Any social media activity needs to be linked to your wider comms plan and support broader activity plans, and also requires slightly different marketing ‘muscles’. You can’t just set up the profiles and expect them to take care of themselves, or see it as a platform to use sporadically and think people will automatically engage. It requires commitment, time and on-brand content to be a success.

Content is key but ensure quality over quantity. While regular posts are important, it is essential that the content shared is of a decent quality. This doesn’t mean all photos or videos have to be by professional content creators, a decent iPhone shot works just as well, as long as it is framed well, clear, bright and uncluttered. Make sure your content is tailored to the different platforms. Aside from the obvious format differences, it’s important to consider how users consume content on different platforms: Twitter should be short, snappy and fast; Instagram users want beautiful imagery; while TikTok is all about engaging (entertaining, informative, educational etc.) video content.

When you’re managing a brand social media account you should be:

• Honest and transparent

• Informal and individual (or when there’s a need to be formal, remember to still be human)

• Quick and reactive

• Consistent

• Conversational

• In line with brand guidelines and other forms of marketing comms

• Engaging

There are some horror stories about how brands have reacted when things went wrong on social media – crucially, you can’t bury your head in the sand. Just deleting a post and hoping it’ll go away isn’t an effective strategy (or, in fact, a strategy at all) – it will have been seen, potentially shared, and Google may well have indexed it already, so it’ll still exist somewhere on the web and tring to pretend that it isn’t will have the complete opposite effect to what you’re hoping for.

Depending on the severity of the situation, this is where your crisis comms planning may need to come into play. Ensuring the social media team knows how to escalate a situation if and when needed, and that they take the conversations offline ASAP. Don’t carry out any individual back and forth in public – resolve the issue in a non-public forum. Usually, if it is dealt with satisfactorily, the user with the gripe will come full circle on their public story and update their followers, or at the very least, stop sharing negative comments.

People are far more forgiving if they see you learning – admitting to a mistake and actively making changes to address the issue and correct things going forward goes a long way. It’s true that negatives can be turned into positives when they are handled well.

If you plan well, give online activity the time and commitment it needs and remember that, ultimately, it’s simply a conversation between humans, it’s not as scary a place as it might seem.