Facebook and Twitter are always there. You can pop in and check your accounts, disappear for a couple of weeks, and when you come back, everything is just how you left it, people carrying on the global conversation without you. What you’re not seeing, however, is what your silence is costing you in followers and potential customers. Here are some reasons why it’s important to stay consistently active on your social media accounts.
1. It makes you look reliable. Like it or not, if you only post on your social media accounts every once in a while, and are lax about replying to tweets and Facebook messages, people will make assumptions about your customer service ethic. If you can’t even be bother to respond to tweets in a timely fashion, why should they believe you’ll respond when they have a real need to speak to you?
2. It keeps your followers from getting bored. There’s a balance to be achieved with posting frequency on social networks. On one hand, you don’t want to spam people, but on the other hand, you do want to look like you’re there and participating in conversations. If there are huge gaps in your timeline, people will start to wonder why they bother following you at all, and many will unfollow.
3. It reminds people that you exist. Not everyone thinks about your company all the time, but being active on social media keeps you on their radar, and gives them a gentle reminder that you’re still around, and still eager to help them with whatever they need. This means that when it comes time for them to make a purchase, your company name will be fresh in their mind.
If you’re going to participate in social media (and you definitely should!) it’s better to stick with a couple of networks that you know you can keep up with, rather than signing up for every network and spreading yourself too thin. There’s only a finite amount of time you can commit to social media, so use it wisely, and make the effort to participate enthusiastically and regularly. You’ll definitely notice a difference in how people respond to you, and that in turn will translate into more shares and retweets, better interaction, and of course more followers, which is what everyone wants.
How much time per week do you devote to social media marketing? Do you notice a difference when you don’t keep up with it regularly?
