Social media gained popularity a few years ago and it seems that the trend is never going to die. Businesses and individuals who can connect with their audience on a more personal level have a lot to gain and many people seem to come to this conclusion every day. If you are getting started in social media and you plan on being successful, you need to have a strategy. It doesn’t really matter if you are currently running a business or if you just want to create a brand over time; there are a few social media rules that apply in all situations.

Always be Honest

Once you get involved into social media, you are making a statement that your company is interested in offering transparency. People will call you out if they have a problem with your business, and you need to be prepared to answer truthfully in such a situation. When thousands of people start hanging out to your every word, a false statement will be easily noticed, so if you don’t plan on being honest, gaining success in social media is difficult if not impossible.

Offer Assistance

Even if you are not joining Twitter or Facebook as a customer service representative, people will often see your page as an easy way to contact you regarding their problems. Offering assistance to dozens of people might be a drag, but it will help you create a connection between you and your customers, so don’t ignore people’s cry for help. If you have a way to help them, you should definitely try doing so.

Make Them Come to You

Instead of trying to track down your clients and practically force them to join your fan page, you should start a creative campaign that will make people come to you. If your accounts put out enjoyable content or if you attract attention through an exciting contest, you will start gaining popularity in no time. Every one of your followers or subscribers should feel like you’re doing him a favor, not the other way around. Here are some of the campaigns that had a huge impact on the online community.

Ask for Feedback

No matter how much you think you know about your community, you can always improve that relationship by asking the consumers for feedback. This way, you will get an insight look at your ideal target market and you will be able to move your company in the right direction. However, don’t pressure your followers with insignificant questions and polls.

Measure Your Success

You have to start measuring your success from day one. This is the easiest way to analyze the results and see which methods worked and which ones didn’t. Once you have a clear idea based on hard facts, you can make the necessary improvements and develop your social media strategy. There are countless programs or methods that you can use for analyzing your progress, so all it takes is a little bit of time and patience if you want to see how successful you are.

What day is it anyway?

This one simple trick can do wonders for your business. Be careful of the day you are sending an email on. If it is a business email meant for merchants, send it out on business days, when they are more likely to check it quickly. But the average Joe who returns home after a hard day’s work doesn’t want to see an ad in his inbox, even if he signed up for it. So if you are selling directly to consumers, send out the email on public holidays.

Don’t buy lists

Buying a list might seem to be a quick way to jump into email marketing, but any veteran in the field knows it takes months to build a commendable email list. Most of the lists with a price tag on them are completely useless. Others are not much better. Make a respectable site that users love to read and allow them to opt-in for your emails. Not only does this makes the receivers of you email more receptive to you pitch, but also gives you an extremely targeted audience.

Also, when using an opt-in list, you’d do well to use a service like Aweber to easily manage your subscribers. Such services also ensure that your emails are not regarded as spam by mail providers.

Maintain focus

When sending out email, it is important not to bombard the readers with information. You might have a lot of great things to tell them, sure, but make sure you concentrate on marketing one, and only one, product/service. You don’t want to take the spotlight away from your star performer. If users see that you email is too long to read quickly, they will skip it entirely, including your flagship product.

Inform, don’t sell

It’s no secret that salespersons are among the most hated people on the planet. Most people hate them with a vengeance. There is a single reason for this – they try to sell things to people before they are interested in them. In your emails, tell people about why the product is great and how it will help make their lives easier. Don’t start the email with a link that screams ‘BUY NOW!’. It will do worse than not getting you a single sale. It will cause you to lose subscribers.

Make it jump out, but don’t scare the readers

This one should be a no-brainer. Yet it is surprising how many marketers can’t even get a simple subject line together. Smart people don’t read emails that shout their sales pitch in the subject line. The subject line should give people a reason to read the mail, not a description of your product. The rest of the mail should be just as well writer. Don’t send them a wall of text. Include images and an attractive template (nothing too big, you don’t want people to give up before the mail loads). And ensure there are absolutely no errors in your mail, grammatical, factual, or otherwise.

Next time you feel like clicking on the send button, come here for a minute and read the headings again. Don’t send out a mail before you have done that.