Social media marketing is a crucial part to most (…and I’d probably say every) business marketing strategy. However, we are now see businesses focus on delivering their own messages instead of interacting with potential customers and trying to create long lasting relationships for their business.

For example, would you rather interact with a business on Twitter who is blasting out generic messages every 2 minutes in CAPITAL LETTERS with loads of unrelated hashtags, or would you prefer a more personal approach where the business has politely started conversation with you? Interaction and engagement then increases the chance of making a sale.

Remember social media is social. People are on there to chat to other people. Even if it is business, there are still people managing these social pages and chatting about business related subjects. Far too often we find businesses that simply spam their audience with content that is poor and, quite frankly, terribly boring.

This infographic really sums it up, from the clever guys at HubSpot. It gives a nice visual account of the way social media marketing is changing.