25 rules for communicating on social networks

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin... Since their emergence and meteoric rise to prominence among Internet users, social networks have gradually established themselves among businesses as a means of communicating on the Internet.

They've become an essential part of any communications strategy, but you need to know how to use them wisely to exploit their full potential. Here are our 25 tips for communicating effectively on social networks.

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On the program:

• Why communicate on social networks?
• And how?
  • Rule 1: Define your objectives
  • Rule 2: Qualify your audience
  • Rule 3: Identify your priority social networks
  • Rule 4: Make an inventory of your resources
  • Rule 5: Define your editorial line for each network
  • Rule 6: Plan your publication schedule
  • Rule 7: Use a tool to schedule your publications
  • Rule 8: Stay alert
  • Rule 9: Look after your professional pages
  • Rule 10: Expand your network
  • Rule 11: Vary your content
  • Rule 12: Prioritize quality over quantity
  • Rule 13: Engage your community
  • Rule 14: Respond to your fans/subscribers
  • Rule 15: Thank your community
  • Rule 16: Share your actions with partners
  • Rule 17: Encourage your collaborators
  • Rule 18: Measure your actions
  • Rule 19: Be patient
• Conclusion: Mistakes to avoid
  • Mistake 1: Launching without a strategy
  • Mistake 2: Positioning yourself on every social network
  • Mistake 3: Minimizing the investment required
  • Mistake 4: Adopting an overly commercial approach
  • Error 5: Failing to track the impact of your actions
  • Error 6: Manually managing and animating your social networks

Why communicate on social networks?

In 2017, France had 45.7 million active users on social networks. 70% of them are connected 1h30 a day.

Source: Médiamétrie

The figures speak for themselves: they're everywhere, and there's no escaping them! Launching a business on social networks is no longer an option, and represents, in the same way as traditional media, an important lever for raising awareness of your business, products or services by forging links with customers and prospects, and relying on the virality of content distribution.

Thanks to the enthusiasm they generate among Internet users, their advantages are considerable:

• Enhance your company's profile : Whether you're an entrepreneur, a small business owner or a freelancer, by investing in social networks and creating a page in your company's name, you'll diversify its online presence and increase its visibility.
  
• Generate traffic to your website and attract new customers: Whatever your business, your sector of activity or your target market (BtoC or BtoB), social networks represent a significant opportunity to reach new prospects and boost your sales.
  
• Develop your image and assert your values: Investing in social networks is a good way of humanizing your brand by developing a close relationship with your target and maintaining a special bond with them.

So how do you go about it?

1- Define your objectives

There's no need to rush into creating accounts on every social network there is. Take the time beforehand to work out your communication strategy based on your needs.

Whether you're prospecting for new customers to boost your business, boosting traffic to your site, building awareness of your company or developing a community, set yourself measurable objectives:

• number of fans and subscribers,
• number of visits to the site,
• number of newsletter subscribers,
• increase in sales, etc.

2- Qualify your audience

To define a relevant communications strategy, it's essential to identify and understand your target audience, so you can offer them content that's consistent with their interests, needs and issues. The creation of marketing personas is an excellent method for drawing up a typical profile of each of your targets.

By addressing a clearly identified audience whose expectations are known, you can then more easily implement appropriate actions.

3- Identify your priority social networks

To avoid spreading yourself too thin, it's important to select the right ones on which to focus your efforts. How does your audience stay informed? Which social networks do they use? By analyzing your target audience's behavior, you'll be able to decide which platforms to position yourself on.

Each social network has its own specific characteristics that you need to take into account:

• Facebook, frequented by all age groups and population categories, is a formidable marketing database and, thanks to its advertising program, a powerful tool for promoting your business to targeted users.
• Twitter is particularly attractive to opinion leaders on highly targeted subjects, especially in the information and communications sector.
• Linkedin is ideal for developing your network, employer brand and modernizing your recruitment strategy.
• Instagram is a good way to promote your products by implementing a storytelling strategy.
• Etc.

4- Take stock of your resources

Communicating on social networks requires regularity and organization. Before taking the plunge, you should assess your capabilities, based on :

• your human resources: do you have the necessary skills in-house?
• your time resources: how much time per week can you devote to your social networks?
• your financial resources: do you have the budget to invest in advertising campaigns?

5- Define your editorial line for each network

Now that you know which networks to position yourself on, don't just duplicate the same content on each one! By considering your social networks in a complementary way and distinguishing their editorial lines, it's important to be able to implement a strategy adapted to each community.

For each of your social networks, define :

• The tone to use: humorous, offbeat, professional, serious...
• The type of message: entertaining, informative, promotional...
• Format: videos, images, infographics, photos, gifs...
• Publication frequency: weekly, daily, best time slots.
• Content: tips, contests, current events...

6- Plan your publication schedule

Good organization is the key to effective long-term communication. Planning your events will save you time and give you a global vision of the content you need to disseminate.

We recommend that you draw up an editorial calendar defining the themes to be addressed and the messages to be conveyed:

• over the next 12 months in broad outline, according to seasonality and the year's events (Christmas, vacations, sales, etc.)
• over the next 30 days in detail.

7- Use a tool to schedule your publications

Indispensable if you don't want to log into each of your accounts every time you want to publish! Dedicated tools allow you to manage all your social networks from a single interface. You save time by scheduling posts in advance, and you can optimize your communication actions by analyzing their impact.

Some go even further, like Banana Content, which centralizes all your digital communications (social networks, automatic newsletters and emailing).

