Chances are if you have been in business more than a day, you are using social med. And in fact, if you are getting ready to launch a new business, you are likely using it.  But are you using it correctly?

If you’re doing it right, social media is a good way to keep up with public opinion about your business and post regular updates about what’s going on. Businesses tend to run the gamut between awesome social media strategy, poor media strategy, and no strategy at all and sometimes it feels like there are more ways to get it wrong than to get it right.

If you follow some basic tips, though, you can nail that social media strategy in a way that engages customers in a positive way.

  1. Don’t ever ignore social media. Whenever someone has a gripe about you and your business, they might tell everyone except you. However, an attentive social marketing strategist can quickly find out what people are saying about the business and respond to it. Coca-Cola is one company that often refines its approach to developing new drinks and bringing them to market just by monitoring Twitter feeds that mention their products so they can see what people are really saying.
  2. Get more traffic by not doing a hard-sell anytime somebody mentions you on Facebook or Twitter. If somebody asks a question related to your niche on Twitter and mentions you, linking to the appropriate blog entry that answers their question is an easy way to impress them and make it look like you know what you’re doing. Sure, you might have a product or service that can also solve their problem, but now is not the time to do a hard-sell. They’re asking for information and that means you should get them on your site by answering their question first.
  3. Don’t overdo it. You can get away with posting a new promotion or introduce a brand-new product once or twice a week, but people like to see that there’s a real person and not a bot behind that Facebook page and they’ll be annoyed if their Facebook and Twitter feeds are full of promotions from companies that are trying to sell. That means you should spend more time interacting with people who visit your page then you do promoting your products.

The bottom line here is that social media can be a good tool for marketing your business simply by interacting naturally with customers and potential customers. It’s a good way to find out what people are really saying about you and get some organic traffic when someone shares a useful post on your website.