10 Social Media Rules to Maximise Your Social Media Channels

Here are 10 relatively quick and easy ways to make the most of your Facebook, Twitter, blog, YouTube (and any other social media channels you may be running).

1. Make sharing your blog content as easy as possible. Work on the premise that your audience is either lazy or very pressed for time. Install share, like and tweet buttons wherever possible

2. Cross promote your channels. If you have content on more than one social media site, give your users the option to interact with you in their preferred way. Adding a link to your Twitter page on Facebook or a link to your YouTube channel on your blog is a quick and easy way to let people know where else to find you or your brand

3. Monitor what is being said about your brand. The use of tools such as Google Alerts is essential to keep an eye on what is being said about your brand, positive or negative. Enter the name or phrases you'd like to track and how frequently you'd like to be notified

4. Be honest, transparent and human. Trying to cover things up or avoiding issues will only backfire. Address issues or negative comments head on and you're more likely to change a negative into a positive

5. Experiment, test, record and learn. Don't be afraid to try new things. Some will work others will fail but if you have done a stock check of your fans, followers, view etc before and after the trail, you'll be armed with the tools you need to learn and improve

6. Establish a strategy for each of your social media channels. Once you have goals, however small they may be, you have something to work towards and a benchmark to assess yourself by. How do you compare to your competitiors? And how would you like to compare to them?

7. Know your audiences. Approach each social platform separately. Just because those who like your Facebook page love regular offers and promotion updates doesn't mean your Twitter audience will feel the same way

8. Plan for the worst. Don't wait for something to go wrong before you figure out how to tackle it. Who should respond to that negative comment? How should you reply? A simple Social Media Triage/Flowchart can easily clear this up. Start simple and review and amend this over time.

9. Don't try to run before you can walk. It's tempting to rush in and create accounts for every social media community there is going, but if you're unable to manage them this can work against your favor. Work out where your target audience will be, who they'll engage with, where and how, then you'll know which social networks are for you and the type of content you need to provide them

10. Avoid brand hijacking and brand identity theft. Register any potential future usernames with as many social media channels as you can. They may never be used but should you decide to move into this area at a later date they'll be set up ready for you. More importantly this will prevent anyone presenting themselves as you. You can always change the settings on such pages to private to prevent people finding them by accident and set them up with a link to your active pages or main website.