The Dos and Don’ts of Social Media for SMEs [INFOGRAPHIC]

Social media is a great place for people to find out about you and your business, which is why it offers great opportunities for small and medium businesses to interact with and market to their customers and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to new ways of connecting with consumers.

While social media offers numerous opportunities for SMEs, there are a number of dos and don’ts when it comes to running and managing social media channels for your business.

It’s important to start small in order to build and grow your social networks with your business. Carefully consider which ones you’re going to become a part of; if you’re not going to be able to interact and communicate with your social followers on a regular basis, then social media – or at least perhaps not all available social media channels – may not be for you. It’s much better to engage brilliantly with consumers on a couple of channels, than engage poorly on a vast amount of channels.

Social networks are great places to promote your work and business – especially those consumers searching the channels using key phrases, terms and hashtags – but they’re not the place for a hard sell so it’s important to have more genuine interactions. You have to develop trust and understanding with potential customers.

We’ve talked before about the benefits of how social media automation can work for your business for scheduling your social posts on different channels, but remember that while automation can be great, it’s not a replacement for real human interaction on social media. Compliments and complaints should hold the same weight when it comes to responding to your followers, so respect the fact that people have taken the time to interact with your businesses as much as possible.

To help your business with the key social media rules of etiquette, we’ve pulled together our latest infographic. Social media should be a great tool for your business, so use these Dos and Don’ts of Social Media for SMEs to help harness social media as an integral part of your marketing strategy!