Nurturing relationships with social media marketing

Social media marketing is not about driving direct sales. Instead, social businesses build and nurture relationships with prospects, leads, customers, advocates and partners. If you apply a pure, sales-driven mentality to your social media marketing campaigns, you will most likely be let down.

Social media marketing is great for brand visibility, awareness, thought leadership and nurturing activities.  Success comes with learning the rules of the community you are engaging with and providing value to.

Nurturing relationships with social media

Remember, social media (and marketing) is all about building relationships. It's not just about getting retweets and gaining new followers. Here are a few tips which will help you with nurturing relationships:

• Frequency - Activity is important for building influence. Build a routine and keep your account active. Try to not "fall of the map" when it comes to posts, tweets and general social activity.
• Respond and reply - If someone shares, retweets or comments on your content or brand, remember to respond to their gesture. Make contact and be graceful.
• Be personable - Try to keep your interactions meaningful and human... Sure, it's a virtual relationship, but maintaining genuine and personable interactions help drive reciprocity.
• Curate - Share and curate great content. Don't just post your own content. Share interesting, useful and meaningful content with your followers that you and they may love. This curation process can inspire new relationships to form.  Also, it's a good habit to continually look for relevant and interesting news and articles. You'll learn a lot in the process.
• Community rules - Be respectful of the social media community that you are participating in. Learn the rules. Don't just spam post your sales messages everywhere there is activity... It will only get you banned, and it will build ill will with your brand.