With all the new media options available to businesses these days, it’s important to determine which best suit your business and how to best utilize these options.  With social media and electronic media being increasingly important for businesses, it’s key that they are used properly.  If used improperly, it’s very easy for people to opt out thus losing the link with these potential customers.  Let’s look at some specific platforms:

Bulk e-mailers:  Anyone who has an e-mail account, which is most of the population now, knows how annoying spam is.  If you’re a company sending out bulk e-mails as a way to communicate with potential clients, you’re a spammer.  So how do you avoid being too annoying and increase your chance of actually being read as people wade through the masses of spam they get daily? 

To avoid being too annoying, be selective about how often you e-mail your bulk list.  Here at GaitPost we send out 2 bulk e-mails per month to remind people about our deadlines.  Inevitably, we receive some requests to be removed from our bulk list and the odd piece of hate mail. (We’re sorryJ.) If you can build a strong list of contacts and take a few nastygrams, this is a really effective avenue for informing the masses about your company.

To increase the chances of people actually reading your e-mail, keep it brief and to the point.

Twitter:  It is for the dedicated because anyone who has any sort of “following” list has to spend some serious time reading all of the posts.  Make sure that your posts are interesting and relevant.  Twitter is not for conversations! It’s really important not to post too often.  It’s okay to post multiple times per day if you have something important to post, but if you find yourself posting every random musing you have, stop yourself!  If a “follower” is wading through too many of your posts and they are not even useful posts, they will simply “unfollow” you. 

Facebook: This medium can be a really useful tool for businesses.  This social media is particularly useful for interesting & fun tidbits, short newsy posts and gives companies the chance get feedback from their customers.  Remember there is an etiquette associated with using Facebook, mostly don’t overdo your posts.

The prevailing theme is moderation, don’t go overboard.  It’s just like a rider with really busy hands, sooner or later the horse will get sick of the over-communication and tune out.