8- Stay on the lookout

Generally speaking, it's essential to keep abreast of what 's being said about your company, your competitors and your market. This is especially true when it comes to ensuring an effective presence on social networks.

On the one hand, by monitoring your e-reputation, you'll be able to react when people talk about you (thank them, share the content on your networks or blog). On the other hand, monitoring will enable you to find content to share. Finally, observing your competitors' actions and the content that generates the most interaction is a source of inspiration for creating your own content (get inspired, don't copy!). To make your job easier, you can use tools such as Google Alert.

9- Take care of your business pages

Setting up your professional pages and accounts usually takes just a few minutes. Gather all the necessary information and make sure you maintain a certain unity on all your social networks, using the same name and photo so that web users can find you quickly and have no doubts about your identity.

Similarly, a clear, concise presentation of your business, up-to-date contact details and quality photos will reinforce your professionalism and reliability.

10- Develop your network

The aim is to build up a large community of qualified Internet users. To do this, use your personal profile to join groups dealing with your topics, or to connect with people, influencers and experts who share your professional interests.

By building up a targeted personal network with whom you can relay the content of your professional page (in moderation), you'll be helping to increase your company's visibility.

However, if you want to follow other brands, comment on and share their content, make sure you interact with your business page!

11- Vary your content

Whatever your activity, always offer useful, rich and engaging content. Tips, feedback, white papers, sharing statistics, anecdotes about company life, etc. - there's no shortage of ideas! Don't forget to share your blog posts to generate additional traffic.

In terms of format, images and videos are very popular, as they encourage engagement and improve the performance of a publication.

12- Prioritize quality over quantity

Forget exclusively promotional content: you need to add value to the messages you broadcast. By publishing quality content tailored to your target audience, you demonstrate your expertise and arouse their interest.

To find the perfect balance between quantity and quality, you need to consider :

• your audience: capture their attention by offering content that is relevant to their expectations.
• your budget: limit your communication strategy to the essentials.

13- Engage your community

For your communication on social networks to be effective, the biggest challenge is to succeed in federating a community with which to build a lasting relationship, with a view to converting subscribers into customers and increasing their attachment to your brand so that they become its ambassadors.

Create and maintain a dialogue by launching a discussion or a poll, get web users to interact by encouraging them to share (with skill), invite them to testify about their experience... in short, show them that you're interested in them!

14- Respond to your fans/subscribers

Every comment, request or question deserves a response. Whether they're positive or negative, you need to be able to respond quickly with an appropriate answer that's as transparent as it is relevant.

Showing that you're responsive, accessible and in control of your emotions at all times will reflect positively and professionally on your company.

15- Thank your community

Thanking your fans and subscribers, as well as your staff, partners and customers, is an excellent way of building loyalty and humanizing your company. There are a variety of techniques:
Recommend someone's skills on Linkedin

• On Twitter, thank the person who retweeted your post
• Highlight an employee or customer to thank them for their loyalty
• Publish a thank-you photo when you reach 1,000 fans/followers, etc.

16- Share your actions with partners

Do you work with service providers, resellers or franchisees? What if you could pool your communication actions and increase your visibility tenfold, rather than communicating individually?

Banana Content makes it easy to create and transmit content to your business partners, who can then distribute it on their own channels. In this way, you can :

• manage content published on social networks,
• control which partners take the floor
• analyze the overall performance of their digital actions.

17- Encourage your employees

Your employees should be considered your company's first ambassadors. Involve them in your communication by highlighting the work of your teams or encouraging them to share their experiences, for example. This is a good way to humanize your brand, materialize its values and unite your employees by developing a sense of belonging.

Encourage them to relay your job offers and interact on your social networks, but don't forget that this approach is voluntary and requires a certain sensitivity to digital technology.

18- Measure your actions

It's very difficult to assess the return on investment (ROI) of your social media strategy. Don't make the mistake of focusing solely on the number of fans/followers or the number of times a video is viewed. The most important indicator is community engagement, which takes into account the quantity of content shared and the quality of interactions with Internet users.

Based on the objectives you've set yourself, determine the indicators that will enable you to judge the relevance of your actions and the success of your communications strategy. If the results fall short of your expectations, you'll be able to readjust your strategy!

19- Be patient

Internet marketing, especially on social networks, takes time before you see the results of your work. Be patient, and keep in mind that a webmarketing strategy is a long-term one, since it's all about developing a loyal community over time.

See all software Social Media Management

Conclusion: mistakes not to be made on social networks

Social networks are an excellent way to promote your company, but communicating effectively is not something you can improvise. These last 5 rules summarize the mistakes you must avoid at all costs. Now that you've got everything you need to know, don't hesitate to keep us informed of your progress!

1- Launching without a strategy

In advance, define your objectives, your targets, your editorial schedule, the frequency of your publications, etc.

2- Position yourself on all social networks

Each social network has its own characteristics. Choose the ones that will enable you to reach your objectives and optimize your performance.

3- Minimize investment

Social networks may be free media (apart from advertising campaigns), but they require a real commitment and investment of time and human resources.

4- Adopt an overly commercial approach

Purely commercial content doesn't interest Internet users. Respect the 20/80 rule: 80% quality content, 20% advertising!

5- Failing to track the impact of your actions

Use the statistical data from your publications to improve and fine-tune your strategy, by identifying the best niches or the content that generates the most engagement, for example.

6- Manage and animate your social networks manually

There are a number of dedicated tools available to make the task easier, so why deprive yourself!