Blog Post: Five Tips for Ensuring Social Media Success in 2013

Do you have a New Year’s resolution for your business? If you haven’t thought of one yet, one idea is to form a social media strategy and promote your business on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Foursquare, etc.  Social media isn’t going away and it’s critical that you get your business out there. However, BBB recommends that you ease into the waters carefully and thoughtfully when planning to launch your social media strategy; otherwise it could be a giant mess.

Here are some tips to help get you started on your social media strategy:

Don’t get in over your head. Start small, such as with a Facebook page or by commenting on blogs or connecting with customers on Twitter. Let your social media strategy grow and evolve as you learn what works best for your time constraints and business goals. 

Create and share information. Social media is about engagement, and creating and sharing content is key to connecting with customers and other industry leaders. When writing your own content, always maintain an appropriate and professional tone and use plenty of links to other sites, blogs, or news articles to help illustrate your point. 

Keep everything connected.  Once you’ve created your page on Facebook, or established your blog or Twitter account or other online presences, cross-promote your content so that the same message is going out across every site. For example, Tweet about your blog post or send a link in a message to your LinkedIn group.

Engage in the conversation. Inject yourself and opinions into the conversation by following opinion leaders on Twitter and social networking sites and commenting on blog posts. Whenever possible, include a link back to your content or Web site.

Engage with customers.  our customers are talking about you online whether you like it or not on their blogs, consumer-focused Web sites and on review sites like Yelp, Yahoo! Local and CitySearch. While you can’t take control of the conversation you can help steer it by listening, engaging with customers and working to resolve any problems.