You have to remember that people are following you on social media for a reason. If you are a plumber they may be waiting till they have a burst pipe and your contact information will be handy on Facebook, so for the service industry having social media is vital. The goal of this post is to look into other industries and see how you can best use your social media to benefit yourself and your customers.

If you are a shop or e-store chances are people follow you because they like your products and want updates on changes - information - or they want a special offer. We have all seen posts such as ‘stock surplus must go, like and share this page for a chance to win’ or ‘like and share this content for 20% off your next purchase’ for examples. These are really what your social media audience are looking for, special offers, but it isn’t really viable to push the same special offers over and over again and you do need to keep your audience engaged without spamming them.

This is the trick to social media management. You want to grow your audience without alienating your current followers. I noticed this with my twitter. I have been live around 24 hours and have 35 followers of which 0% have visited my website (according to Google analytics). This surprised me but probably shouldn’t. I have been offering free advice but I have also been pretty spammy. Now the time of year (3 days before Christmas) means that people aren’t going out of their way to get SEO advice even when it is free as I have been offering but I was surprised.

My followers appear to be real people so I am presuming they are waiting till the new year when the website officially launches. So I guess there’s a lesson here, don’t be spammy even if you are offering a good service - specially when it is Christmas time.