Do you run a retail business and wish to boost profits promoting your business on social media? It is certainly possible, since retail is one of those rare industries that can benefit from both conventional marketing and social media. However, you would have to be extra careful when promoting your retail business on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Your consumer base will only grow if the consumers trust you. Here are top 3 things that you should never do when promoting your retail business:

1. Tweeting every hour, and only about your products: You may feel very excited about promoting your products to possible customers, but know when to apply the brakes. If all you are posting on your Twitter channel are product updates, and that too every hour, then you are guaranteed to be blocked by most of those would-be customers, before they purchase a single product from you. Even worse, some of them might tag you as spammer as well. Remember, a few spam tags like that, and your account might be locked out of Twitter for good. The remedy here is to post a lot of links that have good information, which the customers would love to read through. Provide a few promotional links in between, and you are sure to improve your revenues in the long run.

2. Posting only generic product updates on Facebook: Never limit posting of updates to only product information on Facebook. In order to attract visitors, you need to post informative links, and spice it up with contests, lucky draws and news about special offers. Include these in your social media marketing plan. Remember, Twitter only allows you to post links and text messages, but Facebook is your playground, and you can certainly play around with the posts a lot more. Add lots of pictures to your posts, as well as music and videos, to make those look interesting and inviting to visitors.

3. Try to sell products right away: When someone visits your retail store, you are likely to be a lot more interested to sell him (or her) products than you are in getting acquainted with the person. Make no mistake - this strategy is comparable to suicide in social media. You must build up a good rapport with your visitors before you try to sell anything to them. Be sure to have a proper social media marketing strategy in place, clearly stating step-by-step how a potential customer should be approached. Otherwise, you are more likely to be blacklisted.