With so many articles and blogs telling you the right ways and the wrong ways to conduct your social media efforts, it all gets a bit confusing; to help with that we’ve rounded up the key points you need to remember all in one place.
See below for a simple social media check list to ensure your channels are all up to scratch.
Secure a branded account for your business
As soon as you know you want to start up a social media account for your business, make sure you secure your brand name quickly before someone else does. It’s important to get this bit right, as it’s how you’ll make a memorable first impression with your target market.
Vanity URLs are great if you can get hold of them and mush easier for your audience to remember than something long and complicated.
Complete your profile information
With this in mind it’s important to provide all the basic information you can about your company on each profile you set up, so that each channel is aligned with the same key messages.
Engage with your audience
By using social media to solely push your ‘key messages’, promotions or a single marketing agenda, you will just alienate those who you are trying to attract. Your audience should feel involved with your brand and like they can engage with a real human, rather than like they are being subjected to watching a corporate feed.
Tailor the content to your audience
However, while this kind of management has its uses and may seem like an attractive time-saving tool, it’s important to remember that your audience will vary on each channel and the content you push out will need to be relevant to that specific audience; otherwise you risk losing the relationships you have built.
Similarly, if content is automated without accounting for topical news stories or circumstances, it’s possible you could cause all sorts of irreversible damage to your online reputation.
If in doubt, hit delete..
Once you’ve hit the ‘share’ button it’s hard to take it back. Most users on social media channels are so active, that someone is bound to pick up on a ‘brand fail’ and share it again, particularly if they can make a joke at your expense.
Monitor your channels regularly
You will need to monitor your social channels closely once you’ve set them up. As a user there’s nothing worse than looking at a brand’s social media page which hasn’t had any activity for weeks or months, it just looks like the company doesn’t care enough.
If you don’t regularly share relevant content and engage with your followers, fans or subscribers, you’ll soon lose them. Worse still, if someone posts a controversial comment or complaint to one of your pages and you don’t deal with it straight way, reputation management-hell could potentially break loose.
Source: Whitehatmedia
