Social Media Marketing Tips: The Only 10 That Matter

Social media marketing tips have changed since I first wrote about this in 2007, but the core principles haven’t. If you’re a person or company getting into the social media game to promote yourself, please note that all the bells, whistles and buzz words in the world won’t bring in long term, qualified customers.

Social media is a fickle beast and can’t be approached like a traditional advertising or marketing campaign.

The Snowball Effect

Social media campaigns can take time. Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, it takes time to put on warm clothes, climb up the hill, gather enough snow and slowly start rolling a ball of snow down the hill. But, eventually, with enough preparation, that snowball will take on a life of its own and its forward momentum will allow it to grow and grow, faster and faster.

A successful social media campaign can make every single one of your customers an evangelist for your product and brand. An unsuccessful campaign can prove disastrous. Social media campaigns have to be designed solely with the consumer in mind.

The Only Ten Tips That Matter

Listen, Listen, Listen. The purpose of a social media campaign is to create conversations with your potential and existing customers. A conversation is a two-way communication and if you’re not listening, then you’ll have no idea how to adapt to whatever comes next.

Respond. Equally as important to listening is actually responding to your customer’s concerns and figuring out exactly what and why those concerns exist.

Contribute. Don’t be the person that shows up to the birthday party without a present. As you build your community, show respect by adding value to their particular community.

Open the Dialog. It’s fine to talk about your company, but not all the time. Sometimes it can be more valuable to raise concerns or voice opinions on issues that your customers share a strong affinity towards.

Educate. Do your customers know how your company operates and why it does things a certain way? People are hungry for knowledge. How are you offering it to them?

Building Human Connection

Encourage. Sometimes life can be hard. What types of things motivate your customers? Creating an area of genuine encouragement associates those positive feelings with your company.

Be human. Nothing kills a social media campaign faster than automated responses and false intentions. Assign a human being in your company to handle your social media efforts.

Acknowledge. We all crave acknowledgment for the tiny things we do. Your customers are doing great things everyday and they deserve someone to take note.

Trust and Transparency

Stay Transparent. Honesty is and always will be the best policy. This big world of ours gets smaller every day and if you’re not being honest, someone will eventually blow the whistle.

Listen. Listen. Listen. Remember when I said that listening was the most important thing? I meant it and that is doubly true for social media. You can never stop listening. If you’re not listening, you’ll never know when the tide is starting to change.