What you need to know about social media

In a world where technology is available for everyone, social media have become the main communication tools and platforms where communities of millions can grow. They have given people from various parts of the world an opportunity to meet, and companies know that. Social media are great advertisement tools, but not everyone knows how to handle them.  This is why we would like to tell you what you need to know about social media:

1. The nature of social media is active communication, so when you run your social media account, you have to be active, publish posts on a regular basis and respond to any messages, comments and replies to your posts, or anyone who just says ‘hi’.
2. Social media may bring you spectacular effects, but only as part of a long-term strategy. It takes time to create an account, group or fan page that looks professional. In order to succeed, you also need to be consistent in your actions and analyse the effectiveness of your decisions.
3. The times of stock photos and artificial branding are coming to an end. Your audience does not want perfect pictures but something they could identify with. The solution is storytelling, that is a real story. Publishing regular pictures taken with a phone, accompanied by a description of the actual event, is what captures the client’s attention.
4. No one logs into their Facebook account with the intention of buying anything, because social media are not about sales. Social media are not a shop but rather a form of an advertising board, and they are used for building relationships with clients, creating a specific image and for entertaining the users.
5. When you run a popular fan page, you must be ready for a flood of messages. Many of them are pieces of information, suggestions, questions, offers and spam that is not related to our activities. However, you should check your message box on a regular basis to avoid missing out on important correspondence.
6. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of hate, spam, trolling and black PR on social media. Unsatisfied clients and competitors may spam our posts with unfavourable comments. Also, companies specialising in word-of-mouth marketing are sometimes requested to overflow specific accounts with hate to undermine their reputation online.
7. It takes time, hard work and commitment to handle social media, and not everyone is cut out for it. In such a case, you should consider using the services of a social media ninja, a person who is an expert in running social media channels. A social media ninja knows how to adapt the channel’s branding to the company’s image and how to create a fan page that will capture clients’ attention.