business website

We work with a lot of new small businesses, start ups who want to get involved in social media to help promote their business. This is a great idea, but I have a few social media rules that you should follow.

Sumy Designs Social Media Rule #1:

Don’t set up any social media account that you don’t plan to use. Creating a Twitter account and then never tweeting will not get you business. Creating a Pinterest page with no pins will not help your business. Having Facebook with no information about your business will not bring you any additional customers. You must give people a reason to follow you on social media. Otherwise, there’s no point.

It’s better not to have it than to have it not use it.Facebook

Sumy Designs Social Media Rule #2: 

You don’t need to be on all social media. You only need to be on social media where your customers are. If your customers are on Twitter, but you’re pinning things on Pinterest, it’s not very useful to you. This brings a point to mind: you need to know where your customers are, which may require research on your target audience. You don’t need to sign up for every single type of social media just because it exists. Find out what your customers use, and go there.

Sumy Designs Social Media Rule #3:

Don’t post the same things on every profile. It’s easy to set up a social media account manager and come up with status updates and then shoot it out onto every platform. But that’s not the best option. Twitter and Facebook are not the same, and they shouldn’t have the same stuff. Facebook fan pages are more for posting statuses, news, coupons, events, and information you want your clients to know. It’s more of a presentation of your information. Whereas Twitter is a conversation. You put something out there so that someone else can respond and you can respond back. It’s not the same type of engagement, so you should use it differently.

Sumy Designs Social Media Rule #4:

Engage. Don’t just create a Twitter account and post stuff. Follow people. Retweet interesting tweets. Like tweets. Respond to other people’s comments. Look for ways to engage them. On Facebook, if someone sends you a message, reply. If someone comments on a post, reply. Like other businesses from your Facebook page. Don’t be a one-sided business on social media.

An example of doing social media well:

This past October I ran the Chicago Marathon. After the marathon, we got to the parking garage and our SUV had a flat tire. We were a group of four women and we were exhausted. We had no idea how to change a tire, if there was a spare, or what to do. I posted on Twitter that we were stuck in a parking garage with a flat after running a marathon and a big tire store saw it and responded with this: “Hey Amy, bring it to us and we’ll fix it for free.” They even included a coupon with it.

That was an excellent use of social media. They were watching what people were posting, searching for relevant tweets, saw ours, and responded. I will always think better of this company because they responded to us with help. Of course, at the time, getting the car to their business was not really possible, so we never used the coupon. But I will always remember that they offered us help in our time of need.

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Amy Masson, Web Developer
Owner/Developer

Amy Masson

Amy is the co-owner, developer, and website strategist for Sumy Designs. She's been making websites with WordPress since 2006 and is passionate about making sure websites are as functional as they are beautiful.

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