10 Essential Rules of SMM for Beginners

SMM is social media marketing, and it means getting you message onto social media so that the social community may see it. This means you are going to have to alter your approach because outright advertising is not going to work on there unless you are using their affiliate advertising network. Here are ten rules which double over as tips to help you market your business or content on social media.

1 - Set up a Facebook Fan Page and a Google+ page

You need to do this so that you can start posting on there. Google+ is great for a social media SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefit, and Facebook has a massive range of people that may be attracted to your profile. You can use both these social media networks to gain more customer awareness or to engage with more people on social media in a big way.

2 - Post as regularly as the social media network audience requires

The social media networks have their own posting tolerance. With Facebook and Google+ it is not a good idea to post more than three times per week. With LinkedIn it is even less. With Twitter you can post everyday if you wish and people will tolerate it.

3 - Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook should be used

These are the big four that you should definitely be signed up with. YouTube is a massive social media network but it may not be relevant for your type of posting or business. Pinterest is another popular one, but it may not be ideal for your needs. On the other hand, the four listed above will always suit your needs.

4 - Resist posting without anything relevant or interesting to say

Posting for the sake of posting is not going to keep people near you, it will scare them off. Maintaining a social media profile is not about adding to it, it is about cultivating your audience. However, they are quite happy for you to go quiet every now and again.

5 - Over promoting is a bad idea

People hate adverts, and if you are giving them adverts in abundance then they are going to avoid you. People pay good money for things such as TIVO and apps without ads because they hate them, so do not give people a reason to hate you.

6 - Plan your endeavor to be sure you do not waste time

Planning your social media progress means setting goals, finding ways of achieving those goals, and monitoring your results. Put these elements into play and you will not waste as much time on social media networks. They are time vampires that will suck up your productive hours if you let them.

7 - Pick to use images or videos when it comes to other social media networks

Videos on YouTube may not be suitable for your cause or your business, so consider YouTube carefully because it can take up a lot of your time and money for very little return. Images such as on websites like Flickr are sometimes suitable, but again, your business or cause may simply not suit a highly visual approach so be sure not to waste your time if that is the case.

8 - Affiliate advertising will help you advertise on there

You can make direct sales and get people onto your website with affiliate advertising. It is there to help you get more traffic and maybe even more sales. The great thing about Facebook and other social media affiliate advertising is the fact that it can be very highly targeted, so you may want to give it a go.

9 - Try but don’t rely on social bookmaking

Social bookmarking is a nice idea, but it is not going to gain you a lot of traffic. The best thing you can do is make your website social media bookmarking friendly. Do this and other people may do to work for you. You may then gain traffic from social media bookmarking without wasting time on it yourself.

10 - Look to engage your target audience

Getting people to look at your social media profiles is not always that hard. Most people on Facebook are looking for a cheap laugh, so if you put jokes on your profiles and funny pictures then people are going to start looking at your profile. But, those people are probably not your target audience, which means you may have a well attended social media profile but it will offer you no benefit whatsoever.

Author’s bio:

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