There’ll be any number of experts out there who’ll tell you that there are certain rules that are fundamental to a successful social media marketing strategy.
They’ll tell you that you must either do this, or avoid doing that if you want to engage and connect with your audience. But ask yourself this question – are there any golden rules in social media marketing? Are there any fundamentals principles you must adhere to or avoid if you want to squeeze the maximum benefit out of social networking? Well, actually we’d have to say there aren’t. The golden rule that underpins any social media marketing strategy is that there are no rules. If you approach the medium with that philosophy you won’t go far wrong.
What works for one business won’t necessarily work for another.
If you read any articles by marketers who’ve found some degree of success on social media platforms, it soon becomes abundantly clear that they all have their own particular habits and preferences. Some are quite happy retweeting the positive comments of their customers on Twitter: others avoid this practice like the plague. Some will go overboard and post randomly on Facebook timelines in the hope that it will get them the recognition they’re after; some find that sort of approach unsavoury. At the end of the day it’s horses for courses. What all businesses want is to develop relationships with their customers and to engage and connect in order to benefit their brand. There’s no right way or wrong way.
All that matters is that whatever strategy you choose to adopt works for you.
Ultimately you’re trying to get the best ROI you can from your social media efforts, and whether you choose to do that through Facebook, Twitter or a combination of the two is your choice. Nobody’s strategy is superior. What matters is getting to know your customers better and finding out which strategies will help your business better connect them. Inevitably this means that you may have to adapt and change your views because some things you try probably won’t work. There’s nothing wrong with being adaptable, regardless of what some so-called ‘experts’ may tell you. Try as hard as you might, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. What you can do, however, is please some of the people some of the time, and if ‘some’ of those people are the ones you’re trying to win over, then your social media marketing strategy is working.
