Social Media and Business: Good or Bad

As we know in today's society social media has become an ever-growing presence. When it comes to business the two can now go hand-and-hand. According to Jason DeMers, of Entrepreneur, almost a third of all referral traffic for companies is because of social media. It can play a big role in gaining popularity and notoriety for whatever brand you are promoting. If used improperly social media can actually have a detrimental effect on your business.

According to DeMers, there are eight common mistakes by companies that use social media which leads to negative business. 

1.) You have the wrong people running and monitoring your account. Whether it is an inexperienced, untrained or poorly unsigned employee, this can lead to a lame account, long periods of inactivity or PR nightmares for your brand.

2.) You can not ignore or delete negative feedback. A good company will respond to negative feedback in a timely manner. It shows the company has good costumer service. Choosing to delete or ignore the feedback will lose you customers in the long run.

3.) You can not BUY likes. Buying likes makes your page look unprofessional and fishy. Think if someone on twitter has 54k followers and they only get 2 retweets, it looks sketchy. The fake followers and likers will not be able to interact with your page.

4.) Especially on social media, your brand can not look static or like it has not changed. Promoting the same product over and over will make the brand seem "boring" according to DeMers. It makes it look like the company does not really care what is posting as long as the brand is on there.

5.) On the flip side of rule number four, do not over-push your product! It becomes like another advertisement on the Internet to skip over. DeMars says that 80 percent of the time engaging content should be posted. Then use the other 20 percent of the time to promote the actual product.

6.) It is a general rule in life, be consistent. Do not post something now and then have your next post be posted seven months later. Keep coming up with fresh and engaging material to spread to the masses.

7.) When responding to customers via social media try not to give back generic answers. Make each post or comment seem personal and engaging with the individual.

8.) Do not bite off more than you can chew. You do not have to use every single social media site out there. Keeping up with all of them can be challenging and less effective in the long run.

Personally, I think these are excellent rules to go by especially with regards to running a business. DeMers is an experienced-professional businessman and has successfully integrated social media into his SEO agency based in Seattle. I connected these principles to people who promote music on twitter. The artist has over a 100k followers, so in my head I am like, "this person has got to be famous!" Yet when you go their profile it is the same post about the same album 100 times and each post has like 1 retweet and 2 likes. It just looks shady. I believe consistency, engaging material and honesty, are the three most important contributing factors when it comes to promoting a business through social media.

Jayson DeMers is founder and CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based SEO agency. He also started Crackerize.com, a lyrics-humor website. He's the author of the ebook, “The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online.”