Let me preface this by saying, I am not a social media expert and the advice that I am giving you here is more like general rules to follow for your social media communication. I can’t tell you exactly how to grow your following or get leads and make sales from your social media. 

What I can and am telling you is what you should and should not do with your social media communication. 

Over the years, watching what other businesses were doing and working with my own social media, I have picked up a few things that would be considered best practice. So I am going to share with you, based on my experience, what you should and should not do with your social media communication.

1. Don’t get too personal but also be genuine.

People make purchasing decisions based on their feelings and it is our innate human desire to fit in and belong so it makes sense that we are going to choose to do business with companies that we feel like we can relate to them. We feel like we know them, we like them, and we trust them. That is the goal – know, like, trust – that is what you are going for when you are creating content for your social media communications. 

This can be a hard balance to create. You don’t want to be too personal but you also don’t want to be a business jargon robot. 

Be real. Imagine that you are standing face to face with a longtime customer. How would you be speaking with them?

Sometimes when I am creating new content, I use a voice recorder and say what I think I want to say out loud before putting pen to paper. For some reason, our brains process information differently, and this practice helps me to sound more genuine.

What you should not be posting:

• Pictures of your food
• Videos of your kids’ soccer game
• The spec list for your product
• Stories about Aunt Barb’s new dog
• Offensive jokes

What you should be posting:

• Helpful tips
• Customer reviews and testimonials
• Videos of your product or service in action
• Answers to your customers most asked questions
• Stories about yourself that relate to what you do and why you do it
• Humorous memes that relate to your business and are not offensive in any way
• Inspirational messages
• Other people’s posts that relate to your business

2. Don’t post without editing and don’t be afraid to address your mistakes.

Always, always, always and one more for good measure, ALWAYS, edit your content before you hit that post button. 

If possible, have someone else read through your content before you publish it. It is so easy for us to glance right past our spelling and grammar errors without even seeing them. But a second set of eyes can never hurt. 

If having a second set of eyes is not an option, then write your content, set it aside (don’t publish it yet), come back to it 24 hours later, and re-read it. With fresh eyes, you are more likely to see any mistakes you have made. 

Social media tends to be a more laid-back atmosphere, I mean it’s not like you are writing for a medical journal or something, but people still notice the grammatical mistakes and some people (we call them trolls) will make sure that you know that you made a mistake. So it is better to double-check what you have written before it gets published. 

On most social media platforms, you can edit after you post and if worst comes to worst you can delete and re=post after you have fixed the errors but it will be much better if you don’t have to do that!

I learned this lesson the hard way! Very early on in my career, I was working for a local doctor’s office (luckily it was a family member). I put together this entire email campaign about weight loss. I was so excited about it and so honored that they took a chance and let me work for them. Well, I scheduled all the emails to go out in a sequence, and about a week later, after they had all gone out, the doctor’s office called me and told me they noticed a mistake in my copy. 

Let me remind you that this campaign was for weight loss.

Every time I intended to use the word “lose”, I actually used the word “loose” so my copy looked a little like this;

“Are you ready to loose weight fast?” “Loosing weight doesn’t have o be so difficult.”

Even as I type this right now, my spell checker is going nuts telling me it’s wrong. Man do I wish I would have double-checked that copy!

The even more unfortunate part is that if it had been on social media, I could have edited it or delete the posts but nooooo, this was an email campaign. So, once the emails had been sent out there was nothing I could do about it. 

Needless to say, my family member did give me another shot at helping in their business. And, I learned the hard way to always edit before I hit send or publish!

So what happens if you do make a mistake like that?

Well, you do the only thing you can do. You acknowledge that you made a mistake and if necessary, you apologize for it. 

In some cases, you can turn it into a humorous situation just be careful that it is in no way offensive. 

