I spend a lot of time reviewing clients’ social media campaigns and advising them on ways to improve. Here are the top five most common mistakes that I see:
Top 5 Social Media Mistakes
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No purpose/sales funnel/strategy
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Me, me, me!
Some (too many) companies seem to have missed the point of social media entirely. With greedy eyes they see the statistics of user data on Facebook and slap up a fancy page boasting about their services or products. They pat themselves on the back for having a set posting schedule, and send out regular updates daily about each and every product in their line.
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn!
Simply put, if social media isn’t social, it won’t work. Think about what your customers want. What are their interests? What kind of tone will they respond to: friendly or professional? Do they want breaking news, cool trends or celebrity gossip to break up the monotony of your sales pitches?
Talking about yourself all the time isn’t acceptable in social situations, and it isn’t effective in social media.
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No interaction
Rather than a social media mistake, this is more like a crime. At least a serious customer service faux pas.So you have a social media presence… one of your customers has a question and they reach out to you… only to find silence.
Your social media profiles are like a mask without a real person behind them.
Not checking or responding to customer feedback on your social media platforms can do massive damage to your brand.
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No consistency
Is your Twitter stream bi-polar? Do you have twenty posts a day followed by an eery absence of content? Consistency is a real key to successful social media engagement, and kind of a Goldilocks story:
Too little activity and people will forget you.
Too much activity and you run the risk of annoying your fans.How often and when you need to post varies depending on your business and audience, but in general, you should set a schedule and stick to it as much as possible. With great scheduling tools such as Hootsuite, this can be easy.
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No personality
Don’t let your social media presence be the dull and professional to the point of sounding distant and aloof. Social media needs a slightly different ‘voice’ than other forms of marketing.You are speaking to your audience in a more informal, immediate and regular way, and your updates should reflect an understanding of their interests both in your company and industry in general.
Adding a bit of humour and sparkle to your updates will engage your fans and followers and encourage them to interact with your profile.
By far the biggest mistake made by businesses on social media is to not have a strategy. They know they need a Facebook page or Twitter account, set it up, post randomly and then wonder why everyone claims social media is such a great way to find customers.
Ask yourself what you want to accomplish on each social media platform. Do you want Twitter to act as a q and a forum? Will your Facebook page promote new offers or act as a slick mini site? Will you run social media competitions to attract fans, and once you have them, how will you convert them into customers?
A roadmap for your social media presence will help to guide both your staff and fans through a well defined process and give purpose to your pages and profiles.
Angela,
Bravo! We need to keep the “Social” in Social Media. More power to you!
Peace,
Jimmy
Great tips. Thanks… I am always warning clients about the “you like me, you really, really like me” syndrome where you end of begging for likes instead of giving supporters good content.
I see some business putting out tweets & Facebook updates with obvious spelling and grammatical errors. Always proofread!
Sweet Tips Angela! thank you for the insight.
Good points Angela. Thank you. The personal touch is important when communicating as a brand to consumer in social media. When responding to fb posts it’s not hard to notice and comment if one of your regular fans has changed their profile pic or to make a quick follow up to see if a query was resolved.
Great info.I see alot of this going on.And i think taking some personal touch will get you there.Great stuff Thanks.
Good stuff! Thanks Angela…
ur Blog post is missin a google+ button
(obvious mistake?)
It’s item #3 on my to do list for this week!
Glad you found it interesting Mike.
Great tips! But it’s extremely hard to interact my readers… they just refuse to leave a comment and I follow them without their knowledge with my blog’s statistics.
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Try ending each post with a question. This is a good way to engage your readers.
Great tips for any social marketing strategy. I think that many people look at social media as a well of buyers rather than as individuals living their lives and looking for things to make that journey a little bit better in some way. If you market to sell you will fail, if you market to serve you will succeed.
“if you market to serve you will succeed.” Well put Jon!
You’ve touched on great points Angela. I’ll be sharing this on my FB Page.
I see many of these mentioned mistakes happen all the time. Some businesses think OK, I’ll have a FB Page or open up a Twitter account because so and so has one and I want to gain more fans and followers than they do. After I ask them, how will they do it and what will they do after they start gaining those, they draw a blank. A strategy is key! Without it, you might as well go back to spending your hard earned money on yellow pages.
Thanks for writing this great article. Worth sharing!
Jocelyn
Thanks Jocelyn.