As part of Velsoft’s marketing strategy, last fall we embarked on a renewed effort to write blogs for our website, and post more offerings on Facebook and Twitter.

At first, we were hoping these efforts would boost sales and generate leads for our account representatives, along with providing useful content. So we completed extensive research into how to use social media as a marketing tool.

But what we’ve learned since we began our endeavors is that some of our initial ideas were a bit off-base.

To mark World Social Media Day, which takes place on June 30, here are a few thoughts on what we’ve learned about social media in the last six months.

  1. The rules are constantly changing. Just when we think we have figured out what works best, something like the General Data Protection Regulation is introduced and algorithms change, causing us to learn anew.
  2. For us, the use of social media is not a sales tool. It’s more about developing relationships with our customers and others, and being good corporate citizens.
  3. Twitter followers don’t want sales pitches. If our tweets contain any hint of selling, we receive fewer impressions.
  4. Learning what people want to read takes time, research and trials.
  5. Hashtags work. Using these consistently on our posts has generated a bunch of new followers.
  6. All kinds of information is out there about the best times of day to post, but for us, we experimented with different times and found that it doesn’t seem to matter, as Tweets and Facebook posts seem to stick around for longer than we originally thought.

Conclusion:

Although we originally started out with the idea of supplying beneficial content plus selling, we quickly realized that it’s not about selling at all. We want our posts to provide insight into our company and let others know what we’re doing while delivering content that is helpful and has value to others.

And that’s what we’ll continue doing. That is, until something changes again. 😉

To find out more about Velsoft, connect with us by clicking on one of the social media icons above.