We all have that friend who sends us non-stop game invites on Facebook, the friend who constantly rants on Twitter about everything and anything, and the one whose baby’s pictures flood our Instagram feed on a daily basis.
We may love our friends, but if their behavior on social media is annoying, the “block” and “unfollow” buttons are only a few clicks away.
It’s no different when it comes to businesses on social media. A company may be great at gaining followers, but keeping them around is a whole different ball game.
As a business owner trying to grow your brand, you sometimes walk a thin line between getting the word out about your company and over-saturating and annoying your customers with content. And the damage caused isn’t limited to seeing your numbers decrease on your social channels. Instead, certain types of behavior – innocuous as they may seem to you – can ruin your reputation as a respectable business and may push away existing and potential customers.
The problem: These things aren’t always so apparent. You may think your behavior falls under the best practices umbrella, but it may end up hurting you instead.
Here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you’re not annoying your customers into unfollowing you on social media.
Avoid overly promotional content
While social media is a great way to get the word out about your business, your content shouldn’t all be promotional. Your customers will notice if everything you put out is a push to sell your product or service – and that’s not the kind of thing you want them to notice about you.
Sprinkle something useful, entertaining or interesting in with the promotional stuff — as long as it’s relevant in some way to your company or to your customer.
And when you do craft a message to sell, don’t be aggressive. Be helpful, let the customer know why your service or product is beneficial to them rather than instructing them to make a purchase.
A helpful way to understand more about this is to learn about the push vs. pull marketing technique.
Limit your posts
While you want to have a good mix of content that you’re putting out, it’s important to limit the total amount of content you’re publishing.
You want to be relevant and stay top of mind, but you don’t want to take over your customers’ feeds. How many posts you put out will vary based on the type of work you do, but a good rule of thumb is between 1-3 per day.
Don’t be slimy
Tactics like posting click-bait material, using direct-messaging features to make a sales pitch as soon as someone follows you, and ignoring your followers’ comments and messages are not only annoying, but they also prevent your potential customers from gaining any trust in you. And if you don’t have trust, you don’t have a customer.
Social media is one of the most powerful tools you can have in building relationships with your customers. In the right hands, this can have a wonderful effect on your marketing; used incorrectly, it can spell disaster. Use the tips above to help you prevent the latter from happening.
If you have any questions that you would like us to answer, email us at tips@216.171.160.67/~devkatiewagnerso/ or follow us on Facebook.
