Welcome back to Social Media Friday, where we focus on social media tips for small, diverse businesses. Once you have determined which social media tools you want to use, deciding what to post can be a daunting task. Here are the top tips for writing content for blogs, Twitter and Facebook.
In General
Before discussing specific social media sites, there are some general best practices that will help you release social media content that is likely to attract readers.
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The most important tip for using any social media outlet is to treat it as a two-way dialog, not just a platform to spew advertisements. Businesses need to use good writing to combine promotions with multi-media, conversational topics, polls and other engaging forms of content that will make new clients want to subscribe to your page.
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Be yourself, regardless of the social media vehicles you choose to use. Let your personality, humor, style and wit shine through and allow people to get to know you and what makes your business special.
- Listen and react to what others are saying about your industry or business. Social Mention lets you create e-mail alerts whenever your search terms are used on social media sites. Google Alerts is a similar tool that scours the web for new listings. Perform searches within Twitter to see what others are saying about keywords in real-time.
- Though many social media services let you automatically post content from one social media network to another (i.e., Twitter to Facebook), it’s considered poor form for businesses to do so. Use the advantages of each social network to create unique content for every site.
Blog Posts
A businesses blog is one of the easiest social media methods to implement, and it often yields the best results. When writing for a blog, consider the following:
- Write for the reader, not yourself.
- Write as if you were having a conversation with the reader.
- Be sure to relate your topic to the reader’s needs.
- Variety is the spice of life, mix up the type of posts, and the length, to keep readers interested.
- Talk about the people and the communities you serve, your employees, regular customers, and other people who
- Show what you know. Build credibility by taking data and expert opinions and facts to create content that offers real value to the community.
- Coming up with regular original content can be a challenge. Here are a five great tips for what to do when you run out of ideas for a blog post.
With 500 million monthly active users, chances are, your target audience is on Facebook. When users “Like” your page, your updates are sent directly to their news feed. Make newcomers want to “Like” your page by doing the following:
- Use Facebook to open up dialogs with your followers and provide brief updates. Ask questions to get others involved.
- You can use Facebook to add links to your blog posts, but don’t add one for every post. Focus on the important ones.
- When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link.
- Did you attend a conference or event? Be sure to post photos on Facebook, it makes a great conversation starter.
Some have criticized that Twitter is a limiting service for people who want to report what they had for breakfast. It’s also a powerful way to connect with others through short messages. The 140 character limit doesn’t give you a whole lot of room, but its enough to give a thought and a link (make sure you use a URL shortenerto mazimize your space).
- Twitter is a great way to tell the world about promotions, growth, accomplishments, press releases, events and presentations.
- Create a back-and-forth dialog with someone new. Say congratulations to a newly certified business in your region or respond to others when they ask who is attending a conference.
- Use hashtags to contribute to conversations about specific topics or events.
- Use the Re-Tweet function to share intersting and relevant Tweets from other users with your followers.
- Keep your Tweets simple and focused on a single thought or idea.
These ideas should be more than enough to get you started in the world of social media.
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[...] that we’ve discussed how to build connections and what to post in the Social Media Friday series of posts here at the MBEConnect Blog, let’s look at the [...]