The buzz and excitement that social media has to offer, is one that seem to keep getting better and better everyday. In fact, social media marketing is where all the businesses are heading towards and you must not get left behind.
However, using social media as a digital marketing tool can still be alien to some people. The trick is to set out some ground rules that can help you manage your social media platforms successfully. Rules that will ensure you receive positive results while keeping everyone’s attention focused and on the brand. Simply put these rules help you hire great people and giving them the freedom to be awesome,
Here at Swoop Studios, we have perfected some very basic but very sound rules, shared below, that help our team function without breaking a (digital) sweat.
Check them out and don’t forget to let us know what you think in our comments box below.
- Use CREATIVITY’ to breed interest and keep your audience engaged. Don’t be like everyone else. Use pictures, videos, drawings and the likes to communicate. Be different. Social media is all about breaking the norm in communication, so be as creative as you can be.
- Be ENGAGING’. Ask questions of your audience. Invite debates and discussions. Don’t just talk ‘at’ people. Talk to people through people.
3.’LISTEN’. Do you know what your audience likes and are you delivering? Get to know what to and where to deliver your services by observing patterns and responses to your tweets. This is what we mean by listening. So, be a listener.
- Be ‘RESPONSIVE’. When you listen and ‘hear’ your audiences likes (or dislikes for that matter), do not be lax, instead, respond to their needs as much as you are able to. Listening and doing nothing is far worse than not knowing at all. It shows lack of attention or care. You can also be responsive by joining in on any interesting debates that crop up on your feed.
5. Be ‘TIMELY’, especially with your responses. Social media conversations (or “convos” as we like to call them), works best when it happens in realtime. So get cracking. Don’t leave your audiences waiting too long for your response to their comments or queries, else your conversation becomes ‘stale’.
- Use ‘HONESTY’ in your responses to your audience. No matter how tough it may be to share certain information or talk about a subject on social media, once it is out there, try to be honest about it. If it is about a mistake you made, owning up to it quickly and honestly will make your audience more empathetic towards you.
- Be a ‘USEFUL INFORMATION SOURCE’- and you can generate ‘lead’ by making your audience ‘feel’ the ‘need’ to come back to you, over and over again. Do this by making your business a hub of useful and current information by tweeting on almost anything that is relevant to your business and the rest of the globe.
- Be FUNNY. If you can laugh at your own silliness, your audience will be put at ease too. A Cartoon character, (especially one of your own creations), can be funny as well as impart the intended information to your audiences in a go. Try to be creative, but in a non-offensive manner.
- Be RESPECTFUL; of other peoples opinions and beliefs. Don’t judge or condemn. Even if you feel insulted, social media is definitely not the place to ‘air’ your grievance. Keep a respectful demeanour and always think twice (in fact, we recommend that you think in the quadruple), before responding to anything posted about you or your business on social media.
- Always be POLITE to people on your feed. Thank them for their comments and (or) contributions and make sure you share it with your wider community. Thus, your audience feel valued and will be eager to be part of the ‘in’ crowd whose opinion matter.
Having said all of the above, here at Swoop Studios, our last but certainly, most important advice of all is; to remain HUMAN. No matter the size of your business or organisation, remember that you are still dealing with real people, and real people like to do business with real people too. So don’t just use your brand logo as a face, show your ‘human’ face to your audience. It makes them feel connected on a one-on-one basis with you!!
Written by Gayle Thomson @SwoopStudios
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