Making a great first impression means everything on social media. Chances are, if you get a customer on your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn page and they leave without “liking” or “following” you, they won’t return.
To make sure you don’t blow your one chance to make a lifelong fan — and to improve the effectiveness of each and every tweet, Facebook and LinkedIn post you make — we’ve compiled a list of the top 10 things every company should do on social media:
1. Listen before you post
Before developing a social media content strategy, follow industry keywords or your own company name to see what kinds of conversations your target audience is having on social media. Apps like SocialMention.com are great for doing this.
Research like this will help you formulate content ideas that will be relevant to your customers — because you can’t just post promotional messages on a “social” site and expect to gain a following.
Why is building a following so important? Because unless you pay for your posts to appear as ads, they won’t show up in users’ social news feeds if they aren’t already fans or followers of yours.
In other words, your social reach depends entirely upon building a following around relevant, engaging content.
2. Use a professional-photo or logo
Your profile image is the tone-setter for your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. So it needs to look polished and professional.
The two best sources for a profile image:
- hiring a professional photographer to take a photo of your business or product, or
- using your company logo.
The idea is to present the same kind of image you’d present at a sales meeting — so no goofy photos of office pranks or company parties.
Also, you’ll want to use an image that doesn’t contain a lot of small features that would be hard to make out when it appears dime-sized in fans’ feeds. Professional photographers will keep this in mind.
3. Keep your profile photo consistent
While it’s okay to switch up your Facebook cover photo or background photos on Twitter and LinkedIn, you want to keep your company’s profile image consistent.
If you’re going to change it up, do it rarely.
The reason: It acts as the one visual identifier for your company that will appear in your fans’ social feeds. And if you keep it consistent, fans will know at a glance when you’re making a comment. But switch it up and fans won’t recognize you, and will be less likely to listen to what you’re saying.
4. Include a photo
Have you ever seen a text-only Facebook page? If so, you probably never went back to it. They look dull — and there’s a reason why: Facebook was built to showcase visual content.
No matter what you’re posting, try to include an image of some sort — even if it’s an infographic or a basic bar chart.
According to Facebook itself, posts with images generate 120% more engagement than text-only posts.
Photos should even be used on Twitter. After all, apps like Twitpic don’t have a million registered users for no reason.
People want to see and post photos on social media … period.
5. Put a communication professional in charge
Don’t put your social accounts in the hands of recent college grads or interns simply because they understand the ins and outs of the Facebook- and Twitter-sphere.
You want to put your sites in the hands of someone who’s an expert in business communications. Who would you put in charge of writing a press release or standing in front of the media during an emergency?
That’s the person you want to give the social reins to. They’ll have a better understanding of your audience, marketing objectives and the consequences of questionable posts/tweets.
6. Follow the right people
The number of people you have following you isn’t nearly as important as the quality of the conversation they bring to the table.
That being said, don’t be afraid to “unfollow” or block people from posting on your page who are constantly sharing junk or looking to start a fight.
But at the same time, you don’t want to block someone just because they complained about your product or service. In fact, if you react quickly to complaints and resolve them on your page, it can improve your image.
You just want to distance yourself from those who are complaining for the sake of complaining.
7. Commit to conversing
Social media is supposed to be exactly that … social. Customers will follow your company if they feel like they’re going to be part of the conversation.
But that also means there must be a conversation. Social media can’t be a one-way street in which you’re just promoting your products and services.
Talk to your customers. Ask them questions. Start a debate. And for crying out loud, don’t disappear from the discussion for days.
8. Establish a rhythm
Building on that last point, you want to be sure your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages don’t have long stretches of inactivity.
That doesn’t mean you have to post every day, but you should establish a steady rhythm to how often you communicate to fans.
9. Create incentives
You don’t want to have to pay someone for being one of your Facebook of Twitter fans via discounts and free swag. But you do want to create some sort of incentive for coming back to you social pages.
Those incentives can be sneak peeks at new products, insider info, how-to articles, fast responses to questions, fun contests, product reviews or case studies — anything that gives people a reason to want to return.
10. Integrate with your website
Let customers know you have a social presence using your website, blog and landing pages.
We’re not just talking about adding “Like,” “Share” and “Tweet” buttons. Those are certainly great for spreading the reach of your online content — and you should have them — but they don’t do much for increasing the effectiveness of your social media posts.
What will, however, is making sure your online sites, have big, bold buttons linking back to your social media pages, complete with calls-to-action like: “See what our customers are saying about us on Facebook” or “Got a question, get a same-day response from our Twitter team.”
Those buttons and calls-to-action will pull visitors to your pages, and increase the amount of people viewing your social posts.
Info: If you found this article helpful, you may also be interested in “7 things customers don’t ‘Like’ about your Facebook page.“
