Social media is amazing! It is especially great and quite useful if you are a business that successfully manages their social media pages. Social media can be used as a tool to connect with your customers through posts, pictures, and comments.

The most popular social media sites are Facebook, Linked In, Instagram and Twitter. These are the sites that you will find most of your customers on. If you have a profile for your business on one or all of these social media sites then you have successfully completed the first step.

Setting up and establishing your social media presence isn’t the only thing that you have to do. The next step would be to know the best practices for using social media sites. Best practices can help you to get the most out of your social media efforts, but they don’t make up for poor content strategy and devious business actives. This post will cover four of the best practices for the most popular social media sites.

Know Your Persona:

Knowing your customers personas is one of the most important best practices. A persona is the ideal customer that you are trying to reach through social media. You should know who your persona is and what kinds of things they are interested in. Depending on your business, it is possible to have more than one ideal persona.

The goal is to write all of your content based on your persona and what they want to read about. The purpose of this best practice is to write content that interests your persona so that you have a better chance of targeting them.

Customize Your Content:

If you are on multiple social media platforms you have to customize your content to each platform. Customizing your content is important because not all social media sites are the same. Each site is set up differently and has its own format.

For example, Twitter has a limit on the amount of characters that you are able to use in a post. Facebook does not have a limit. If you post your Facebook content into Twitter without customizing it first, half of your post will not be posted. Therefore, you have to optimize each post so it fits the formatting of each social media site.

Making sure that you take the time and pay attention to this best practice will show your customers that you care about the messages that you are sending them. 

Optimize Your Social Media Pages:

If you are a business using social media it is very important that you fill out every section on your social media page. The content in each of these sections is another opportunity for your social media page to be found online. So, do not leave any of your titles or descriptions empty. 

Take the time to create clear and precise content to fill these sections. Make sure to write exactly what your company does or sells and add in relevant keywords that relate to your business. These keywords will make it easier for search engines to understand what your social media page is about. You should constantly be looking for ways to optimize your social media pages.

Build Reach:

What good is social media if no one sees your posts? If you are going to take the time to create content for your persona, it is important that you are able to reach them. Building reach is a significant aspect of social media marketing.

The best way to build reach is to promote your social media pages every chance you get. Tell people in emails, in your blog posts, on your website and in print. The goal is to get as many people as you can to know about your social media presence.    

This best practice doesn’t end with promotion. You have to continue to reach out to your customers through your social media pages. Build relationships, answer questions, interact with them through your page. This is not an easy step. It will take time and energy, but if you want to reach your customer so that they are able to read your posts then I would continue to look for opportunities to build your reach.

These social media best practices will help you get the most out of your social media pages. Knowing who you are writing to, customizing your content based on the platform, optimizing and building reach will help you be a better social media marketer.