Every webmaster and SEO knows that social media should play a role in marketing a website. Social media is a powerful way to build interest in a site, to generate a following, and to create a relationship with your visitors. It’s this last element that will make your social media campaign truly powerful – because we are programmed to invest time and energy in our relationships, meaning that if your visitors feel as though they know you, they will become much more likely to spend the time to visit your site and check for updates.

Social media also has many other benefits

It allows your message to spread virally through your connections and their networks of contacts, it allows you to keep your brand on the minds of your followers through regular daily updates (whereas normally they probably wouldn’t be thinking about you) and it helps to improve your SEO as well.

But too many webmasters and SEOs it seems have no clue about how to do social media correctly. Either they won’t invest enough time in it at all, or they’ll put the time in but have no strategy. Bad social media marketing can do more harm than good, so read on to start getting it right…

Strategy and Consistency

Social Media Marketing

Firstly, if you are going to create a successful social media campaign, then it’s crucial that you have some overarching kind of strategy and some consistent message running through your marketing efforts. If you are just all over the place with your posts across different networks, then you’re just going to confuse your followers and you won’t be making it clear what your brand is about or who it is for.

A lot of webmasters for instance will make the mistake of using different usernames across their various accounts. So they might be ‘fitness.com’ on Twitter, but ‘MrMonkey788’ on Instagram. Of course this is only going to serve to confuse your visitors and it won’t be obvious that these are both accounts from the same site. It also makes it harder for others to find you – so make sure that you are consistent.

Make sure too that your theme is consistent. Do show a bit of personality by moaning about your bus being late as that’s what will help your visitors to feel as though they know you – but at the same time make sure that the majority of your posts are at least somewhat relevant to your niche. And make sure they’re interesting so that you are providing value by posting.

Regularity

Social Media Marketing

Consistency also means posting regularly and not just forgetting about your various accounts which can do a lot of damage to your reputation and lose you subscribers and more.

To help you post regularly, there are many tools you can use online that specialise in automating the process of running social media. An example is Buffer which allows you to ‘queue’ your Twitter posts – so you can sit down and write them all on one day, and then have them come through steadily so that there’s never a ‘dry spell’. There are also WordPress plugins that Tweet all your new posts, while the fantastic IFTTT lets you set up all kinds of automated functions between your various services.

Activity

Social Media Marketing

Also important is to stay active on social media in other ways. That means not just posting regularly, but also occasionally commenting or liking on other people’s posts. When you leave a comment on a fans picture on Instagram it will be very exciting for them and win you a lot of good will. More to the point though, by writing messages and interacting with people who aren’t already fans you will find you gain new followers and friends on your accounts and that this then extends your reach and allows you to bring new business to your website. By posting and not just trying to promote yourself at every opportunity you will again be providing value through your social media interactions and this will in turn mean people are more likely to want to stay connected to you.

Author Bio:

Kristina Parker, the author of this post, is a freelance blogger who often writes for Webfirm, leading providers of social media strategy services. In her spare time, Kristina loves playing tennis and going to the beach with her friends. You can follow her on Twitter @Kristinawparker.