Social media is an excellent way to create brand awareness. Millions of people already connect via social media every day, so with the right social media presence and the right profile, you can promote your brand and your business to everyone.
However, the wrong approach to social media can also have a negative impact on your brand and your company’s reputation. A professional online profile has to be positive, interesting and engaging.
A branding consultant can help you to establish where your social media activity is letting you down and recommend a more positive approach. In most cases businesses are making the same common mistakes, which are very easy to rectify.
Don’t Spam Your brand
The word ‘spam’ conjures up the image of a large number of messages sent out every day, and in some cases this is exactly what some businesses do. Your customers and potential customers don’t want to see the same thing repeated every hour on the hour, all day every day. Sometimes less is more and on social media, one well-worded message a day can be far more beneficial to your brand.
When creating a message, don’t just provide information, facts and figures about your brand and constantly tell everyone how great it is. Customers don’t want to just hear about your brand. The aim of social media is to interact with your customers so they need to hear about your company as a whole, the industry and news items which may affect you.
Don’t Repeat the Same Content
Creating the right content is a very common failure on social media as most companies aren’t sure what to say or how to say it. Posting messages is one thing: encouraging interaction is slightly harder.
Mentioning your offers is a good way to start, but try to keep this to a minimum. Make people aware that there is more to your company than just your brand. There are many ways you can engage with your customers on social media. A branding consultant will be able to provide you with tried and tested ideas for creating the best content for your own individual brand. These can include:
- Posting information about your industry. If there are changes in regulations which affect your business, post these so that people will know why you may have had to make some changes and invite everyone to discuss these changes.
- If a competitor has been recommended for an award or has been in the news, post a link to this. People will realise that you’re not just interested in you and your company, but that you’re keeping abreast of what’s going on in your industry as a whole.
- If someone has asked an interesting question about your brand or if you have future plans for it, post the question with your reply and ask others for their input.
- Ask for ideas. Everyone likes to be included in polls so if you’re looking for suggestions to help develop your brand, start a poll and discussion.
- Add links to your posts. For example, if a staff member is doing something for charity, include that on your page with information about the charity and how people can support them.
You also need to be careful about what you post, particularly if you are a smaller business. Political rants, swearing and inappropriate photographs are not going to encourage anyone to use your company. Keep your tone even and professional at all times and sometimes it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself.
Don’t Ignore Complaints
One of the negative aspects of social media is that anyone who has had a bad experience with your brand can post it and get it seen around the world. How you publicly handle complaints can go a long way towards giving your brand a good, or bad, reputation. Some businesses forget that these comments are not only public but are also permanent, so be careful how you reply.
If someone posts negative comments about you or your brand, the worst thing you can do is ignore it. If you don’t respond, everyone will think that what that person has said is true. If you respond with anger, that won’t create a professional opinion of your company and will simply give the impression that you don’t care about your customers. Instead, politely apologise that they had such a bad experience and invite them to discuss this with you in a private message. If you are seen to be proactive about complaints, customers will feel more confident in dealing with you as they can see that you respect them and their opinions.
Never Be Too Busy to Engage
If you don’t interact with your own social media pages, you can’t expect anyone else to. If you invite others to participate in a discussion, make sure that you take part in it as well. Doing this also means you can control the discussion so that it stays on topic and that participants stay polite.
If someone posts on your page, or you receive a notification that someone has mentioned or recommended your brand, always acknowledge them, even if it’s just with a simple ‘thank you’. Ignoring anyone who is trying to interact with your brand doesn’t show much respect for the other person. The same goes for any private message you receive. Just because others can’t see them, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t respond.
If you ignore comments, the assumption will be that you don’t care about your brand, so why should anyone else?
With the help of a branding consultant, you can find out how to use social media to your best advantage and create a professional, positive and responsive reputation. You can also find out about all the pitfalls and things to avoid which can negatively affect your online presence.
It doesn’t take long to keep on top of your social media pages and if you schedule in time every day it will soon become a habit and you should start to see positive results.
Leila Dorari is an entrepreneur, freelance writer and business-improvement enthusiast from Sydney. Currently, she is consulting companies on various effects different marketing solutions can have on their business. In her spare time you can usually find her window shopping.
