Social Media Corner: Golden Rules of Social Media Marketing

While it is vital that you learn all of the social marketing fundamentals, it is still important to adhere to some important rules that will help you build a foundation and enhance your marketing efforts. One of the biggest rules that experts tend to focus on is listening and reciprocating. Success with social media and content marketing requires less talking and more listening to your target audiences online content. Join discussions, share your information and offer a contribution to others. Remember to keep the lines of communication open both ways and mix up your messaging by using a mixture of offers and entertaining content.  You should expect others to share your content as you share theirs so a portion of your time should focus on sharing and talking about others content. If you cannot bring anything of value to the community, no one will listen, so make sure your comments, suggestions and posts are relevant to the content.

Another “law” that is helpful to abide by is the act of staying patient. Social media and marketing successes do not happen overnight. By building your network gradually, you are staying consistent and not coming across as a spammer. Social media involves a lot of energy, time and creativity so be ready to stay clear and focused on what your objectives are and your marketing efforts will yield positive results.

One last important rule of social media marketing is knowing that it’s not about having a lot of activity on your outlets, but being productive as well. In this case, quality is better than quantity and you should keep it simple. Offer friendly pieces of information instead of having long, non-focused conversations. It’s great to have a large amount of fans and followers, but if there is no value in your content and conversation, it will get you nowhere. Be productive and not noisy, social media is about building relationships and engaging your online influences.

Leveraging the power of social media marketing can help build your target audience and customer base in an extreme way, but getting started without any help or hindsight can be challenging. Social media is a powerful marketing tool so take the time to learn some basic rules before starting your adventure!