11 Essential Principles Every Successful Social Media Marketer Follows

We’ve all seen them, interacted with them and shared their content.

But have you ever wondered what makes them so successful?

What is it about the habits, personality and skill of a successful social media marketer that sets them apart?

Is it their social media savvy, intellect, drive and passion?

Or maybe their willingness to keep pushing forward, even amidst setback?

While social media success can feel mysterious and elusive, it is attainable for anyone.

All you have to do it take a look at the tweets and posts of successful marketers to gain an understanding into the traits that define them.

• Hardworking
• Diligent
• Focused
• Flexible

And above all else, consistent in their social media marketing efforts.

Beyond that, they’ve committed to incorporating a few basic rules of thumb. These are essential principles that guide their decisions, conversations and strategy.

If you’re ready to put your social media into overdrive and learn from those that are succeeding every day at social media, keep reading.

I promise what I have to share isn’t rocket science.

Below are a few simple principles that every successful marketer knows and follows and you can too. Each one can be incorporated immediately into your daily habits, actions and routine.

Essential Principles Every Successful Social Media Marketer Follows

  1. Honesty is the BEST Policy

The foundation for success is honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. - Zig Ziglar

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Be honest in all of your online interactions.

Whether you’re promoting a client project or tweeting a corporate partnership, always, always, always tell the truth!

If you’re upfront and clear about your intentions, you will never need to worry about covering your backside.

  2. Treat Others with Respect

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners. - Laurence Sterne

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Your social media followers and fans want to know that they’re important to you.

They also want to know that you respect their opinion. While it might differ from yours, they deserve your respect.

Let them know that you value their insight, opinion and feedback.

Take the time to respond.

Successful marketers know that if you can give people what they want, they will provide you with what you need.

 

  3. Make a Great 1st Impression…Every Time

I influence anybody who is able to get through the chaos of my first impression. - Gary Vaynerchuk

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While Gary Vaynerchuck might have the luxury of a fumbled first impression, most of us do not.

People are fickle, judgmental creatures.  That means you only have one chance to make a great first impression.

Showing up on social media as unkempt, scattered and downright unprofessional is not the message you want to send.

  4. Stay Present in ALL Conversations

The point of power is always in the present moment. - Louise L. Hay

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We all have one favorite topic – us.  We love to talk about our lives, dreams, goals and plans.

What we don’t like is when someone ignores or discounts what we have to say.

Stay present in your social media conversations. Ask questions and show your interest.

There’s no greater gift to give someone that your undivided attention.

 

 5. Make Everything Relevant

Quality, relevant content can't be spotted by an algorithm. You can't subscribe to it. You need people - actual human beings - to create or curate it. - Kristina Halvorson

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Social media fans and followers want to know you get them.

They want to know that you’ve taken the time to understand who they are and share content that’s specific to their needs.

Be clear, concise and quick to solve the problems of anyone connected to you.

Your fans will thank you and your followers will cheer you for quality content that hits its mark every time.

 

  6. Ditch the Negativity

Negativity is expensive. It costs companies millions of dollars each year. - Gary Topchik

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As the saying goes, you attract more bees with honey than with vinegar.

Working on your demeanor and communication skills will go a long way to improving your results.

People will remember that you were a pleasure to interact with if you provide a ray of sunshine in their otherwise dreary day.

People are attracted to cheerful people. Be that person.

 

  7. Enthusiastically Share Other People’s Content

To build a solid, trusted social network, you need to enhance your original content with other people's content. - Peg Fitzpatrick

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Enthusiasm is not overrated hype; it is undeniably one of the most important tools in any marketers toolbelt — and it’s FREE!

Pair that enthusiasm with the power of giving and you have a win-win scenario.

Take a cue from successful social media marketers and enthusiastically share other people’s content.

  8. Stay Focused

Focusing is all about saying no – Steve Jobs

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As social media continues to evolve at a lightning pace, it’s easy to let goals get derailed.

Don’t let the latest and greatest pull your focus away from why you’re using social media in the first place.

Know what you’re looking to achieve and stay the course, no matter what.

  9. Create a Transparent Brand

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity. - Dalai Lama

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Fans and followers are equipped with a built in “BS” meter and if they sense something isn’t quite right, you’ll run into one problem after another.

Trust is built over time and through actions as well as words.

Proving that you are trustworthy and reliable through a transparent and open brand is an important factor in a sustainable and mutually beneficial relationship.

  10. Pay it Forward

Pay it forward with free compliments. They are returned in due time. - David Chiles

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Successful social media marketers know that part of their success is due to their willingness to pay it forward.

They’ve tasted success and have no problem sharing it with others.

Whether it’s passing along a tip, words of wisdom or an introduction — take time daily to pay what you can forward.

  11. Find Balance

The key to successfully balancing your life with your social media activities involves prudent prioritizing. - Ann Tran

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As Ann says, the key to successfully balancing a robust and happy life with daily social media activity is being smart with your priorities.

Find time to step away from the computer. For one it’s unhealthy to work non-stop. Secondly, it’s a creativity killer.

Believe me, I know.

Final Thoughts

Like many things in life, there is no one-size fits all solution to social media success.

It’s up to you to test what works and identify a formula that supports business growth.

What one thing do you feel is attributing to the social media success you’ve seen?

Do it over and over again, without fail. Then begin to add others in until you start to see traction.
Once you have momentum, the sky is the limit!

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6 Must-Have Tools to Boost Your Social-Media Productivity

Let’s face it. The daily demands of running a business and managing multiple social media accounts can eat up a big chunk of your time.

