You could grow your brand using social media. The different platforms offer access to millions of potential clients, who are increasingly using social media to interact with brands, as well as research and make purchasing decisions. Using social media strategically could help boost the performance of your brand.
However, there are a number of commonly overlooked practices that may underwhelm your progress. You need to develop a social media strategy to help you avoid making these mistakes that could harm you both in the short and long term. These are the benefits of having a social media policy.
It allows you to review your content
Some content, even though it may have been successful in the past, is just a recipe for bad press. On the internet, the bad press could cause a permanently bad reputation, which will affect your brand for a long time. You need to analyze and review your content before posting it.
Creating a social media policy will increase the number of checks available to help pinpoint any potentially negative content. This may range from the use of an inappropriate word to an entirely unsuitable topic. You should generally avoid depicting any violence, drugs, and explicit language in your campaign. Having a social policy will help keep you protected from this type of harm.
It dictates interaction
If you are active on social media, you will probably have a following. Only 5% of adult users on social media do not follow a brand. Research suggests that more people are using social media to interact with their preferred brands, with 3 of 4 users choosing to seek customer service online.
As more people look online for customer service, interacting with your clients could be a great way to develop a loyal following. Users will be more likely to trust brands that have a quick turnover time on their social media pages.
You should not pick and choose between comments. Avoiding any critical comments, complaints and any others that are perceived as negative will be worse for your reputation than actually addressing the concerns raised.
A social media policy will dictate how you interact with these clients, regardless of the nature of their messages. The policy will provide maximum response timelines, as well as guide your social media team on the expected standard of their responses. This will prevent any damage to your reputation.
It helps avoid dormancy
A social media policy will dictate posting frequency, which will help avoid your content and pages becoming dormant. It will create a framework for posting, which provides the specific content to be posted, the time, and the platform of choice. This way, none of your pages will lie dormant because of forgotten posts.
Using scheduling tools such as Hootsuite will help you make posts even when you are physically unable to do so. You may also need to promote your content to help meet the strategic goals set out for the specific campaign.
What social media mistakes should you avoid?
The most common mistake brands make on their social media pages is developing a nonchalant attitude toward their posts. Many brands will post content and consider this the end of their social marketing strategy.
There are many free and paid advertising boosts available, which can help increase brand visibility and contribute to growth. Instead of letting your posts lie, consider taking up content sharing and linking with other brands. You will gain exposure to their audiences and grow your following.
Most brands will rely on free advertising tools to help target their goals. They will be wary of incurring any additional expenses to increase their visibility on the internet. Paid advertising is relatively well priced, and offers a variety of options depending on your needs and size. If you want to improve the performance of your social campaign, you may need to consider paid advertising.
For instance, on Instagram, you can purchase automatic likes for your next posts. This may not seem like a value purchase, but it will help attract more users to your content, which could be the difference between successful and failed social campaigns.
There are a number of analytic tools available for free. Most brands will not follow up on this important aspect of social media marketing because they just do not know how to make use of the information.
Analytics help to monitor engagement levels, as well as user interaction with the brand. By collecting this information, you will be better able to understand any changes and address them before they result in significant movement of traffic away from your brand.
You need to find a target audience to improve your chances of successfully increasing your engagement and interaction levels, as well as boosting sales. While social media hosts a large number of users, they are divided across different platforms.
You need to explore your target audience’s preference in terms of platform and content and use this to develop your strategy. If you do not have a target audience in mind, your social media marketing strategy could be inefficient.
This also presents a common mistake brands will make on social media. Instead of finding their niche platform, brands will look to maximize as many platforms as possible. Usually, this will overwhelm your social media team and could cause some platforms to lie dormant, which may affect user perception of your brand’s credibility.
If employees have private social media accounts, they should make sure to attach disclaimers dissociating their online activity from the brand. This will help protect your brand from consequences that may result from its social media activity.
Final thought
You need a social media policy to protect you against avoidable but potentially damaging practices. In order to create a trustworthy brand presence on the internet, you need to be thorough and strategic.
There is little room for mistakes on social media, which is often ruled by the phrase “the internet never forgets”. Creating a social media policy will keep your brand secure from any harmful reputation, as well as help, develop a great relationship with users.
