Let’s keep this thing going for the second installment! (Check out the first one if you missed those tips on social media marketing.)

Fourth: You’re Not Being You

This leads us to the fourth point: if it’s all about you personally, then be personal.

Followers don’t want to see all your rigid marketing jargon, mission statements, and your favorite affiliates all the time, they want a person. Tell jokes, share photos, make holiday wishes. Consult this vital list of do-nots before you get started posting:

• Do not just copy/paste.
• Do not just hire foreign people who don’t even know you to say stuff for you.
• Do not hire your 16-year-old kid or neighbor to speak for your business, unless of course you’d let them stand before the third largest country in the world and deliver your business’s message on a daily basis.
• Do not just post links without any of your own words to explain why you’re posting them.
• Do not simply post quotes of other people all the time.

I think you get the picture. Consider celebrities and why people follow them. People are interested in their lives and doings, in their funny quips, in their experiences. You may not be a celebrity, but if people are following you, they’re obviously interested to some degree. Be you.

Fifth: Engagement

All this is to say you have to be engaging. This is term you’ll hear tossed around a lot in social media marketing tips and tricks, and that’s because it’s the essence of social media. What’s the most important term in “social media marketing”? Social. And what does social imply? A transaction of communication between two or more people.

So how do you engage people? Think of it like a conversation. How do you keep one of those going? If you’re bad at conversation, try these tactics:

• Ask questions.
• Answer questions.
• Respond to people’s comments. All the time.
• Offer surveys with small incentives.
• Be fun and positive.
• Say/answer with moderately profound statements that allow for further discussion; “yes” and “no” don’t go far in eliciting further response.
• Respond to posted links with links to something similar.

If you’re bad at conversation, don’t worry, social media is like cheating. You get time to think about responses and make commentary without ever actually having to meet the person. Whatever you do, respond. Keeping a customer waiting or walking in the door without a response at some point is RUDE!

Sixth: You’re Not Attempting to Drive Traffic

Now that we’ve established that your site should be in order and all that before you start social media marketing, let’s be sure you’re actually getting people there. I stated early that part of the whole social media marketing shtick is driving traffic to your site. So is what you’re saying in your social media campaign actually doing anything to promote that?

People won’t just go to your site on their own, you have to give them reason to. Updating content regularly is a whole post of its own, but the gist here is that you need to have stuff on your site that gives people reasons to return to it. And then, when that’s all in order, let people know about it.

Social media is a great way to make sure that there is continual traffic coming back to your site or promote just about anything, which is one of the most important parts of maintaining a successful site (and thus successful marketing campaign, and thus successful business). You may be noticing that for all your new blogs and site pages, etc., you’re getting no new or repeat traffic. When you update something, post about it. And don’t just tell people it’s there, make it easy for them and post a link to it. We’re all lazy, don’t forget that.

Now What?

Head over to Part 3 of the series, of course! Or back to Part 1 if you missed it.