Contents
Strategizing your social media is very important and we have covered this in our last post. Using social media is one of the most effective and cheapest alternatives to improve your marketing in Malaysia. It is easy to keep your social media on track, so today here’s our top 10 of do’s and don’ts for your social media in Malaysia. Before we get started, don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more tips and tricks.
SOCIAL MEDIA DO’s
1. Ensure It’s A Business Page, Not A Personal Page
This is a major thing that you need to check: There’s a difference between a business page and a personal page, it applies on most social media platforms. We’ve all seen people who are still using their own personal accounts for their business, adding the audiences as friends and doing digital marketing at the same time.
It’s a great way to build connections but personal pages have a limit to the number of friends you can have. At some point, you’ll have hit the ceiling (which is 5000 friends) and your audience group is then limited to that figure. Having a business page will allow you to grow your audience size to an infinite number. And at the same time, a business page will give you more control over the post or captions that you want to tell your audience. A key feature for having a business account is to gain access to advertising functions. It will allow you to craft an ad with your selected audience group. Remember whether your business is on Facebook or Instagram, make sure it is a business page.
2. Fill All Of Your Business Details
The first thing you should look at would be the Name Tag of your business. For example @kodedigital.expert. If possible try to have your business name tag consistent across all your social platforms. Second thing is to ensure all of your business details are filled in the about and info section. This is paramount for you to rank higher on search engines. Having these details filled in enable search engines like google to find the relevant information to match with search results. if it is incomplete it will be harder for search engines to “crawl” on your business page.
3. Think Before You Speak (Post)
This statement here applies everywhere and to everyone. Even though there is freedom of speech on the internet, for businesses any post or statements need to be strategically analysed or they might be misunderstood by the audience. We should always double-check to see if our statement will be appropriate for our target audience, in order to gain or retain existing followers.
4. Update Consistently on Social Media Feed
Another way that social media searches will rank your page is through analysing the page activities. If the page has a consistent update, it will be more likely to be ranked higher because social media like Facebook wants people to get content that they can consume so they will stay in the environment without switching over to another social platform.
5. Give Tips Or Advice
Rather than pushing your products all the time, tone down a bit. Show that you care about your audiences and that your goal isn’t just to keep selling them. Give useful tips and tricks on your products, or other information that can be included in their lifestyle. People will more likely engage with your post that gives them information or facts that they do not know. So a post like “Did you know?” will generate more attention. Just be subtle on your promotion.
6. Set Up Attainable Goals And Objectives
In order to raise the conversion rate from your social media activities, you need to begin with a reachable goal that matches the brand’s core value. With a clear goal in mind comes with objectives that will feature detailed steps that cater to every business’ needs. Layout objectives with specific numerical values such as followers count or engagement of posts as potential metrics to measure brand awareness. For instance, establish an objective for a surge of 100 followers weekly that will bring a rise in the conversion rate, rather than merely emphasis on racking up the numbers of likes. Hence, you will have a better quantitative understanding of your brand’s presence.
7. Have Fun With Various Post Types
There is nothing wrong to shake things up in your social media from time to time, as long as it matches your brand’s voice. Think outside the box and get creative to ignite stimulating brand identity. Amidst the ad-blindness era bombarded with a massive amount of social media posts, it is mandatory for you to create thumb-stopping content in order to increase potential consumers’ attention spans. Spice up some compelling posts from now and then by utilizing memes, GIFs, Instagram filters, interactive polls or even live streams. By sharing these lighthearted contents, you can get more responsiveness and share among audiences will be encouraged as well.
8. Analyze Results And Track Activities
By tracking significant metrics such as followers count, audience reach or conversion rate, you can effectively measure the overall performances of your brand digitally on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. From the collected data, you are able to figure out efficient content strategies that will boost better engagement between the posts and social media users. Identify the patterns from the digital results and try to gain more insights about your audiences, you will learn which strategy is working and which is not. Thus, it will save your time in figuring out which type of content will resonate with the targeted audiences the most.
9. Inclusivity And Diversity
Brands are made for society with people living in a diverse communities. Audiences that you targeted digitally are the assets of your brands, hence inclusivity matters more than ever in this case. With inclusivity and diversity implanted in your social media business operation, you are able to broaden your audiences as they will be responsive to your thoughtful products options, which will lead to investments. Social media feeds that highlight real people of different sizes, identities, ages or races will bring deeper connections as they speak the language of followers. Furthermore, instead of making it a ‘movement’, bring out the authenticity by making this practice a norm.
10. Spread Positivity
Positive content beats negative content. Yet, positive posts do not always mean happy posts. You can breed positive engagement with positive content that will inspire audiences and create interactions. For example, spreading joyous occasions or festive cheers keeps the followers feeling merry as ever. Besides, you can create certainty in uncertain times by sharing positivity in the form of words of encouragement, it will definitely create a positive ripple effect online when audiences click the share button.
