Do's
1. Speak to your audience
Let them know there are real people behind the business. People love businesses where they feel heard and understood. People like talking to real people, because of the connection. Make sure you are actively engaging your audience and not leaving everything up to your chatbots. Reply to comments, post further on topics that your audience is talking about, join the conversations. Let them know you are there. If you give them a place where they are attended to, they will want to stay and come back.
2. Boost important Strategic Posts
Boosting is a paid Facebook feature that allows you to improve your page and post viewership. So, does that mean you should boost everything? The answer is no. Boosting is a tool, you need to use it strategically, or else you could be doing more damage than improving your marketing efforts.
Think of it this way, if your posts aren’t getting feedback saying it’s valuable then I would think twice about spending money on it, thinking more people just need to see it. In the case of physical products, the more people see a defective product the more the providing company loses the trust people have for their brand.
On the other hand, if you know that post (content) is valuable and is generating feedback or is converting (getting clicks and redirecting) enough traffic for your FB page and to your website. Then this is a good post or ad to boost viewership. Remember an easy way to find out which post(s) are best to boost, simply to choose the ones with the most engagement.
3. Put A friendly Tone on Every Post
The tone in which you write your posts plays a big role towards people connection towards your brand. In general, people love being around kind and friendly people. You can position your business as friendly company through your posts. Write your posts in a way like you are talking to someone one on one. It makes it more personal, but it doesn’t stop with just typing out your post article.
Answering questions politely and showing understanding to your audience or community can significantly improve your public image. The more consistent you are in this area, the better things will be especially if your community starts to participate with others. Then you are building your brand culture.
4. Post Often
We know for small business teams producing content every day can be hard work, daunting and overwhelming. But it’s important to post often to keep your business relevant or alive to your viewers. It also helps Facebook and keeps your business visible to organic traffic. So, should you post as much as possible? Absolutely not, posting too much can also be bad. We recommend business to post around 4-5 times or no more than 10 posts a week. Once you start posting it is important to keep doing so consistently. A good way to manage your posts is to come up with lots of topic ideas, create them, and put them on a post calendar. This way you can be more consistent. You can also schedule posts so that your posts go out when you want them to spread across and not all at once.
Don'ts
1. Do not argue with customers publicly
If there are concerns it is best to reply professionally and then lead them to a private chat so you can assist them with their concerns.
Arguing with customers publicly on your wall or via comments on posts etc. can bring unwanted attention that can put your business in a bad light. If you have an angry customer it’s best to talk and learn what actually happened because it could be a business mistake that you need to fix. It is best to acknowledge it and apologize to that person fully. Offer incentives on his/her next purchase. You need to show your customers that you care and that you are willing to improve your services.
Often times, handling client concerns professionally can turn the bad experience into a good one. While people may have high expectations, most people are understanding so if you show that you can own up to your mistakes, it can give a good impression.
Information travels fast online, and people can easily screenshot or record things. And if you make mistakes, people can make it so that your mistakes spread. It can be very damaging. So always be careful and look out for such instances.
Now if your customer is clearly in the wrong, if you take a calm and respectful tone, most people will be okay to talk and come to a compromise. For the rare few that just want to be angry and won’t accept they are the ones in the wrong I would still suggest you take the bigger role of the one understanding. 1. You wouldn’t want that kind of customer anyways, so if you have to refund them go ahead and do so. 2. Losing on one refunded product or service is a lot better than escalating an issue and your angry customer turning into a torrent of bad publicity. Of course, it’s a case-to-case basis but you get the point, it just isn’t worth it. Your business and serving your target market is what’s more important.
2. Ignoring Comments
People don’t like being ignored. So please avoid this as much as possible. Ignoring comments can be a missed opportunity to have engagement with your audience. Answer comments to your posts in a friendly tone. It will give your business page a good image. As you grow bigger this will become more and more difficult to do as you will have lots of posts with possible lots of interaction if you are doing things correctly. To keep up you can hire out people to manage your social media accounts. But ensure that the people you hire or outsource to are trained to maintain your company’s tone and image.
3. Posting Inconsistently
When you gain social media following, it is best to keep when you post your posts consistent. This is so that your followers won’t be confused on when they can expect updates from you. Those who follow you are also busy people, but they want to keep up with you and to do so a lot of people schedule it in or at least keep an eye out for the next post.
If you have really good content, people will want more. Think about it this way, ever experienced a TV episode you love get postpone for some reason? The feeling isn’t good. You have to wait for another week to see if it gets aired. It’s similar to your post. Especially in the beginning when you are just starting to get a following. If you post on different days and don’t have a schedule people may feel that your business isn’t reliable. And if you’re a small start-up this could be a big deal.
It’s a lot of work, but this is really an important part of running businesses online today
4. Don’t post or repost other people’s content without their consent
This is a big NO! Posting other people’s content without their consent is wrong and unethical. Yet there are a lot of businesses that do it because they think they can get away with it. And truthfully there are businesses that do get away stealing other people’s work. This is because while it’s been around the internet is still quite young and laws and rules are still being made.
The more people and businesses do unethical things, the stricter the rules and platforms will become. In short, it may get you some gains upfront but it’s damaging to you in the long run. And not just to you but to all businesses in the online space. And as things evolve, it will become easier for legal owners to come after you with legal action.
Imagine losing everything you worked hard on to build up disappear because of a stupid practice. So, don’t risk it and do things properly. Get peoples’ consent and credit them when they do allow you to use their content. Learn to create good content yourself as it will go a long way.
Read our blog about common mistakes make and why Inconsistency can ruin your business
