Social media is all about ‘me’. People use it to communicate about themselves, their beliefs, their hopes and dreams, their everyday life, their business, their personal brand, their ideology, the list goes on. For businesses, this means you have to really think about your customer and what they want to hear.

You shouldn’t use this communications method to push out sales messaging, it just won’t work. You can’t use it to say how great you are, you’ll just look arrogant. You can’t bombard people otherwise you’ll end up with a disengaged and frustrated audience. Try and be real, create a friendly online persona and portray yourself as a friend with some interesting things to say, use a real photo of yourself to show you’re authentic. Think about how much of the ‘personal’ you’re going to put in. Social media is about ‘social’ so you’re not going to have as much success if you don’t share. And if people want to know more about what you’re selling they can easily do that via the links through your social media site, it doesn’t need to be in their faces.

A starter for ten on what to post

Put together an Annual Posting Plan. This will help when you have one of those weeks when you are time-poor or have just plain run out of things to say. A great way to start is looking at special days, weeks or months in Australia and around the world, called ‘PR events’, for example Father’s Day, World First Aid Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, then link these back to your products and services giving a topical feel. Here is a list of world and international celebration days and Australian celebration days to get you started.

Twelve top tips to liven up any limp-as-a-lettuce social media pages

1. Use inspiring quotes – if they inspire you, they’ll inspire others
2. Interesting stats and facts and ‘did you knows…’ can start interesting debates and you’ll get retweets/shares
3. Create something new and original, using Someecards, Keep Calm or Pinstamatic
4. Use photos, images or video  about your niche
5. Offer free tools or resources, everyone loves a freebie
6. Take time to congratulate, thank and acknowledge others if they are mentioning your business
7. Create a quick poll or ask an easy fun question – this is easy to do in Facebook and LinkedIn
8. Stage a live Q&A on your wall with an industry expert, free knowledge is always a winner
9. Post about world or national events happening, engaging with your tribe on common issues
10. Join forces with another business, collaboration adds value
11. Run a competition for the best story around your product/service or photos of customers with your products for example. This not only engages but you can use afterwards for other marketing initiatives
12. Assign a day/month or time to something specific ie: focus on a cause close to your heart like Breast Cancer Awareness Month

To learn more about social media engagement, how to develop and implement strategies to improve your goal setting, marketing, communications, advertising, and media exposure for your Mumpreneur business sign up to our 8-week course today http://www.reveriecoaching.com/shop/mumpreneur-maven-e-course/