Social Media – 10 Things to Remember

November 4, 2013Blog

1. Don’t pitch! There is no need to yell at customers and bully them into purchasing a product or service from your business. The basis of social media is to build a relationship through connecting with individuals and not pitch. It is this relationship which will encourage individuals to use your organisation over your competitors who may not have made any previous effort to connect with them.

2. Keep your account up to date! Many organisations create a social media account and leave it at that. They actually forget or don’t realise how important it is to regularly upload content. We recommend that social media accounts are updated daily as when customers visit your company page all of the content should be up to date. If customers see that it has not been updated in over a month, they may assume that it is inactive and decide not to follow your company. Failure to update your account could result in your prospective customer going to a competitor’s recently updated page as they feel that they will get better customer service.

3. Decide on updates carefully. Your company is accountable for whatever it posts within its social media accounts and the content is in the public domain on the internet forevermore. Therefore ensure that the people managing your social media accounts are aware of their responsibility and that they are representing the company at all times.

4. Be prepared. Even your customers have bad days and will feel the need to vent their frustrations on your page, blaming you for everything! It is important that you do not remove any negative comments from your page. Make an attempt to deal with the customers issue offline ie, via a telephone call BUT don’t make promises you can’t keep. Once the situation has been resolved post a comment on your wall.

5. Communication is key. It is important for your organisation to understand that for social media to be successful you must interact with your followers. That means joining in with conversations, answering questions and leaving comments. However if you do not realise the significance of engaging in this manner then social media is not for you and as a result you may lose touch with your customers and as a result be unable to satisfy their requirements.

6. Don’t forget to link. If you find an article or other content particularly interesting and it is relevant to your organisation, then link it to your Twitter and Facebook page. Tell your followers why you have chosen to link the information with your account and post questions or incites.

7. Be open and honest. It’s ok to share what your employees are doing within your social media accounts. Take photos of office celebrations, company days/nights out or charity events and upload them. The photos help to create a positive and humanistic element to the organisation.

8. Publicise your blog. You can spend days writing the perfect blog article to have no one read it…sound familiar? So why not link your blog to your social media accounts and mention it with links in your posts and tweets? It allows you to give your customers large amounts of information that you may not want to feature on your website, yet they are too large to be included as status updates. Problem solved!

9. Tell everyone. If you have differing social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or a blog then you really need to let people know how to find you. It is a good idea to have the links on your company website and corporate stationery reminding/encouraging people to ‘add’ you.

10. Be trendy – create a trend. If your organisation does something at the same time each week mention it to your followers. For example if you have a special offer each week then display what it is within your social media so that people will visit your page at the same time next week to see what the next offer is. It is a great way to get people onto your social media and into your organisation.

Have fun with your social media and don’t be afraid to get creative! Think about what you would like to see and read…ask questions that your customers can answer and keep your accounts up to date.