Social media sites and networks offer a great opportunity to brand your business for free. Almost everyone uses sites like Facebook and Twitter and check these sites everyday. But people get carried away to use these sites for promotion in a manner that can cost you heavily. There are some mistakes that can kill your social media promotions if you are not careful enough. I’ve tried to list the top ten mistakes you could make:
1. Shameless Sales Pitch & Promotion
Most people join social networks for personal reasons like socializing, networking and sharing common interests and not to be a part of sales lists. While people may connect to you on a social site to remain updated about your service or may be connect with your brand, but, they definitely do not want to be hounded by sales pitches & advertising. So do not use social media site as your sales page.
2. Buying Your Friends
Most companies have success metrics like the number of likes or friends their agency can get them. I am not sure how it benefits them in the real world of business. The key is to figure out how you engage with these people. You will find that on sites like Fiverr.com and other such freelance sites, people sell friends (read connections) for social media sites. It may be tempting to pad your profile with fans, but this is a deadly mistake. In most cases, these ‘friends’ aren’t even real people and it will soon become obvious to the real people who join you on your site.
3. One-Way Communication
I’ve observed that many companies want to use social sites but never invest their time in it. When people come to your site and comment or ask questions, you must engage with them by responding. Social media is about conversations and not just one-way communication. You must reply to the questions and make them feel welcome. These small gestures on social show that you’re an approachable, responsive brand that cares for what people think.
4. Nothing to Do
As mentioned earlier, social media is all about conversations. It is popular for its ability to be interactive. If your social page just presents information about your brand and doesn’t give your users anything to do there, they won’t stick around. Which is why in most successful social media setups companies use the applications and widgets to make their site interactive.
5. Neglect
The job does not end with creating a Facebook page or a Twitter handle. Maintaining your social presence is a never-ending job. Every company must devote a little time to it every day, whether it is through its internal staff or through an agency. The brands that are most active on social media do the best with them. Take out a little time and stick it in your schedule.
6. War of Words
Social media, to my belief, is judged by etiquettes. Your behavior is noticed and observed. No matter what anyone says about you or your brand, never be negative or nasty to them. You would not want to be branded as a jerk! It pays to be considerate, polite and friendly. Keep things positive even when you’d love to give someone a piece of your mind. You must rather use the space for customer feedback and figure out why someone is so negative about your brand if you really want to make the best use of your social media presence.
7. It’s just about you
It’s important for people to know why they should connect with you. If your presence is just about yourself and talks about you and your services, not may people would be interested. It is important for you and your agency to figure out what your audience likes and then share that with them.
8. Passive Wallflower
You cannot be passive on social networks. You cannot wait for people to discover you and visit your profile. It is imperative to take the initiative to be out there and socialize. A successful social media campaign focuses on making friends, spend time on other profiles, and get to know people. You’ll be surprised at what a difference this makes when you proactively engage with your audience and bring value to them through conversations and applications.
9. Inappropriate Communication
While you may be using social media sites for professional reasons, you must not forget that this space is all about people and conversations and people form opinions. Everything you say or do reflects your brand. So, whenever you’re logged in, you need to be extremely self-aware. You want to look like a brand owner and this requires a little bit of professionalism while dealing with customers.
10. Digress and be distracted
Social media is a useful but a very distracting space. You tend you easily get digress from the core topic. You must become conscious and stick to things that are of interest to your brand. While it may be ok to digress once in a while to show your personal side to emotionally connect with the users, but for the most part stick to things your fans care about.
The absolute biggest mistake you can make with social media sites is ignoring them altogether. You may choose how to use it, but you cannot ignore the power of conversations that social media sites offer. Some experts predict that social media sites will become the search engines of tomorrow, but even today we see them influencing purchase decisions. People seek suggestions on their future purchases from their networks on social sites. Explore every social site that comes along because you never know which of these might be the next great branding opportunity for you.
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