The 6 Golden Rules Of Social Media Marketing For Business

Read The 6 Golden Rules Of Social Media Marketing For Business and take your next campaign straight to the top.

Rule 1. Be Patient

Once you have set up your accounts on different social media, don’t be too excited and overwhelm people with tons of information about your product or service all at once. It’s much better to ease your way into building strong relationships with your audience.
Initially, you won’t see a huge response, so I always advise new business owners to invite friends and family to like or follow and engage, just to get some interaction going.
Be polite, and interact with customers when prompted. Make sure you give them only the most valuable information about your product or service. A simple way of promoting without the hard-sell is to write about features or benefits of your product or service, rather than the service itself.

Rule 2. Don’t Hard Sell

Don’t use hard-selling tactics as it shows you are desperate for sales, and will eventually turn off your audience. It could also damage your reputation by showing a lack of interest in your customers.
Show a positive attitude towards your industry, share relevant and interesting news and updates and always ensure you put the customer first. No-one likes a self promoting, self indulgent speaker. Seek to become an authority in the consumer eye by becoming a valuable resource.

Rule 3. Interact With Your Customers

It is no use setting up an account on any of the social media platforms and then letting it linger there with no activity. You need to actively participate in activity on these platforms once you have established your business there. You need to interact with your customers, listen to their point of view and discuss problems and solutions with them.
Ask questions. Make sure you thank regularly, RT their interesting content and share anything you feel relevant to your business, including other clients reviews and comments.

Rule 4. Listen To Others

Listen to what others say about your product. Check regularly for reviews and respond swiftly. A good way to keep track is to set up a feed in Google alerts for your company name, and be prepared to act quickly when a review or comment is left, positive or negative. Be positive and open-minded when responding.
Don’t be bothered by criticism – take it as an opportunity to improve your product or service and increase customer loyalty by demonstrating your willingness to adapt to your audience. Focus on constantly improving your product for the benefit of your customers.

Rule 5. Test Different Social Media Platforms

Having a presence on all of the social media platforms will obviously do your business some good, but how do you know its the right social media platform? Try different platforms and measure the results for your business.
You need to remember that different platforms attract different audiences and hence your focus should be on targeting the platform that suits your business. What works for one business may not necessarily work for another. Make a plan for different social platforms and then execute it effectively. Test results and ditch under performing platforms. Your time is best spent focusing on where your customer is at.

Rule 6. Provide Regular, Relevant Content

Finally, the content you provide must be relevant to your product, and you must post on a regular basis. Whether it is a status update, a tweet, a video or a blog post it must all be relevant to your product.
This is extremely important because people are there because they are interested in your company and what you can offer them. They also want to know there will be something new for them next time they visit your profile or feed. You will lose your audience over time if you let your updates go stale. Share your point of view on recent, relevant news stories, industry news and solutions for your audience.