During the last three years, many companies have been ramping up or expanding their use of social media marketing. Businesses are hoping to increase brand exposure and develop additional customers and sales. If you are thinking about developing a social media marketing plan for your business, I strongly recommend that your take these do’s and don’ts into consideration:

Do

• Do plan your social media marketing. Having a plan in place will allow you to be more successful. It is also important to have goals and an initial idea of how you want to use social media to benefit your business.
• Do adjust your marketing plan as needed. Be willing to make adjustments as your social media marketing evolves. Although having an initial plan can help, it is also very beneficial to be open to making possible “best fit” adjustments. If you find certain marketing strategies are working, keep using what is working. On the other hand, if something needs to be changed to make your marketing more effective then do so; even if it might steer your marketing in a slightly different direction then your initial plan.
• Do respond to feedback. Regardless of positive or negative feedback; it is important that you interact with your online followers, customers and critics. Even negative feedback is important to acknowledge, so you can learn from your mistakes. Responding to feedback will show that you care and that you want to improve your company’s services and products.
• Do be open-minded. Social Media marketing can encourage discussion and sharing. Be open to what people are saying and their expressed feelings.
• Do post relevant content. Make sure all your blog, Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media posts and links are relevant to your followers.
• Do keep up to date on the constant changes and new popular social media marketing strategies. Make sure that you are aware of changes that may impact your marketing plan. Social media is an ever changing landscape and being on top of your game can help you beat your competition.
• Do make sure your social media marketing plan stays in line with your company’s goals and philosophies. Take a look at your entire company’s marketing plan and make sure that your messages are displaying the values that your company stands for.
• Do be aware of risks associated with social media marketing. Be aware that social media marketing efforts will have a direct and indirect impact on your company.

Don’t

• Don’t start social media marketing without a plan. You can cause harm to your brand and to your company. You could end up having to spend a lot of time fixing a reputation problem and reacquiring the loyalty of many possible customers if proper planning isn’t strategized from the very beginning.
• Don’t start using every social media marketing platform available just because you can. Certain platforms simply aren’t good communication channels for all businesses. For instance Foursquare wouldn’t be a good social media marketing option for a consulting firm that doesn’t have a physical location.
• Don’t use social media as an outlet exclusively to broadcast only direct promotion messages of your company. Doing this will often lead to people simply ignoring your messages. Keep the conversations going with real interactive communication.

Social media is a continually growing channel for companies to connect with their customers and has a bright future to become used even more so in the future. If you decide to execute social media for your company deploying the right plan of action, following some tried and true principles then social media can be a great marketing outlet to reach many more prospective customers, nurture the ones you currently have, and receive additional feedback that previously wasn’t readily available.