice.
1. Do Keep Your Business and Personal Accounts Separate
Keeping your private and business social media accounts separate is essential to maintaining professionalism, reducing confusion, simplifying management, and setting expectations for followers. It helps you target the right audience, use hashtags, imagery, and analytics correctly, and create a successful social media campaign for your business.
Maintaining two separate accounts ensures your posts are relevant to the right audience and that your business is not affected by personal views or attitudes. Additionally, separating these accounts will minimize confusion and make it easier for you to manage your content and use analytics to your advantage.
2. Do Create Brand Guidelines
THE CONTENT YOU SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA REFLECTS YOUR BUSINESS. Unfortunately, posts can easily be misinterpreted, causing friction and dissatisfaction with your followers. If other people in your business are responsible for social media, it’s worth investing in a social media policy to guide their posts and community interactions.
“Social media is not a media. The key is to listen, engage, and build relationships.” – David Alston
Every company should have social media brand guidelines that include information such as the brand’s voice, tone, form of communication, style, look and feel. It should also outline how to respond to negative feedback, security protocols, and platform laws and rules. Ultimately, your social media accounts demonstrate your customer service philosophy.
3. Do Crises Management: React Quickly and Professionally
Even the best brands mess up. When dealing with a crisis on social media, act quickly but not too rashly. Taking the time to assess the situation and develop a well-thought-out solution is crucial. Transparency is essential when doing damage control; do not delete angry customer comments or replies, as this can worsen the situation.
Showing customers that you are handling complaints or criticism well is the best way to maintain a good image. This way, they will remember how you apologized and tried to fix the problem rather than the mistake itself.
4. Don’t Spam Followers
Retweeting, liking, commenting, posting and sharing are all great activities; however, keep everything in moderation. Too much of one account’s content can overwhelm social media feeds. For instance, don’t join multiple groups on LinkedIn and post the same self-promotional message in each without ever engaging with members.
“Social media is relational, not transactional.” – Michael Hyatt.
Don’t mass-follow random Twitter users in the hope of a follow back. Additionally, don’t post content not allowed in certain places due to promotional restrictions. This isn’t the kind of impression you want to leave. Remember, social media is “social,” so you want to balance sharing relevant content and interacting with your audience.
5. Do Use the 5:3:2 Rule
The 5:3:2 Rule is a great way to ensure your business’s social media content engages your audience while promoting your products.
For every ten posts you make, you should focus on having
- 5 posts that are informative and entertaining
- 3 posts that are related to your products or services
- 2 promotional posts
By following this strategy, you can ensure that your social media presence is eye-catching and effective. The 5:3:2 Rule EMPHASIZES YOUR AUDIENCE’S NEEDS, NOT YOUR BRAND’S PRIORITIES. That’s because there’s a significant distinction between utilizing social media to speak to your audience and engaging in a dialogue with them.
Improve Your Social Media Marketing with Color Theory
As the social media environment evolves, so do the rules of proper etiquette for business owners. Keeping up with the latest trends and integrating them into your social media strategy ensures your marketing campaigns are fresh and your business is at the forefront of people’s minds.
Perhaps you need help with your branding too? The ByFERIAL Image & Color Institute offers The 4X4 Color System (16 Seasons)® Certification Course that unpacks the art and science of color. If you want to learn how color impacts your social media marketing, sign up for our internationally accredited training course. It will strengthen your branding and business’ digital footprint.