SOCIAL MEDIA DON’TS
1. Absolutely No Spamming
Social media is definitely a platform used for sharing information. But it is a big NO on social media for you to spam any type of information or promotion. This may lead your audience to get annoyed and frustrated with repeated content. It will lead to them unfollowing your page or hiding your posts. There is a rule of thumb that was introduced by business.com, the rule of 5:3:2
- 5 should be content from other sources that are relevant to your audience, otherwise known as curation.
- 3 should be content you’ve created, that’s relevant to your audience, or creation.
- 2 should be personal, fun content that humanizes your brand to your audience, to be referred to as humanization.
Try this rule of thumb and put it into use but it does not mean that you have to follow it to the dot. Figure out your own way of creating your content by monitoring your engagement. We will discuss how to monitor your engagement in our later posts.
2. Don’t Be Needy
For any kind of marketing, there is a term called “Call To Action (CTA)”. It allows you to call or invite the audience to follow your content or page, but bear in mind to not overstate it. Try using a softer method on the way you attract your followers. If they feel that you are being needy, there is a high probability that people will not follow you.
3. Don’t Complain
Different people have different opinions on complaining, well that opinion usually falls on the negative part of it. It’s best for businesses to remain neutral in every aspect. But, if you know how your market works, maybe you can turn it into something else.
4. Don’t Spam Social Media Hashtags
Most people are abusing hashtags, different social media have different ways of treating hashtags. For example, on Facebook using more than 5 hashtags would not be beneficial to your content. Try doing some research on the social platform and how the hashtag algorithm works. Then you can plan around how you can use these hashtags optimally.
5. Don’t Share The Same Thing
It’s okay for you to share similar content but not the same content. What we mean is, if you want to share the essence of the previous post, you can. However, try rephrasing it so that it won’t be the same. You don’t want the search engine to mislead their searches and find a duplicate. This brings disadvantages for your social media page in the long run.
6. Avoid Grammatical Errors Or Spelling Mistakes
It is common to make mistakes from time to time. Though, it will be a waste of hard work to come out with amazing eye-catching content embedded with grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. Likewise, it might jeopardize the credibility of a particular brand, leaving a poor imprint among your followers. Consequently, it is vital to double-check your copies before posting them for the eyes of social media users. Let your colleagues proofread for you if you need a second eye for approval. These are extra steps that will ensure that you are on the right side besides preventing it from becoming a pattern on your social media feeds.
7. Don’t React Poorly On Negative Comments
Every voice (comments) matters. It is unavoidable when it comes to negative reviews or comments no matter how well-constructed your content is. Take your time to respond to each and every negative comment by starting a conversation with the commenters. It will be great if you try your best to tune their perceptions to a positive one by acknowledging their dissatisfaction. Search their intents and be a problem solver so that they will keep coming back. At the same time, this action will display good behaviours which leave a good impression among other followers.
8. Stay Away From Creating Lengthy Content
In order to keep up with the fast pace of social media, time is gold. Strip off unnecessary long words or sentences in order to make the content easier to digest. Some audiences might feel intimidated with lengthy posts, as follows, punchy writings tend to be more impactful than long-winded sentences. Instead of technical terms, the application of layman words is more likely to make audiences feel relatable. Avoid time-consuming postings and add CTA (call-to-action) if needed. The CTAs will act as an invitation for audiences to take action, boosting the engagement in a healthy way.
9. Don’t Lie Or Steal
It’s unethical to bait engagements just because it looks as if you are falling behind in social media. In the midst of creating the ‘perfect’ social media feed, some brand owners will leave fake ‘positive’ comments in their business accounts or hire someone to do so. They wish to overshadow the real ‘negative’ ones from the eyes of their target customers. Steer clear from organizing fake competitions or fake fundraising events. Even though you will get the attention you wanted so badly, your business will be labelled as a scam, which definitely will take a big hit long term. In addition, don’t steal others’ images. Use your own visual content or invest in stock images for your social media to dodge copyrights fine.
10. Don’t Abuse Every Single Platform
There are vast amounts of social media platforms in Malaysia that assure networking and they are ever-transforming. If you have a presence on every single social media platform, you will probably find yourself unorganized as it would be a messy task to manage all of them at the same time. Save your time and energy by choosing the best few platforms that suit best for your business. By researching your targeted audiences’ favourite online hangouts, you will have better insights on which platforms to choose, that will cater for your business the most. Being active and present in a few social media platforms that you have chosen from, will help in getting the maximum engagement that everyone wished for.
Conclusion
There will always be new ways to strategize your social media, so be sure to stay updated on the latest social media trends. Keeping up the social media trend would definitely help you to pump up your social media presence. Get in touch with us if you are would like to learn how to increase your social media engagement.
Kode Digital is more than just a creative digital agency, we are also a Meta Business Partner. As a Meta Business Partner, Kode Digital has access to exclusive tools and resources that can help our clients get the most out of Meta’s platforms. Our team stays up-to-date on the latest Meta marketing trends and best practices.