9. Approach to Social Media

Your approach to social media activity will depend on numerous factors, including the type of your business, as well as the goals you want to achieve. However, since we tend to provide some general instructions within this e-book, we will share some common approaches to social media, regardless of the business and type of activity. These suggestions are more general ideas and tips on how to behave on social media as a presenter and a representative of a company. 

Be consistent

One of the most important things in your activity on social media is consistency. Although it might be difficult to stay on schedule and keep up with social media every single day, especially when you have so many other tasks, you should try to post at least once a day or once in a couple of days. This will help your audience keep up with you on a regular basis. In addition, you will avoid your social media account seem neglected. Keeping up with this regular routine will have positive impact on your social media presence in general, as you will be in frequent contact with your audience, be informed about the changes and new opportunities on the market, etc.

Being consistent is also important when it comes to implementing social media strategy. You should not change your approach frequently as this might seem disorganized and unprofessional. In addition, you have to be consistent in the way you address your target audience, as this is something they are used to, something they expect. You should also have this fact in mind when you are about to introduce drastic changes to your social media activity or the strategy you are using.

Be social

Since social media is all about interaction and being social, you need to be able to establish good communication with other social media users, regardless if those are your social media followers, your colleges, or competitors. In all of these cases, the approach to social media should include social factor and engagement from your part first.

Even though there are lots of tools that help you with automated posting on social media in order to be consistent and post regularly, these are useless when it comes to social factor, as you need to be present in person in order to communicate with other users, to address them personally, to respond and help. You must not forget that behind each account there is a person, a person who needs help or advice, a person who will want to praise your product or point out to its flaws. In any case, you should try to establish effective communication, in order to create a relationship with people online.

Be professional

One thing you must never forget in your work on social media is that you are a representative of a company. Thus, your approach to social media has to be professional in every sense, when posting status updates, when sharing images, when interacting in groups and chats, etc. Even though social media requires a little bit less formal language and casual approach, a company has to remain professional.

This way you improve the image of your company and create a respectful authority that can be trusted. Professionalism is also necessary when dealing with customer on social media, as you need to be tactful, especially if followers publicly express their dissatisfaction with your product.

Be helpful

Various researches have confirmed that the most popular status updates are the ones that provide some kind of useful information to the users. Status updates that educate, inform or help are most likely to be shared by the social network users. This information is something you should have in mind when creating status updates to be published on social media accounts, as it can help you leverage your social media presence.

Try to help your followers by sharing useful instructions and tips on topics and issues they are interested in. Occasionally, these might be general status updates or you can even link to third party sources, but you should always reference to your own business or website, whenever possible.

Be reliable

If you share some information on social media, make sure that the information in question is true and valid, as you want to be perceived as a reliable source of information. Otherwise, your account might be considered as spam. In addition, you should make sure that you share URLs that work, in order to avoid users clicking on a link only to get to an error page. This kind of approach increases level of reliability you can expect from your users, which will also affect their loyalty towards your company or brand.

Be generous

There have been a lot of studies about the reasons why social media users choose to follow a certain social media profile, regardless of the social network in question. It is usually a reflection of liking, respect, and usefulness. When it comes to business social profiles, the most common reason for following a brand is to keep up with the promotions and discounts.

This is something you should definitely have in mind when defining your social media approach. Depending on the type of business you promote on social media, you will probably be capable of awarding your followers with free samples, coupons, gifts or free trials.

Not only is this a very effective technique for promoting your business, but the followers will appreciate your generosity. This technique is also frequently used in the purpose of increasing the number of social followers. However, you should analyze the terms related to the promotions on each of the social networks you want to use in the purpose of promotion.

Be interesting

One of the important aspects of social networks is sharing interesting and entertaining content. People love seeing funny photos, reading jokes or entertaining videos. This is why you should try to make your content entertaining and engaging. You must be very careful with using this approach on social media, as you do not want to seem unprofessional or insulting. You could try sharing interesting images, funny quotations or song lyrics, etc.

Be inspirational

Your posts on social media should also be worthy of reading. They should inspire and thus engage users to comment, share or like a certain post. Sharing this kind of posts is very helpful, but you should always try to relate the post to your business, as otherwise you are at risk of the post being perceived as spam and out of context. You could share a quotation by a famous writer, or you could ask a question and have users answering.

Have in mind that most statistics confirm that question requiring simple “yes” or “no” answers are most likely to engage followers. Instead, you could also post statements and ask follower to like or share if they agree.

Combine different approaches

Using only one of these approaches is not a valid technique, as your posting activity might seem too automated and predictable. You should combine all of these approaches and create a strategy that will combine the most important and the most helpful aspects of each of these approaches, in order to guarantee that you get the best results from your social media activity.

There is no perfect formula on how to combine different posts, but you need to adapt the posting activity to your business and to your audience. You need to implement different characteristics in order to provide diversity to your audience and in order to be perceived as interesting, reliable, professional, etc. in the same time. This is how you create a personality on social network which is complete and worthy of following.