Have you noticed that some brands gather hundreds of likes, reposts, retweets (whatever) while others have a drop in the sea or even (I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy) suspended and blocked accounts because of their activity on social media? I have seen thousands of suchlike accounts. And believe me or not, I know what caused their failure.
Nowadays, social media marketing (SMM) is vital for your business growth. Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Rinterest, Google+, Instagram, etc. are a great opportunity to reach your target audience. Social media play a key role in modern marketing - both for young companies (start-ups) and for the well-known brands. 88% of all companies all over the world are using social media in their marketing strategies according to Adweek.
SMM is an important tool for promoting products and services. Everyone is aware of the fact that there needs to be at least some plan to wind the campaign. The main thing here is to go in the right direction from the first steps. Otherwise, there is a huge risk of alienating the audience or losing it forever. We will not talk here though about global (strategical) mistakes such as failure with social media plan.
The mistakes below will open your eyes to social media marketing tactics along with the pieces of advice how to avoid them.
You don’t want to throw your social media into garbage the very moment you create them, right?
So, what mistakes should be avoided to escape the notorious destiny of time and money loss?
Mistake 1: Invading All Social Media at Once
If you know there exist Twitter, Quora, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, and more than a dozen of other popular social media, it doesn’t mean you should register everywhere. If you do so, you will soon realize that you have neither time, nor money to keep them live. Then you lose heart and turn face to the wall.
To avoid suchlike situation, choose the most appropriate social media for your company or blog. Rely upon gender and age differences social networks have, as well as other key factors for your social media choice.
Mistake 2: Creating a Ridiculous Account
Now, as you have chosen the best suitable social network, do not create an account that makes everyone laugh (unless it’s the major purpose of your business). Don’t use such words as “legendary” and “awesome” as a part of your brand name (again, unless it is actually your brand name).
The reason is simple: if you have to tell people that you are cool, you apparently aren’t. And it’s just a proof for everybody else that you’re a total tool on social media.
Instead, follow these easy steps while creating your account:
• Make you brand name sound official and serious;
• Add an appealing profile avatar and cover image with description of your business and call-to-action;
• Your profile picture should be clear and business-like;
• Create a vanity URL for your page (if it’s LinkedIn, you may use their help page to do this, and if it’s Facebook, you may use www.facebook.com/username (please, remember that you can only change username once));
• Choose the category for your business/product;
• Complete your “about section”;
• Indicate a link to your site/contact page.
Mistake 3: Accepting Social Media Default Privacy Settings
Thanks to privacy settings all social media are prone to, you can make your public profile turn into a landfill, where every second spammer will post anything s/he wants. And then you are looking for the ways to get rid of your Twitter spam.Facebook, for instance, wants and needs its ad model to work, so its default settings are really rather open-handed with your profile information.
Just go as private as you can. Change passwords in your social media accounts regularly to avoid mishaps.
Mistake 4: Using Accounts Only for Promotional Purposes
Have you seen such accounts? I have. Plenty of times. We know people do this on Twitter and Facebook, too (sometimes they do it too much).Make at your posts as personal and close to your audience as you can. Very often businesses do not care about their audience and start overposting.
Image source: brockcomm.
Posting too much as well as posting too little is going to extremes. These are the first reasons why your accounts can go down the drain.
Mistake 5: Being Quantity and Quality Illiterate
Here I’d like to make an emphasis on the quantity of your social media content and its quality.Quantity
I’ll cry now. Don’t ever do so. Writing posts (pins, tweets, etc.) that consist entirely of #hashtags are just too primitive. More than that, hashtags on Facebook are considered inappropriate, because it uses them to group conversations between people.
People often ask me: How much should I post every day/week/month? Well, guys. What should I tell you - use common sense. First, plan your content beforehand. Besides, there is an amazingly simple social media success formula: 10*7 = 5+3+2
10 means you should have 10 posts a week (7).
5 – posts/reposts/retweets from others relevant to your audience;
3 – posts about your company, your products;
2 – something non-work related, something personal you can share with your readers.
Quality
Using #hashtags in a wrong way is like slow killing for me.
One more fallacy in this group is wrong grammar, typos and mistakes in spelling, etc. Please, be attentive while writing your next post or tweet.
Going too emotional is also a huge drawback of your social media profile. People were even arrested because of their posts on social media. So, don’t get too emotional.
To prevent your social network profiles from being called garbage, create various posts (text posts, photos, videos, links, etc.). Here’s how to do it on Facebook and achieve success on Youtube, if you’re aiming at it.
Mistake 6: Buying People
Here is why you shouldn’t do this. The quantity of followers doesn’t show the quality of your product. The main goal for you should be maintaining good relationships with your audience, but not hunting the numbers. It’s better to invest your money into ads. Have a look at Zappos ads strategy that earns Zappos an annual income from Facebook ads for $10 million.
Mistake 7: Asocial Behavior
Are you ignoring comments and messages? Then, congrats, you are one from the chosen who are heading to the pig pile of rubbish.People who are using social networks are longing for communication and attention. And depriving them of these two is cruel and impolite. Don’t ignore them, when they write a feedback about you, even if it’s negative. Answers to comments are always appreciated. Know your audience and get in touch with all of them.
Which mistake left a bitter taste in your mouth?
Author Bio:
Raymond Stokes – head of Marketing at Essay Writing Place. Interested in start-ups and extraordinary things. Contact me on Twitter.
