When it comes to social media marketing, there are certain unwritten rules that every marketers need to obey.
Even though some of these rules may be obvious for any social media savvy, it is always a good idea to re-evaluate the social strategies every six months, since everyone can fall into the trap of posting too much promotional content or overlooking the importance of interacting with fans.
To make sure your brand is executing impeccable social media etiquette, here is a list of five unwritten rules for social media marketing.
1. Adding Value To Your Subscribers
Although social networks provide brands with the best place to market their products and services, it is important that brands make an effort to post more than just promotional content on their profiles. After all, consumers are quick to unfollow or unlike brands that don’t add any value to their news feeds.
2. Don’t Be A Weirdo
The line between normal and weird can be a little blurry on the social media, especially for the brands. There are a few things that social media managers can do, however, to make sure brands stay out of the “weird zone.” At first, brands should never pay for followers or ask for RTs unless doing so is required for a social campaign or contest. Asking for RTs can make a brand seem less authoritative, which is not good for its online or offline reputation. In addition, social media managers should be conscious of the amount of hashtags they use in their posts. Typically one to three hashtags per post should be the maximum used. Any more than three can make the post look like spam and lead consumers to quickly unlike or unfollow the brand. Finally, social media managers who are on the fence about whether to post a certain message or respond in a certain way should always ask for a second opinion, which should keep them out of the weird zone and avoid being misunderstood.
3. Be Nice
At one point or another, every brand is going to come face-to-face with a negative social interaction. These interactions could simply be complaints about an experience someone had with a brand, or could just be what some call an Internet troll.
When addressing negative social interactions, it is important for social media managers to analyze the situation prior to responding. For instance, if the consumer has a legitimate complaint (such as a bad experience with a brand representative or an issue with the brand’s website), managers should respond by acknowledging any mistake, apologizing and/or guiding the consumer to its specific customer care social handle or other support channel (e.g. email and telephone) for further assistance.
Conversely, if the negative interaction is an obvious social bully who is just looking to start a fight with the brand, it is typically a good idea for social media managers to ignore the interaction altogether. After all, the old adage about catching more flies with honey than with vinegar is true even in the digital world. Plus, responding to an Internet troll could actually give more publicity to the negative comment, and provide the person with more incentive to continue publishing negative posts.
4. Re-Evaluate Everything
Although most social media managers aim to create content that goes viral, it is important that content goes viral for the right reasons. After all, a tweet that goes viral because of an unfortunate spelling error or because a social media manager wasn’t aware of the context of a trending hashtag will bring the wrong kind of attention, and could do significant damage to a brand’s reputation.
5. Have A Real Conversation
It is important to remember that social networks are meant to be social, which means that brands should be interacting with their fans and followers (especially influencers) every day. Moreover, interactions should not only be reserved to customers who have taken to social to complain about an experience.