Social media can be a powerful tool for building engagement—if managed correctly. Some best practices for your social media strategy include fostering audience interaction, avoiding overposting, and never engaging with trolls. Learn how to craft an intentional, well-maintained social presence that drives meaningful connections and brand loyalty. Whether you’re just starting out or refining your strategy, these insights will help you navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Social media marketing can be a tricky needle to thread, and when companies do a poor job threading it, the results are out there immediately for the rest of the world to see – a bell that really can’t ever be un-rung.
However, companies that manage their social accounts effectively see huge benefits that greatly outweigh the risks. No other marketing tool in the history of marketing has ever been more effective at building a sense of engagement with a brand. Before the advent of social media, the thought of a casual weekend golfer getting an endorsement from a golf equipment manufacturer would have been a joke or the plot for a bad comedy movie.
Today, though, the engagement between brands and their audiences is so intense that everyday users can become influencers with more brand value than big-name celebrities through careful use of social media. That’s all down to social media’s ability to drive engagement and create a space where brands communicate 1:1 with their target audiences.
In this article, we’ll examine a few rules for managing your business’s social media profiles.
DON’T Ignore the Conversation – DO Ignore the Trolls
Social media is, first and foremost, an engagement tool–so use it to engage! Your potential customers want to have a conversation with you, and the place they’re likely to start that conversation is on your social media.
One of the absolute worst things a business owner can do is ignore an audience that’s trying to build itself around their business. People want to do business with a company that cares about them, and when you’re not paying attention to how people interact with your brand on social media, you’re actively creating an atmosphere that tells potential customers that you don’t care about them.
What does that mean? It means replying to comments on your posts, following up on reviews left on your social media pages, and answering questions that your audience asks. It means listening to your audience and taking their concerns seriously. And it means making a little extra effort each day to ensure that followers and visitors see you as engaged.
What doesn’t it mean? Getting into online shouting matches. A big part of managing your social media involves not engaging with trolls – misguided individuals who think it’s fun to start conflict online. These are the folks who will make inflammatory, untrue, or even unhinged comments on your posts. They’re not interested in buying anything; they want to stir up trouble.
When a troll starts haunting the waters under your business’s bridge, the key rule is to starve them out. Trolls thrive on reactions and love nothing more than to watch a business owner come completely unspooled trying to win an unwinnable argument. Like all pests, if you deprive them of their source of nutrition, they will find another spot to feed.
And you can fight back against trolls, depending on the severity of their trollishness. Social media platforms all provide recourse for businesses that are the victims of trolling activity. If a particular comment is inflammatory, discriminatory, threatening, or obviously irrelevant to your business (for example, someone commenting, “These shoes made my feet hurt!” on a pizza place’s Facebook post is clearly irrelevant), you can usually have the offending post taken down.
DON’T Set Up Unused Profiles – DO Grow Your Social Presence Intentionally
There are hundreds of social media platforms out there, and conventional wisdom might tell you that the best results come when you have accounts on every single one of them. In this case, conventional wisdom is just wrong.
Imagine two businesses. One has a dozen social media profiles:
- A Facebook page that hasn’t seen a new post in more than six months
- An Instagram page that’s full of poorly composed and badly lit photos of the company’s products
- A TikTok channel that only has a couple of old TV commercials posted to it
- And several more accounts on other profiles, some of which have never even been posted to before.
The other has two profiles:
- A regularly updated Facebook presence that includes consumer education videos, promotional ads for sales and special offers, contests and giveaways, and humorous “behind the scenes” videos from the company’s staff.
- An Instagram page featuring reels promoting new products, photography that explodes off the page with action and dynamism, and collaborations with other experts in the company’s field of expertise.
Which one is more successful? If you’re just starting out with social media for your business, starting large is almost a guaranteed recipe for failure. Instead, identify one or two profiles that your research suggests will be most promising, and do a great job working on those two profiles. Don’t set up a bunch of empty accounts that will just make it look like you don’t care about your social presence.
DON’T Overpost – DO Post Regularly
How often should you post? Depending on who you ask, you may hear that you need to make a post a day. Others will say a post or several posts a day. Many will say one post a week. The truth is, there’s no magic number. The main thing to remember is not to post too often or too infrequently.
Posting too often comes across as one or more of three unpleasant things:
- Businesses that overpost come across as needy and desperate.
- Businesses that overpost run out of content ideas quickly and end up becoming boring or repetitive.
- Most of all, businesses that overpost send a message that they’re inconsiderate of their audience’s time.
If you post frequently—more than once a day—and start seeing your reach and engagement numbers decline, you may be overposting. Social media platforms are not fond of overposters and will tend to show your content to fewer users.
On the other hand, not posting often enough reads to your audience as being disengaged, disinterested in having a conversation with your audience, or just lazy. If you’re not making at least one post a month on a given social channel, you should either step up your posting frequency or take down the profile and put your energies into a channel that requires less day-to-day management.
Generally, anywhere between a few posts a week and a few posts a month is a good rule of thumb. That strikes a balance between being seen often enough to stay front-of-mind without being seen so frequently that your brand becomes a symbol of annoyance for your users.
DON’T Talk TO Your Audience – DO Talk WITH Your Audience
Remember, social media is a channel for engagement first and sales second. Your efforts in this space should encourage an open, inviting atmosphere in which your audience is comfortable connecting with you and sharing their experiences.
Loading your profile up with a lot of top-down, sales-y language positions your company’s social profiles as just another channel for you to broadcast the same messaging as your other channels. In digital ads, on your website, and in most of your other marketing channels, you own and control the message – you’re talking TO your audience.
In the social media realm, that’s not a recipe for success. In social channels, people expect interactivity. Rather than talking TO them, you should be talking WITH them. Ask questions. Do polls. Invite customers to submit photos of themselves using your products. Have giveaways encouraging people to comment on your posts. Do whatever it takes to begin establishing conversations – when people see a company actively engaging with their audience, they see a business that’s open, transparent, and – above all – approachable.
Ready to Take Your Audience Engagement to the Next Level? Give M&R Marketing a Call and Get Started Today: 478-621-4491
Properly managed social media presences can be absolute prime movers for engagement, but beware of the trolls and other traps. When you’re ready to see your social media accounts really working to grow your business, give M&R Marketing a call. Our dedicated and creative team is standing ready to make your socials a significant part of your marketing mix.
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