25 rules to follow for good communication on social networks

Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin... Since their emergence and meteoric rise in popularity among Internet users, social networks have gradually become the preferred way for businesses to communicate on the Internet.

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

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On the agenda:

• 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 on top of things
  • Rule 9: Look after your professional pages
  • Rule 10: Develop your network
  • Rule 11: Vary your content
  • Rule 12: Prioritise 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 employees
  • 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: Minimising the investment required
  • Mistake 4: Adopting too commercial an approach
  • 5 : Not monitoring the impact of your actions
  • Mistake 6: Manually managing and animating your social networks

Why communicate on social networks?

In 2017, there were 45.7 million active users of social networks in France. 70% of them are online 1.5 hours a day.

Source: Médiamétrie

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

Because of the enthusiasm they generate among Internet users, they offer considerable advantages:

• Raising your company's profile : Whether you're a company director, the head of a very small business or a self-employed person, by investing in social networks and creating a page in your company's name, you can 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 humanising your brand by developing a close relationship with your target audience 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 looking to attract new customers to boost your business, boost traffic to your website, raise your company's profile or develop a community, set yourself measurable objectives:

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

2- Qualify your audience

To define a relevant communications strategy, it is essential to identify and understand your target audience so that you can offer them content that is consistent with their interests, needs and issues. Creating marketing personas is a very good 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 concentrate your efforts. How does your audience stay informed? Which social networks do they use? By analysing your target audience's behaviour, you can decide which platforms to position yourself on.

Each social network has its own specific characteristics that need to be taken into account:

• Facebook, which is used by all age groups and population categories, is a formidable marketing database and, thanks to its advertising programme, 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, your employer brand and modernising your recruitment strategy.
• Instagram is a good way to promote your products by implementing a storytelling strategy.
• And so on.

4- Take stock of your resources

Communicating on social networks requires regularity and organisation. Before you get started, think about assessing your capabilities and take stock of :

• your human resources: do you have the necessary skills in-house?
• your time resources: how much time per week can you devote to running 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 of them! By considering your social networks in a complementary way and distinguishing their editorial lines, it is important to be able to put in place a strategy tailored to each community.

For each of your social networks, define :

• The tone to use: humorous, offbeat, professional, serious, etc.
• The type of message: entertaining, informative, promotional, etc.
• The format: videos, images, computer graphics, photos, gifs, etc.
• Publication frequency: weekly, daily, best time slots.
• The content: giving advice, organising competitions, commenting on current events, etc.

6- Plan your publication schedule

Good organisation is the key to effective long-term communication. Planning your events will save you time and give you an overall view of the content to be disseminated.

We recommend that you draw up your editorial calendar by defining the topics to be covered and the messages to be conveyed:

• over the next 12 months in broad outline, depending on the seasonality and events of the year (Christmas, holidays, sales, etc.)
• over the next 30 days in detail.

7- Use a tool to schedule your publications

This is essential 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. This saves you time by scheduling posts in advance, and you can optimise your communication actions by analysing their impact.

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

8- Stay on top of things

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 can 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, keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing and the content that attracts 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- Look after your business pages

Configuring your professional pages and accounts can usually be done in just a few minutes. Gather all the information you need and make sure you maintain a certain unity on all your social networks by using the same name and the same photo so that Internet 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 gather together a large community of qualified Internet users. To do this, use your personal profile to join groups dealing with your topics or to make contact with people, influencers and experts who have the same professional interests as you.

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

However, if you want to follow other brands and 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. Advice, feedback, white papers, sharing statistics, anecdotes about company life, etc. - there's no shortage of ideas! Don't forget to share your blog articles to generate extra traffic.

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

12- Prioritise 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 take into account :

• 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.

Stimulate and maintain dialogue by launching a discussion or a survey, get Internet users to interact by encouraging them to share (skilfully), invite them to share their experiences... in short, show them that you're interested in them!

14- Reply to your fans/subscribers

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

Showing that you're willing to listen, that you're accessible and that you can keep your emotions under control in all circumstances 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 humanising your company. There are a variety of techniques:
Recommend a person's skills on Linkedin

• On Twitter, thanking someone who retweets your post
• Highlighting 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 activities and increase your visibility tenfold, rather than communicating separately?

Banana Content offers you this opportunity for collaboration, which is still rarely considered. It 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 the content published on social networks,
• control which partners speak
• analyse the overall performance of their digital actions.

17- Encourage your employees

Your employees should be seen as your company's first ambassadors. Involve them in your communications by highlighting the work of your teams or encouraging them to share their experiences, for example. This is a good way of humanising your brand, embodying its values and uniting your employees by developing a sense of belonging.

Encourage them to pass on 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 is 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 have set yourself, determine the indicators that will enable you to judge the relevance of your actions and the success of your communication strategy. If the results fall short of your expectations, you can readjust your strategy!

19- Be patient

Internet marketing, particularly on social networks, takes time before you see the results of your work. Be patient and bear in mind that a web marketing strategy is a long-term strategy, since it involves 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 of raising awareness of your business, but communicating effectively is not something you can improvise. These last 5 rules summarise the mistakes you should 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

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

2- Position yourself on all the social networks

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

3- Minimise the investment required

Although social networks are free media (apart from advertising campaigns), they do require a real commitment and investment of time and human resources.

4- Adopting too commercial an approach

Purely commercial content is of no interest to Internet users. Stick to the 20/80 rule: 80% quality content, 20% advertising!

5- Failing to monitor the impact of your actions

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

6- Manage and run your social networks manually

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