social media best practices

Social Media Marketing Best Practices — 7 Qualities That Really Make It Work

Keeping your social marketing campaigns on track and working effectively requires careful, ongoing attention to the basics. Here are seven ways to apply social media marketing best practices to improve customer engagement and, ultimately, boost your bottom line.

  1. Stay focused: Understand what you’re trying to accomplish with your social media efforts and stay focused on achieving those results. For example, keep your comments and content restricted to your specific niche. Don’t wander outside your industry and try to be too many things to too many people.
  2. Maintain quality: Produce and publish high-quality, useful content for your social media campaigns. Make sure your material is well-written and presented, that your tweets and responses are timely and appropriate, and that your content provides actual value. Don’t overwhelm readers with sales and marketing messages. Instead, freely offer material that will be useful to them.
  3. Tend to your audience: Work to maintain a high-quality audience who’s interested in your social media content and who will respond positively to you. It’s better to have a small but dedicated audience than a large audience that isn’t really listening.
  4. Practice your own listening: Pay attention to your audience’s comments, responses and requests. Even online, the adage “talk less, listen more” is useful way to conduct business. Visit blogs and social media centers of your customers and engage them there. Use what you learn to guide your own content creation efforts.
  5. Recognize that results aren’t immediate: It takes time to build a successful social media presence. Commit to working on this important area for as long as it takes.
  6. Compound and expand: Create an audience who is willing and even happy to share your content and build trust in your social media work and your brand. Engage with influential leaders in your market and seek to have them share your content with their own audiences.
  7. Stay accessible: Be available to participate in give-and-take with your customers on your social media platform. If necessary, schedule time to focus on interacting with your online audience.

How can you improve your social media campaigns with these social media marketing best practices?

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