5 Simple Strategies to Keep Your Social Media Audience Happy

Businesses can gain a lot of good exposure and bolster their branding through smart social media use. Here’s how to help your accounting firm increase positive feelings using your favorite platforms.

It’s frustrating to painstakingly build a solid network of friends and followers through a social media platform, only to see them trickle away or leave in a huff. Every firm wants to be a polite user, but if you aren’t careful, you might inadvertently bore or irritate your network. Timothy Carter shares some smart tips to keep your networks happily in the fold in an article published on socialmediatoday.com. Take them to heart and feel confident that your contacts will stick around to build strong relationships that help your firm for the long term.

1. Make it meaningful. Finding interesting, relevant things to post about isn’t always easy, but it’s critically important. People watch television shows and read books that speak to them, not those that just make noise. The same is true for social media. If you really don’t have anything of merit to say, it’s better to keep quiet. Making regular posts is ideal. It becomes a negative, however, if those posts are made just because they’re on the schedule and don’t share valuable, amusing or timely content. Every post should reflect what’s important to your firm and/or its clients.
2. Give it a rest! Regular posts, as we mentioned in the previous point, are ideal. That doesn’t mean you should post morning, noon and night. You are not responsible for the full time entertainment and edification of your audience. If you’re dominating the newsfeeds or inboxes of your audience, it won’t be long before you’re cut off from access. Give everyone else at the social media party a turn to talk – or you won’t be invited back.
3. Avoid the melodramatic hyperbole. Messages that are couched in overly enthusiastic terms tend to be disregarded as spam. BEST!! OPPORTUNITY!!!! EVER!!!!!!  Mhm. Brings to mind every subject line in your junk mail folder, doesn’t it? Showing positive energy and appropriate excitement about the information you’re sharing encourages your audience, but there is a threshold across which it becomes creepy and insincere. Choose your subject lines and post intros carefully to remain on the right side of that line.
4. Act reciprocally. In face-to-face social interaction, you take turns and show (or at least feign) interest in what the other parties are saying. Good etiquette demands that you do the same in online social behavior. Repost great articles with a note of praise, even if they’re by the competition. Like, follow and comment on the fascinating developments your contacts share the same way you hope they will for you. You’ll probably glean useful information and you’ll definitely be perceived as polite. Try to use social media platforms as opportunities for true conversation rather than a digital megaphone.
5. Look your best. Never underestimate the power of a good image. Using eye-catching graphics is a great way to increase the numbers of people who pay attention to your posts or open your emails. Draw readers with visual images that are too good to resist and then reward them with useful, well-written messages.

Gaining and keeping an audience isn’t easy, but it is fairly simple. Share meaningful information with your contacts; respect their time by not posting too often; be sincere; pay attention and respond to what they’re saying; and package your content attractively. Your mother would tell you the same thing.