Nine Rules of Social Media Marketing

Nine Rules of Social Media Marketing

If increasing your audience and customer base is important to you and your business the understanding the power of content and social media marketing is important. It’s imperative to understand the social media marketing fundamentals. Taking from these nine rules of social media marketing will help you build a foundation that will serve your customers and your business.

1. Listening is Rule Number One

To be successful with social media marketing it requires that you do a lot of listening to your customer base. Read your target audience’s online content and join the discussions to learn what is important to them. By doing this you can create content that will spark conversation and add real value.

2. Focus is Key

When it comes to integrating social media and content marketing into your overall digital marketing strategy, working to build a strong brand through a well-focused strategy will give you a much more chance for success than spreading your attempts to broad.

3. Quality vs. Quantity

The old adage is still true in the social media age. Quality is better than quantity. It is more beneficial to have 1,000 connections who read, share and talk about your content than to have 10,000 connections who vanish after connecting with you once.

4. Patience

While it is possible to have success quickly, it is more likely that you will need to be diligent to achieve success with your social media marketing.

5. The Rule of Compounding

If you put up real quality content and work to build your online audience, you will have them share that content with the own audiences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even on their own blogs. One of the most effective ways to grow your audience quickly is to make sure your website design includes an integrated blog that can be shared widely. Using WordPress as the foundation of your website is ideal for this purpose since it has a robust blogging platform built in. It is also one of most widely used website development platforms in the world, and Google loves WordPress website.  So the sharing of your blog posts and online content directly from your website opens a world of new possibilities for search engines like Google to find that content and you through keyword searches. Those entry points could grow into thousands of potential ways other people find you online.

6. Influence Across Platforms

When it comes to the social media marketing, rule number six is probably one of the most important.  It’s also surprisingly easy, and one of the most enjoyable.

Spend time finding the online influencers in your market who have quality audiences and are likely to be interested in your products, services and business. Don’t limit yourself to thinking only about Facebook.  Look elsewhere.  Google Plus is an excellent starting point.  Make sure you have a verified Google Business Page and connect with influencers in your topic areas in Google Plus circles. Connect with those people and work to build relationships with them.

7. The Rule Called Value

If you spend all your time on the social web strictly and narrowly promoting your products and services, people will stop listening. You must add value to the conversation. Focus less on conversation and create content that educates and develops relationships with your target audience as well as other online influences. If people feel they get something out of your content then they will be more willing to share that information and continue to spread that knowledge (and your name).

8. Be Consistent

It is impossible to overstate the importance of posting regularly and being available and active in comments and discussions. Engagement and participation is key. Be available, be connected, be engaged, and above all be interesting and thoughtful.  At the end of the day, building relationships online is a lot like building relationships face to face.

9. Turnabout is Fair Play

It’s really all about networking and relationship building.  Share other people’s content and comment on it, and they will do the same for you and your meaningful, original content. Remember, social media is first and foremost “social.” It’s all about sharing.

Paul Albee is the digital marketing director of ATS Design Group in Syracuse, New York. Paul and his team specialize in all aspects of online digital marketing including website design, SEO search engine optimization, social media marketing as well as print and advertising design.