Effective Ways to Use Social Media for Your Business

Social media is one of the prime methods of communication these days. No matter your age, you’re more likely than not to have some sort of social media presence to stay connected with friends, family, and-on some platforms-businesses you wish to support and follow. This platform lets clients and businesses interact directly with one another: you can ask one another questions, repost content, chat online in real-time, and form relationships that older marketing techniques don’t allow for. With how integral social media is in our everyday lives, using these networks to promote and market your business is a smart idea and practically necessary to get your brand out there.

Marketing on sites like Facebook isn’t as simple as making a page and posting away. Before you start marketing, here are some tips to promote your business on social media the right way.

The Platform

If you’re going to have a social media presence, you’ll need to have it on the right platform. There’s a seemingly endless amount of websites available to set yourself up on and share your content with its users, but you doom yourself to failure if you set yourself up on the wrong site. When looking for the right platform to use, consider not only your type of business, but your consumer base as well. To successfully market yourself on social media, you’ll want to create accounts on the sites that your target audience uses so you can easily connect with them, and vice versa. Likewise, figure out which sites fit your products or services best and aim for that.

Interaction

It’s important to remember that marketing on social media is different than marketing with advertisements. Blatantly promoting yourself in every post will only deter your target audience away from your page, and that’s the last thing you want. Instead, focus on creating content that people want to see and interact with, and throw some promotions in the mix of posts once in a while. A good rule of thumb is to use the one-in-seven rule: for every blatantly promotional post, make six other posts that are purely content-based (sharing articles, commenting on current events, asking your audience a question, etc.). You don’t have to avoid any mention of your brand in your posts-just be mindful not to oversell yourself.

Problems

Social media is all about instant results. If you post something, chances are you’ll be going back to that post frequently to look for feedback and customer interaction. While the goal is to receive positive feedback, there will be times when you encounter someone who’s upset, argumentative, or generally negative about your business. Monitoring mentions of your brand on social media channels lets you find any issues quickly; from there, apologize publicly and offer to resolve the problem over direct message. This shows you’re responsive, but doesn’t make the specifics of the issue at hand public knowledge beyond the initial comment.

Originally published at http://daviddevries.co.