Being social on social media has never been more important than it is today. While you have the potential to reach thousands, everyone wants to feel like your message is personalized directly to them. The best way to curate this form of content is connecting to your intended audience authentically and build a community around your brand.

The fifth post in the Posting with Purpose series is all about creating, sharing and interacting. Whether B2B or B2C, by following these four simple steps you will grow your company and social media presence as a well-loved, opinion leader in your industry.

Tag Others. By tagging individuals, businesses and even larger recourses (with the intent to get featured!) you are identifying them to a particular post. The beauty of tagging: many social media accounts allow you to tag anyone in a photo or post! By tagging others you are giving credit where credit is due, and creating a connection with others. Remember, potential clients and other businesses who would rather work with a someone who is transparent.

Share, Share, Share! Here is your chance to become an opinion leader in your field! This step comes in two parts: share other social media posts and share tips. Be sure that you stay in the "safe zone" and only share content relative to your business and/or industry. When it comes to sharing tips, my favorite idea is to reserve a specific day of the week and share a tip that has helped you grow as a small business. This will help your audience as they will look forward to seeing that post each week!

Be Active. The biggest mistake people make when posting to social media is only pushing content, and not interacting. How can you build a community for your brand if you do not interact? It's simple: you can't. "Like" other posts, follow other businesses/industry professionals/national resources, create a dialogue and respond to reviews to increase your own activity.

Avoid Self Promotion. With this final step, remember the phrase "everything in moderation." Do promote your brand and company culture, but avoid content that is overly promotional and commercial. It is always good to incorporate a brag post on a feature or new product, but do not go overboard by only posting that type of content.

Be social, be authentic and strike up a conversation by incorporating the above steps in to your social media campaign.

I may be a social media nerd, but I love hashtags so much that sometimes I find myself going a little overboard. There is just something very exciting about discovering an audience, and having the potential to turn that audience into a consumer of your product and/or service. With the growing popularity of hashtags, one thing holds true: they are not always used correctly for businesses. My fourth post in the Posting with Purpose series is all about the do's and don'ts of hashtagging to make your posts more effective!

DO'S

Create a unique hashtag. Make a list of various hashtags that would work best for your company, and search them on all of the platforms you use. Does anyone else have them? If not, choose that one and always incorporate that hashtag into your posts! If so, then it's back to the drawing boards. Having a unique hashtags allows others to find all of your posts under one list and is a big trend in today's social media culture! ( Fun tip: you can get your clients and consumers to use your hashtag too when posting anything that relates to your company!)

Research. My Dad always says, "prior planning prevents poor performance." This "do" completely resonates to that quote. In order to stay relevant, avoid random hashtags and research ones that relate to your company and specific post. If you choose a random hashtag and it leads you no where, it is pointless.

Hashtag within your text. Many social media users only put their hashtags at the end of their text; however, if you are going to type something in the copy and follow that same word/phrase with a hashtag why not just incorporate it into the copy? There is nothing wrong with using a hashtag in the middle of a sentence, and it will make things easier on you!

DON'TS

Forget etiquette. There are three main rules when it comes to hashtag etiquette: (1) do not use punctuation marks or spaces within one hashtag - it cause a break in the hashtag, (2) do not spam news, event or other company hashtags, and (3) do not hashtag aboslutely every word!

Use too many words in one hashtag. If a fellow social media user has to stare too long to figure out what you are trying to say in a hashtag - get rid of it. Using a hashtag that is short and sweet is much more effective for your brand and audience. Also, you are more likely to misspell a word within a hashtag if it is too long!

Hashtag without purpose. Including random hashtags within your post is ineffective and useless. Always remember to post with purpose, and include hashtags that associate with a specific post and most importantly your business!

If you want to have a social media review of your current platforms to ensure that you are hashtaging with purpose, contact me today!