Remember, we all make mistakes. We are only human. If it is a simple typo or grammatical error that you can not fix, then don’t worry about it and just let it ride. But, it if it is something big and you have in some way offended someone or a group of people, then own up to it and make your apologies. 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and you can feel free to post yours on your personal accounts but your business accounts are not the place for your personal opinions. 

3. Don’t only talk about yourself.

We all know that one guy. You dread running into him because he won’t shut up about himself and you feel like you can’t get a word in edgewise. Don’t be that guy!

This is an easy mistake to make because it can be difficult to find new content to post to our social media pages. And when we don’t know what to say we tend to talk about what we know best and that is ourselves.

You definitely need to share some information about yourself and your business but the trick is to pepper that in with other types of content.

A great way to find new content is to think about the questions that your customer ask the most and answer them. Use that answer as your post. This way you are serving your customer first and they feel like you care more about helping them than you do about talking about yourself and your business.

Another way you can avoid talking about yourself too much is to share other people’s content. So if you come across an article that relates to your industry and could be helpful for your followers, share it.

Here’s my tip for this issue, plan out your social media content at least a week in advance (although a month would be better) this way you can see as a whole if you are talking about yourself too much. If there are more posts about you than any other type of post, you know that you need to make some changes. I use CinchShare and Canva to do all my social media graphics, scheduling, and posting.

4. Don’t ignore comments and don’t let them get the best of you.

When it comes to your social media, engagement is a big priority. If you can get your followers to start having a conversation with you, they will get to know you better (remember; know, like, and trust = sales). 

Also, you will get to know them better which means that you can find out straight from the horses mouth what your customers need from you and you can serve it to them on a silver platter. 

This is huge in our digital age where we don’t always get to deal with people face to face. We don’t always have the time for genuine conversations with every person we encounter. So being able to connect with our followers through their comments is a big advantage. 

Don’t let that advantage slip away by not replying to their comments. And, definitely do it in a timely fashion. We have so many things vying for our attention every moment of every day that if you don’t get back to someone fairly quickly, they will have moved on and you will have missed the opportunity to connect with them.

I know this can seem overwhelming, I get it you are running a business, you don’t have time to be on social media all day. But think of it this way, when you take the time to respond to messages on social media, that is basically customer service. 

It is no different than a customer calling your office to ask questions about your product or service. And I am pretty sure you wouldn’t say “oh, I don’t have time to answer the phone today.” 

Now, unfortunately, we live in a world where people have the ability to hide behind their keyboards and not all of the engagement and comments you get are going to be sunshine and rainbows. You will get negative comments. It is inevitable. Because there are people out there that don’t always think before they type. They think their opinion must be heard especially if they have a complaint. 

In these situations, it’s important to keep a level head. Never respond to those types of comments right away. Take some time and really think about the best way to respond. Remember what your mom always told you about bullies, “don’t stoop to their level”. The best thing you can do is to defuse the situation by making an apology and finding out if there is a way that you can make them feel better. Then offer to resolve their issue by moving the conversation off of the public forum.

5. Don’t post only when inspiration strikes.

The key to social media is consistency and variety.

You should be posting at a minimum 3 times per week. If possible, I would suggest posting every day. The more you post, the more likely people are going to see your posts. 

I know that can seem like a lot and you are probably thinking you have no idea what to post about 7 days a week. I created this calendar to help with that!

The best way that I have found to manage my social media is to create all of my content for at least 2 weeks, including pictures and/or graphics and videos, then I schedule all of my posts using a scheduler called CinchShare. They are great because you can add all of your social media accounts to it. That way when you create one post, you can check which accounts you want it to post to, schedule it and you are done! 

I know social media can seem like a lot and it can be overwhelming but if you make a plan and schedule all of your posts, you can sort of set it and forget it (except for responding to comments). 

Social media communication is just that, social. It is no different than being at a party and having a conversation with someone about what they do for a living. Or having a customer call your office asking questions about your products and services. Social media is just another avenue for having a conversation and communicating with potential customers about how you can best serve them!

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