What Works:
- Pause before you post.
Write your post, wait 15 minutes and reread it before you post. You’ll avoid some terrible mistakes doing this – the kind that makes the news for all the wrong reasons.
- Just be you.
Let your readers see you for who you are. Most people follow others more for how they’re saying things than what they’re saying. Share your unique insight and strike a conversational tone that engages readers.
- Set realistic expectations.
Realize that social media alone won’t (usually) make you wealthy. Yes, it can help to build your brand reputation, generate awareness and increase the visibility of your website and products. But you’ve also got to work on your website content, the quality of your products and services, working with partners and affiliates and so forth. Don’t get lost in social media; it’s only one piece of the puzzle.
- Write for your readers.
Focus your content on what will help your audience and write it in a way that they will consume it, use it and share it.
What doesn’t work:
- Engaging with haters, trolls, and other negative influences online.
Battling them is—and always will be—a lost cause. Just don’t. Always take the high road. Always.
- Being on every social platform.
Figure out which one, two or three channels deliver the best results for your business and focus exclusively on those.
- Posting without proofkreading.
Yes, that was intentional to make a point. Proofread everything at least twice. You will still make a few errors now and then, but not so many that people question your intelligence or the quality of your products and services.
- You are ignoring your followers’ questions, comments, and messages.
Ignoring your audience is the fast track to creating hard feelings, lost opportunities and damaging your brand. Do you want your customers to think you’re “Too good or high and mighty” to answer them? No way.
- Using AI as a substitute for human interaction.
Yes, you can schedule posts and use automation to save time, but it’s not a replacement for person-to-person communication on social media. Your followers expect to develop a relationship with you, which can only be done by you genuinely engaged with them.
