Social Media: Let’s Do It Right

I love social media. It’s possibly one of the most incredible inventions ever to have existed, especially if you’re a business owner. But what I find amusing is that on a personal level, social media can be overbearing. There are so many pros and cons to social media.

Pros

What’s the overall benefit? Access

A friend of mine used Twitter to contact David Marris, who came to speak to our Rollins College accounting class about his experience with Biovail--after turning down an opportunity to speak at Harvard.

If you’ve got an effective message, other people will do the work for you.

“That Crazy Wrap Thing” is all over Facebook. I am fairly certain all of my female family members are That Crazy Wrap Thing distributors at this point—which is awesome. They’re building a business to start bringing in more income. (Although I could list this in the cons section, since seeing at least three posts per day, per person is a bit annoying.)

Cons

It can be extremely overused.

I know you want us all to know about those cute bracelets you made on Etsy, but please don’t post every five minutes about how cute your bracelets are. Please stop! We’re begging you!

People can become desensitized.

If you post too much, people stop caring, and it can even get to the point where your posts become so annoying that people start to delete your posts.

So what is one of the most vital things that we can do as social media specialists?

Don’t overuse the system.

There are several platforms you can play with in order to get your name out there. Think of Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram--all those platforms waiting for your business. So use them! Finding content for your social media pages can be really fun; you get to be creative and you get to explore various ideas for that content. Just make sure that your message is streamlined and blends effectively. That is part of the challenge.

If you are a notorious poster, start using a website called Hootsuite to track how much you are posting and see if you’re an addicted social poster. You can schedule posts in advance across three platforms for free. This could be a great way to bring awareness to a possible addiction to and abuse of social media.

Try a 3-2-1 system: 3 posts about related content, 2 posts about your business, 1 post about an upcoming or ongoing sale. This will ensure you are effectively using and not abusing your social media platforms.

Hope some of these ideas are helpful! We’d love to hear from you. Feel free to contact us on our Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn pages with any comments or questions you may have.