With both small and large companies increasingly establishing and expanding their presence on social media, it has led to more customer touch points for businesses. As a result, customers and potential customers are connecting and engaging with brands and companies at an unprecedented level. Such exposure has deemed it essential for your business also to ensure social media marketing is done in the best possible way.
With Australian users surpassing 13 million on Facebook, 5 million on LinkedIn and 2 million on Twitter, the importance of knowing the do’s and don’ts of social media marketing has never been higher.
Why Social Media?
As much as social media has been embraced by large corporations and SMBs alike in Australia, there still remains some skepticism among SMBs on whether a social presence is worth the investment. However, as per the stats, if you’re not present on social media, you are definitely losing out on a big opportunity to connect and engage with your customers and stakeholders but also to generate business leads.
One of the common trends in all social media networks is the fact that the number of users on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube continue to rise.
Did You Know…
– Social media is the number 1 web activity?
– 9 million Australians use Facebook on DAILY?
– Every month 5 million Australian visit WordPress blogs and 4 million visit Tumblr blogs?
– 92% of children under the age 2 have a digital shadow?
– 69% of parents are “friends” with their children on social media? (we were surprised at this one too!)
– Every minute 72 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube?
– 90% of customers trust peer recommendations online?
And here’s the kicker – babies in Egypt have been named Facebook and Twitter. And another baby born elsewhere was named Hashtag (that’s pushing the search for a unique name a tad too far we think).
Sources: Frankmedia.com.au and digitalbusiness.gov.au
Now let’s check out what to do and what to avoid during your social media marketing campaigns:
Top 5 Social Media Do’s
1. Be active by posting regularly on your social media pages. Make sure that your customers are frequently reminded about your presence. If not, they would just forget you.
2. Listen and engage with your audience both in your page and other pages too. Constantly look for opportunities where you can engage with your audience and spread the word of your brand. Share, retweet and comment on other pages and let them know that you’re interested in their content. It would lead to some interaction on your own page too.
3. Make the maximum use of the free resources. Services such as Google alerts and search options on social media channels are great places to start. Use them to know about your existing and potential customers and also to get an idea about your social media presence.
4. Mix up your content. Post videos, pictures and interesting links. Stay up to date with the trending topics as it is a good way to keep your audience interested.
5. Ask your audience to like, comment, retweet and share your content. A call to action in your posts is a clear way to increase your engagement level.
Top 5 Social Media Don’ts
1. Do not show off. In other words, do not self promote excessively. We recommend keeping the percentage of promotion posts to as little as 10% of your total posts.
2. Do not abandon your social media account. It is important that you spend at least 10 minutes a day to check in and post something.
3. Do not forget to acknowledge people who engage with your posts. Thank them for taking the time to stop by your post and taking some sort of action.
4. Do not be repetitive. Make your message to your audience clear and constant but don’t take the same tone in every post as it would annoy your audience and eventually move them away from your page.
5. Do not get into political or into contentious conversations which would lead to unnecessary disputes. Give out a neutral perspective in all things that doesn’t concern your business.
Following these 10 tips will make sure that proper social media etiquette is followed. And are you guilty of any of the don’ts or have a different view on some of the Do’s? Why not let us know by commenting below?
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Do you have a social media policy in place at your organisation? If not, do get in touch and we’ll work with you for a tailored social media solution.
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About solomoIT
SolomoIT is a digital marketing agency, based in Sydney, Australia, offering fully integrated social, local and mobile marketing solutions.