Social media is a great marketing opportunity for your business; it provides an outlet to display your work and allows you to put yourself out and bring in potential new clients. If you want to make the most out of your social media, you need to manage your profiles well, and don’t do any of the following:

• Get personal

Running a business’ social media isn’t the same as just posting about your life on Facebook or Instagram, a big mistake lots of people make is letting their personal opinions and agenda creep into their business accounts; political parties, non-business related public figures and sites with “questionable content” shouldn’t be followed or liked by your business account, it will come across as unprofessional and possibly turn away potential customers.

• Be random

Not having a plan before you start posting is a major problem; you’ll need to have an idea what content you’d like to post, who it’s targeted at, and when it will go out, just to name a few. Yes, a lot of the highly rated content on social media is the more humorous, and whilst it’s not always bad to share funny content, it must be tasteful and in line with your brand, otherwise you risk alienating your audience.

• Don’t invest

Don’t just leave the social media scheduling to the apprentice or the kid who’s on work experience, unless your staff really know what they’re doing the results could be mixed. Having a marketing company schedule and help plan your social media benefits you by letting them concentrate on the marketing whilst giving you time to run your business. You can exchange ideas and new approaches can come along you might have missed.

• Ignore messages

People with money don’t really use Facebook messenger to get in touch, do they? Even if a potential client or collaborator comes to you via social media, you shouldn’t disregard them, doing so may lose you opportunities and put off potential new business.

• Snap back

Occasionally you might get an unsatisfied customer taking to social media to air their grievances, these require a special approach; understanding what’s gone wrong and working towards a practical solution for both parties. It’s not something that can be solved by trading insults and acting as if you’re in the right and they’re in the wrong. Don’t snap at customer complaints on social media, it makes you look unprofessional and means the customer will probably never use you again.

Remember, social media for your business, if used properly, can generate many rewards, but it needs managing with as much care as your startup business plan if you want the process to be smooth.