Branding or Bragging: Balance and Tips for Your Business Social Media
The use of social media can be perceived to be a double-edged sword—especially when you are trying to use it for business. There needs to be a balance between “informational” and simply “bragging”.
Hello and welcome to Fishnet! As always, we are here to bring you discussions about the World Wide Web! We truly appreciate all the feedback that we have been receiving with all the articles that we have been having about the internet and its various business applications. We’ve mentioned social media as used by businesses and we’ve received some pretty interesting questions.
Several avid readers have asked the difference between ‘branding’ in professional or official business social media and merely bragging. We’re glad to talk about this today so thank you for giving us something to think of for the past month or so!
Social Media for Business
A lot of businesses see the wisdom in creating official social media pages for themselves. This after all, helps them to:
- Directly engage their consumers
- Get a pulse on the present trends
- Address any issues personally
- Promote their latest deals
- Dispute any misinformation
- Make statements to clarify their stance on certain things
This and so much more is what social media can be used for. With that hanging in the air, we feel that it is important to for brands to understand that in running their social media, there needs to be a suitable balance so they won’t end up sending the wrong message or alienating their client base.
Tips to Remember
While we are not here to really point out whether a practice is branding or bragging, we feel it is a better use of all our collective energy to promote better utilization of social media for businesses. In light of that, we wanted to give a few tips on how businesses can achieve a balance for their social media pages. If you’ve got a business and you have a social media page for it, we hope that you take these few tips to heart:
Always Be Mindful of Your Tone
The trouble with social media is the fact that tone doesn’t always carry over. You can be trying to say something without a hint of aggression or disrespect but the words that you choose may inadvertently express that. So it is quite critical that the person who is in charge of your social media needs to be well versed with syntax and grammar in a completely flawless manner.
This tone should always carry over through your interactions in your comment section and in your private messages. It also goes without saying that your tone must always be suitable whenever you create a post on your social media page. While we’re not saying that you should bend over backwards in heightened respect for your clients, it is worth noting that when your clients are dissatisfied you don’t get profits or a positive reputation.
Always keep in mind that even when you are speaking to someone in a private message, they are well within their rights to capture a still of that conversation and spread it around. So if you’re caught saying something unsavory or inflammatory, it’s your loss. So with everything, always mind your tone. Even if you are speaking to the most exasperating person on the planet, you are representing your business and should always have your best foot forward.
Time Your Posts
Every business should know their audience and their target market. For example, if you are a clothing business which targets students, then posting during the times where they will be immediately seen or will have maximum effect like early in the morning, during lunch break, and finally around late afternoon when school is done.
If your service is for homeowners that need repairs, timing your posts during between the hours of 9 am to 11 am would be quite effective. This is when most people will be doing housework and will more than likely encounter issues. You can also double up by having another post between the hours of 6 pm and 10 pm in the evening when things are wrapping up and when homeowners are reviewing what needs to be addressed in the home. Extra bonus would be around before the weekend starts.
Knowing the timing can help you grow your brand’s reach. After all, this means that you care enough to ensure that your interested clients won’t be missing anything. They get the security that the brand that they support understands their schedule and plans the best sort of promotions accordingly.
Choose Your Battles
When you run a business, you always run the risk of coming across people who hate your brand and those who are clearly just out to be divisive. When it comes to those sorts of encounters, it would be wise for you to choose your battles well. It would do no good for you to come out swinging only to have your responses taken out of context and be published around the web.
Whenever it comes to engaging someone who is irate, it is always best to see if their rage has basis with your service or your product. If it is someone who is merely being upset for the sake of getting attention, it would be best for you to not engage at all.
It would be good for your brand to only choose battles that you can control and those that you can actually affect. If you feel that there is nothing that can be achieved by addressing the person but will need to do damage control, publishing a clear statement can help you clear the air.
When it comes to using social media for your business, you don’t always need to go big in order to be effective. We hope that you’ll take the few tips that we’ve given to heart. It may not seem like much but you would be surprised at how many businesses tanked simply because they forgot one of the tips we’ve shared above.
So now, we’d like to pass a question to you: what tips do you keep in mind when you make use of social media for your business?
