Keeping Your Social Media Content Appropriate

Social media sites are a great place for businesses and individuals to express themselves. But as a business owner, where are you supposed to draw the line on what constitutes “appropriate” social content? It’s important to express your corporate values, as well as the personalities of your employees, but it’s also just as crucial to stay within the realm of acceptable business behavior.

Posting inappropriate content on your social media profiles might gain you some attention, but odds are it won’t always be positive. When I say “inappropriate”, I don’t necessarily mean offensive. Often, inappropriate content might occur in the form of posts which have little relevance to your business.

For example, I ‘like’ a hair salon which posts regularly on Facebook. From what I have seen, at least 75% of their posts have nothing to do with the hair industry or their customers; they post anything and everything, as if it were there personal Facebook profile.

This might not seem like a huge problem – they’re not posting anything offensive or vulgar, but where is the value to their fans? When someone ‘likes’ your page, they usually expect to see content related to your business: updates, specials, customer reviews, pictures, etc.

There is little value for them when you only post personal updates which are unrelated to your business. You may build some relationships and trust by being personal, but you can do this without posting irrelevant content.

Your goal should be to develop personal relationships with your customers as a business. Social media’s power lies in its ability to give your business a personality of its own – use that to your advantage.

Here are some tips on keeping your content appropriate:

• Avoid being offensive: This one should be fairly obvious. Unless you’re a comedian or comedy site, offensive humor will get you in trouble faster than you can type your punchline.
• Try not to post irrelevant content: Every now and then, you’ll need to post something irrelevant. That’s fine, but try to keep the majority of your content business related – that’s what people are following you for.
• Don’t talk down to competitors: Making fun of your competitors blunders or badmouthing their products may seem like a good idea, but it can actually make you look worse in the eyes of your customers.
• Reply to complaints considerately: If and when customers complain on your social profile, don’t shake them off. Address their complaints with respect and try to resolve the situation.
• Keep pictures safe: Pictures are one of the easiest ways to get in trouble on social media sites – before you post them, make sure they don’t contain anything which can come back to bite you.
• Avoid spelling and grammar errors: Everybody makes spelling and grammar mistakes sometimes. You don’t have to be perfect, but always double-check your posts, and make the necessary corrections.

Keeping your social media content appropriate really isn’t that hard. Just remember to think before you post, and always review your content. Your social media content speaks volumes about your business – make sure that it’s saying the right things.