Daniel Offer writes, Daniel is the owner of Chit Chat – a Facebook IM. Chit Chat is a Facebook messenger that makes it possible to chat online with Facebook from your desktop.
Social media is a wonderful tool for marketing your business or product but, like any tool, it can be used incorrectly or ineffectively. Listed below are the top 10 most common social media marketing mistakes. By avoiding these common mistakes, you can make your business marketing much more effective in the social media landscape.
1. Spreading yourself too thin.
Each social media outlet has thousands of users, encounters hundreds of post and updates, and may even offer games and applications. It is virtually
impossible to follow every major social media outlet effectively. It is far more productive to select one major social media outlet (e.g., Twitter, Facebook) and follow it closely by posting regular status updates, pictures, customer testimonials, etc.
2. Not hiring social media experts.
Social media has the reputation of being the domain of bloggers, teenagers, and entrepreneurs. However, putting an intern or untrained employee in charge of social media marketing for your business is bound to end in disaster.
Social media may be an informal environment, but your social updates, advertising, and comments still need to be accurately and effectively convey your business’s message. Ads and promotions must be expertly designed and launched in order to make an impact.
Finally, all social media actions need to be legally cleared if your business is to avoid litigation.
3. Not cleaning up your mess.
Once you post something to a social media outlet, it will stay there until either the site shuts down or you decide to take it down. As a matter of professional
courtesy, delete your old business profile and comments if you decide to leave a social media site.
Having users find your previous social media attempts does not reflect well on you or your company.
4. Not investing money.
Social media may be free, but managing social media accounts is not. You will need to invest some money into your social media ventures, whether by hiring employees to run the site, by buying advertising, or by allocating current employees to different social media tasks.
5. Not measuring return on investment (ROI).
There is the notion that social media cannot be followed by any kind of metric in order to assess ROI. It may be difficult to understand how much money a social media presence is generating for your business.
However, you can assess your social media success (or lack thereof) by measuring other parameters, such as the number of subscribers, online coupon redemptions, brand awareness, etc.
6. Spamming your subscribers.
Your subscribers will not remain subscribed to your business for long if you constantly inundate them with online marketing collateral and spam. Sending an occasional promotional code to your subscribers is fine; constantly harassing your subscribers with product and company news announcements is not.
7. Not recruiting from within.
Subscribers to your site can become the best product sponsors if you learn how to recruit them correctly. It doesn’t take any money, bribes, or begging.
Simply feature a subscriber on your company blog or newsletter and you will gain an instant advocate for your business.
8. Publishing first, asking questions later.
Whatever you publish online will stay online-forever. That means that your subscribers, colleagues, collaborators, and competitors will be reading your posts for a long time after they are published. Consider carefully what message you would like to convey to a host of different parties and outlooks before clicking on the ‘Publish’ button.
9. Deleting negative feedback.
Many businesses fear negative feedback and will delete bad reviews and comments, along with any complaints. However, this makes a bad situation worse because word will spread that a company is censoring its subscribers. A far better tactic is to keep all negative feedback and respond to it in a positive and constructive way.
This shows subscribers that your business is willing to address issues and resolve them in a professional manner.
10. Expecting too much too fast.
While social media is a great tool for business, it is limited. Social media can certainly increase brand awareness, for example, but it will not drive higher
sales. Your metric of 10,000 subscribers in 10 days may take over a year to achieve, and days will go by when not a single person clicks on and goes to your web site.
The key here is to keep posting and blogging in stead of becoming discouraged.
Eventually, you will start achieving your social media goals.
3 replies on “10 Most Common Social Media Marketing Mistakes”
Their are new platforms and social media sites emerging almost daily. I agree that you can spread yourself to thin.
I think Facebook and Twitter covers about 98% of what’s most relevant.
I’d like to comment on item No. 9 of your list – I just hate it when people delete what you have to say, especially when you are trying to do so in the name of continuous improvement. I think that censorship should only apply when there are foul words involved and not on a negative feedback that’s meant to help you do a better business online. Besides, you don’t want to be so unreachable that customers will resort to reporting you to FTC or BBB, or both – when things can be resolved in the first place. I like your tips here, thanks!