Thousands of businesses are rushing to create a presence for themselves online through social media. However, many businesses are careless in their efforts, and try to get a large quantity of readers without any quality content. This can jeopardize the success of the strategy in the end, and cause the business a great deal of embarrassment. By following the next few steps, businesses can create a great online community without ruining the experience for themselves or their target audience.

Failing to update your social media profile regularly with fresh content and updates annoys your readers, and makes them likely to unsubscribe from your page. This decreases the amount of people who read your page, and can detriment the reputation of your page online. Try to update with quality material as often as possible, but keep the intervals regular to avoid over or under-stimulating your readers.

By posting unprofessional or petty posts, you deter your readers and make them uninterested. Run your posts across several possible readers before posting it if you are unsure if people outside your close groups will find them relevant. Trust that your readers will notice changes even if you don’t point them out. Sales are a big deal; small website layout changes are not.

Provide relevant, interesting material for your consumers. Boring them with information they don’t care about makes them unlikely to view your posts, and additionally damages your reputation, by making you seem like a ‘spam’ page. This results in people following your page, thus constricting your audience. Include details about sales, discounts, and member benefits to people who take the time out of their life to follow your business. They probably expect such updates, and supplying them in a consistent manner will build trust between your consumer and your company.

Ignore the social media strategies used by your competitors. Competing with another similar industry in followers, especially when you call them out (an easy practice given the open forum social media allows) is petty, childish, and frowned upon by consumers.

Respond to customer’s concerns, issues, and compliments. Apologize for things your company does incorrectly, and recognize when they are complimented on something. This creates a closer relationship between the business and the consumers, and makes the customer feel more connected to the business. Buying an item from your neighbor’s yard sale, analogically, is a lot more probable than buying something from a stranger’s garage sale. This is because familiarity breeds a feeling of closeness that translates into sales, speaking in an economic and business-related manner.

Succeeding in social media marketing is a process that, contrary to popular belief, requires you to really try. When a single person is ‘annoying’ on a social media site, they are easily ignored without much consequence. A business, however, that is seen as unprofessional or annoying is likely to lose some of its audience-base, and gain a less than reputable name for itself in a socially connected world. By adhering to these simple guidelines, your company can easily create an online entity that translates into happy, loyal, and socially active customers who are happy to hear about business news.