BizLaunch presents 10 Best Practices for Social Media

Marketing your business takes time. Luckily with social media, you can do a lot of marketing online. But social media can be overwhelming if you're not sure where to start, or if you don't have a social media strategy in place. Follow these 10 best practices to create a strong social media following.

1. Determine your strategy. A social media strategy is more than just having a Facebook account. You need to think about what you want to achieve by using social media. Is it to get more interaction from your customers, or is it to raise awareness for your products?


2. Pick your networks. Even though it may be tempting to join every social network, you'll  achieve better results if you stick to one or two sites that your customers use. This will also prevent you from spreading yourself too thin.


3. Stay true to your brand. Stay consistent to your brand's personality. Your brand's personality should come out in your social media posts. Try to stick to topics that your customers will care about, and don't shy away from starting a discussion. Hot topics will get more interaction than safe topics.


4. Don't push sales. Many businesses only post about themselves, and then they wonder why no one interacts or follows them online. Follow the 80/20 rule where 80% of the content is about your industry and 20% is about your products/services.


5. Provide good content. Using content such as photos, videos, links and blog posts in your social media can really help you build trust with your customers. Also, photos get more 'air time' in Facebook news feeds, so post photos as often as you can.


6. Use a call to action. Tell people what to do.  Ask them to like your updates, fill in the blank, or come up with the best caption for your photo. Using a call to action helps get more people interacting with your posts.


7. Update regularly. Update your accounts at least a few times per day and make sure that you respond to each and every comment on your profile. It's also helpful to develop a schedule of your weekly posts to keep organized. Use a social media aggregator (described below) so you don't fall silent on the weekends.


8. Use a social media aggregator. With Hootsuite, you can link up to 5 social media networks that can all be viewed on one page. This saves you time switching between various accounts and also allows you to schedule posts ahead of time.


9. Don’t try to control everything. Another reason that businesses are scared of social media is that they don't want to receive negative feedback. If customers post negative feedback about your brand on social media, take it as an opportunity to turn the situation into a positive experience.


10.  Be patient. Don't expect millions of followers right away and never buy likes. Remember that making strong connections with fewer followers is better than having no connection with many. Building a strong following takes time.

Brought to you by the small business experts at BizLaunch. BizLaunch creates webinars, seminars and other educational content to help business owners succeed. For more information please visit www.bizlaunch.com