Remaining ethical in social media

Social media marketing is one of the most effective ways to reach your niche market and generate interest in your company. Why is social media so powerful? For one, millions of people use social media sites each day and millions of new customers are being introduced to social media sites. Another reason social media is so popular for businesses are the opportunity it provides for word of mouth marketing. In just a matter of seconds, your marketing message can be sent to millions of people using features like "re-tweets". Since marketing gurus know how effective word of mouth marketing campaigns are, they can understand the value in social media sites.

In order for social media sites to become effective, the messages that are sent out must be truthful, reliable, and credible. On social media sites a number of people are blocking certain users or hiding their status messages altogether. Gaining the trust of your customers is vital in order to survive social media sites. Customers are naturally skeptical of the advertisements and endorsements found on social media sites that it is causing many of them to avoid the ads altogether.

So how do you break through the ethical barrier that so many other companies have ruined? Here are some simple steps to follow that will help you to build up your following and to gain the trust and respect of your customers:
1. Coupons. A great way to build relationships is by sending out credible information to them. Sending discounts codes and coupons will help you gain interest and if you time them correctly, your customers are likely to avoid blocking or hiding you from their social media homepage.
2. Product reviews and referrals. When you write a blog post or other things, you want to have customer reviews and referrals in the post. This way you can include a customer review that is honest about your product. Actual customer reviews give an unbiased opinion, one that your customers are likely to trust.
3. Valuable information. Posting timely information that actually has value is a great way to acquire customers. People will ignore you if you are posting too often and the information doesn't provide them with any type of value.

As it comes to acquiring the right customer reviews for your website and blogs you need to make sure the customer is stating their name, the product they purchased, and then their opinion. Having the name of the person helps to make the product review seem real and actual. You also don't want to edit the review as grammatical errors make the review "real" and your customers can see that you are not the person writing the reviews.

People need the truth and they will make buying decisions based on the truth and accuracy of the reviews of your customers, not on the opinion you provide. They already know you are biased about your products and you aren't going to point out the flaws like your customers will when they purchase a product.

Never impersonate anyone. All those "celebrity" accounts on Facebook and twitter are rarely managed by the celebrity and managed by a company that represents the celebrity. This makes it very difficult for anyone to believe that the celebrity is actually on these sites, which is slightly misleading to people on the social media sites. If you have multiple people from the company that are posting on social media sites, have them state their name and position with the company as this will help your customers to see who they are actually talking to with the company so they do not feel mislead in any way.