Social media is touted as the most interactive, least expensive way to communicate with potential and existing customers. Most mainstream media brands — and many adult entertainment brands — maintain active presences on the social media Big Three: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Each platform attracts its own audience (Instagram’s is primarily young and female; Twitter and Facebook users are split evenly between the genders and claim users of all ages), but some basic tips for success apply to all of them.

The 80/20 rule

Research has demonstrated marketers get the best response when they engage social media audiences with more than just promotional messages. In fact, only a small percentage of posts — 20 percent, max — should be calls to action. The other 80 percent should be devoted to information, education, inspiration and/or entertainment.

How the 80 percent is handled varies from brand to brand and is highly influenced by the public perception the brand wants to foster. Sex educators might post links to sex-life tips and tricks or research about sexuality, or they might engage in passionate advocacy for a cause. Studios could post shout-outs to stars, links to interviews with personnel or behind-the-scenes images or video (SFW). Pleasure products manufacturers may want to solicit followers’ opinions about product packaging or offer bedroom advice. For performers, memes and tidbits from daily life work well.

Whatever you post in your 80 percent, make it something others will want to share. Developing a reputation for sharing interesting stuff will increase not only your cachet with the masses, but also the likelihood your followers will share the 20 percent of posts devoted to promotional messages.

Customer service

No matter how satisfied the majority of your customers, there will always be a few who aren’t pleased with your product or service. Unfortunately, those few always seem to have the biggest mouths and least compunction about airing their grievances in public.

When you receive negative comments on social media channels, don’t ignore them and don’t delete them. Instead, acknowledge the person’s comment. If you can, move the conversation to private messages. Whether or not the conversation continues in private, determine exactly what the person is concerned about and address the situation in a way that makes the most sense for your brand.

Use, don’t abuse, hashtags

Hashtags help social media denizens find subjects that interest them — they increase the elusive quality known as “discoverability.” Studies indicate hashtags increase engagement on Twitter and Instagram, but Facebook posts perform better without them.

All three networks allow only letters, numbers and underscores to follow the #; a hashtag is truncated at the point the system encounters a character it doesn’t recognize (like &, /, =, etc.). The best hashtags are short — 15 characters or so — and clearly convey a concept: #InternationalBeerDay, #FlashbackFriday and #CamGirlTakeover, for example.

Instagram limits to 30 the number of hashtags a post can include, and the sites statistics indicate posts with 11 or more hashtags receive the highest interaction. Facebook doesn’t limit hashtags, but since posts on the platform perform better without them, why bother? Twitter doesn’t limit the number of hashtags, either, as long as they and the message combined occupy only 140 characters. Twitter suggests using no more than two hashtags per message to get the best response.

To derive the most benefit from hashtags, research first to make sure the tag you’d like to use isn’t already in use for something else. Relevant, brand-specific keywords make good hashtags.