Don’t Go Overboard When Promoting On Social Media
How do you find the line between being pushy or overly promotional on social media and sending out the right amount of information to influence your audience?
Using social media successfully involves having a strong understanding of your audience and also being able to recognise that social media shouldn’t primarily be used as a direct sales tool.
While you can and should share your experiences and the value of your products and services, balance your sales talk by promoting and helping others. This will make your followers much more receptive to your promotional posts.
With this in mind, here are some tips for promoting your brand in a genuine and customer-focused way.
Content curation
One way to raise awareness about your brand without self-promoting is to link to useful content. You can also create content on your website that can be shared, such as an article or interesting advice you think that can be of value to your audience.
Your audience always come first
Always think about the interests of your followers. For each self-promotional post, put up two or three non-promotional posts which are relevant to your business and audience. Try starting a conversation instead of obvious posts that ask the audience to “please like and share” – it’s a sure way to turn people off.
Story telling
By posting information about success stories of how you have helped your clients or how they have benefited from what you have to offer can promote your business indirectly. Success stories make an interesting read and at the same time demonstrate the value you offer. This is where you can be proactive by seeking out your customers and asking them for feedback and testimonials.
PR and media coverage
If you are promoting your business through PR, posting media coverage is another great indirect promotion strategy. For example, “our General Manager Tim recently spoke to The Daily Telegraph about HSC student options for study” and include the link to the article. This way you are providing people with an interesting read, which is also relevant to your business.
News and current affairs
When you share your news, make sure you consider if your potential customers will be interested in reading it and what value they can extract from it – forget about what you need to say and focus on your audience.
To ensure your content is informative and interesting as well as promotional, set clear goals and track every post to see that you have the right mix