I’m excited to see so many individuals and businesses joining the social media fast lane of online interacting. But like anything new and different, there are some common courtesies and guidelines to keep in mind. Here are some pointers to help you keep a professional presence while venturing onto new paths of exploration. Hope you find them useful.
* Keep your business pages professional. Don’t tout political or religions views. Save your personal opinions for profiles that you only share with friends and family.
*Don’t be a numbers person. Don’t get all wrapped up in seeing how many “FB Friends” or Twitter “followers” you can rack up. Go for quality vs. quantity. It’s much better for your business to have 50 loyal, active followers who interact with you regularly, than a 1,000 fake friends.
*Don’t ever, ever share an article or blog that you haven’t read all the way through. Make sure that what you are posting agrees with your beliefs and business brand.
*Be courteous. Take the time to thank people for “following” you, “friending” you or re-posting one of you posts. They’ve taken time out of their day for you – show them you appreciate it.
*If you don’t blog: do research for articles that you can share with your clients. Give them something useful, or inspiring. And don’t forget to make them just plain laugh once in a while. Although people always respond and thank me for articles and blogs I’ve shared with them – the post about a personal event in my day will always get three times the amount of response as one just giving information. People do WANT to feel an emotional connection to you.
*Nothing turns off a potential client more than a non-active website or Facebook page. Make sure your profile information is complete and the bio (About) page gives them a comprehensive look at who you are and why you can be of service to them. Keep current with events and share new information in your field on a regular basis.
Check back soon for additional tips. And as always, if you find this all just too over-whelming, seek out the help of a Social Media Manager – we can take the stress away and give you the support you need- freeing you up to do what you do best, running your business or writing.
Great article… sounds like it should be a “given” but surprisingly in this day and age, it is NOT.
You are so correct. You would think that this is just common sense, but I’m amazed at the number of people who make the mistakes I’ve listed. And to their credit, some of them are just following direction from marketing people who don’t understand how social media differs from the older marketing platforms.
Pretty sage advice!
Thanks Shawn. I appreciate you taking the time to read it!