Nearly all marketers use social media in their marketing mix, which means more and more businesses are getting actively involved. Business is always affected by the consumer environment, and social media makes a great environment for leads and prospects.

As an entrepreneur, your goal is to find where these future customers hang out, and put your ideas in front of them. Since most of your customers like to use at least a few social platforms, this applies even if your target demographis is 55-64 year olds, which is the fastest growing age bracket on Twitter.

Thankfully, there are tools to help you boost your social media productivity and marketing:

1. Rignite

Rignite is a neat little tool that I recently discovered. It’s actually a full-blown social media dashboard that lets you control and monitor your social media activities all under one roof.

With Rignite, you can monitor multiple social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram etc. You can chat and collaborate with your social media team inside Rignite, so it’s perfect for larger teams. But even if you have a small team, Rignite will pleasantly surprise you.

One cool feature is “Schedule Profile Groups” where you can schedule multiple social media posts for different platforms. Rignite Groups are a set of social profiles.

You can also connect your Rignite profile with Feedly to find interesting content, curate and post it.

The cherry on the top is Rignite’s Campaigns feature. Set up a New Campaign to schedule a series of posts, grow your email list, host contests for your fans, or promote a discount.

Campaigns run on auto-pilot once set. For example, you can create a series of posts to promote your content or a new blog post (super-helpful if you’re a blogger!) across multiple platforms on a chosen day and time.

With their campaign-level analysis, you can also know what’s working and what’s not.

To monitor certain keyword trends on social media, you can Add New Stream under Monitor tab from the left-hand menu. Below, I have added two new streams to my Rignite (Blogging and Digital Marketing) to monitor what’s happening in those areas on Twitter.

All in all, I think Rignite offers a ton of features to enhance your social media marketing experience.

Price: Free trial for 14 days. Paid plans start from $28/mo per user.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Measuring Your Social Media ROI

2. Topsy

It can be too hard to make sense of the billion tweets on Twitter. EnterTopsy, a free Twitter analytics tool to search, monitor and analyze tweets.

You can find tweets, links, photos, videos or shares by a person or on a specific topic. This is a wealth of data if you want to find out what’s trending and being shared. But most importantly, Topsy can also help you with your blogger outreach campaign.

Price: Free.

3. Mention

Mention is a real-time media monitoring app that lets you listen, react quickly, collaborate and analyze your online presence.

Mention is a great alternative to Google Alerts. According toWordStream, Google Alerts apparently works if the following conditions are met:

Google Alerts only sends you email if new articles, webpages or blog posts make it into the top ten Google News results, the top twenty Google Web Search results or top ten Google Blog Search results for your query. If the top results remain the same for a while, you won't receive email on your topic.

That means that with Google Alerts, you will not receive an alert for every mention out there. With Mention, things are brighter. The number of results are way more than that reported by Google Alerts. Mention also takes into account any social mentions you may have had.

You can monitor Facebook, Twitter, News, Blogs, Videos, Forums, Images and Web, but their best feature is reporting. If you’re a big brand or company this means gold for you. For example, let’s say you’ve recently launched a new product and you notice some cool new spikes in your report. You can now attribute where those spikes came from (the launch) and whether it worked well for you.

When receiving Mentions from Twitter, you can turn on a feature to track your Twitter name but exclude your own tweets from alerts. Pretty cool, right?

Price: Free 14-day trial. Basic plan free for one user, one alert and 250 mentions/mo. Paid plans available too.

4. Twtrland

Twtrland is a simple tool to discover new people on Twitter. Sign up via your Twitter account for free.

You’ll be taken to your dashboard that shows your activity, popularity, and communicative scores.You’ll also see your top content that did well on Twitter (based on all time or recent posts).

The Network tab shows a break down of your followers by celebrities, power users, casual and novices; location; age; skill and gender.

Price: Free 14-day trial. Paid plans start at $49/mo.

Related: 18 Effective Social-Media Tools That Will Save You Time

5. LikeAlyzer

There are many tools to analyze Twitter posts, but what about Facebook, the largest social media network on earth?

Enter LikeAlyzer, a tool to analyze and monitor your Facebook page. If you’re big on Facebook and use it to drive traffic to your website or blog, give this one a try.

You can analyze your competitor’s Facebook page and compare that to yours. LikeAlyzer assigns a unique score to pages. In the above example, PickYourGoals Facebook page has a “LikeRank” of 63 out of 100.

Here are the things LikeAlyzer reviews on your page:

1. Page Information: Checks whether you have filled your profile including any milestones.

2. Page Performance: Your overall performance, the number of likes you need to engage better, and whether you have a big enough audience to find success on Facebook.

3. Posts by Page: Talks about posts per day; timing; likes, comments and shares per post; length; curiosity etc.

4. Posts by Others: How you’re dealing with fan responses.

The report tells you how well you’re doing, and also suggests areas to focus on to make improvements. You can repeat the process for a competitor page and see if they have a higher score and how they are doing better than you. Pretty cool!

Price: Free.

6. Swayy

Swayy finds you the best content on the web so you can share it with your fans and followers on social media, thus saving you time on curation.

Add topics of your interest (niches), hit submit and sit back and relax to receive a daily dose of best content to share with your audience.

With a paid plan, you can add multiple dashboards inside Swayy (a community manager’s heaven!) if you manage more than on social accounts.

Once done, you’ll receive a daily email with the best content to go around in your chosen topics.

Swayy dashboard also shows how your shares are doing.

Price: Free for one dashboard. Paid plans start from $9/mo with two dashboards.

There you go – 6 tools that will boost your social media marketing and productivity, so you can relax and focus on other important activities in business.

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