In today’s online–centric world, many businesses approach social media marketing as a ‘must have’ feather in their bow. The positives of social media are well documented and the benefits are there for marketers the world over. However social media marketing is a double edged knife, if a company gets it wrong the results can be catastrophic in terms of damage to the company’s brand. Here, inBASE looks at the 13 mistakes to avoid with social media marketing.
1: Underestimating the Task at Hand
Firstly, the bad news: social media is hard work, very hard work. Any avenue a company chooses to use must be well thought out and executed. Think of one tweet – 140 characters and each must come together in a relatively short space to deliver your brand’s message. Think of the responses to one tweet – responses that won’t come between the hours of 9am & 5pm but 24/7. Now split out the amount of messages you intend to send out and receive and multiply that across the various platforms that can deliver that message. It’s a hell of a lot isn’t it!
Where many companies fail before they even start on social media is they underestimate the work involved or it slides down the list of importance very quickly resulting in lifeless social media accounts and grossly underwhelmed customers who hear nothing back to queries – plan and resource accordingly! The person or persons who look after these account hold the keys to your online brand presence so make sure they’re either experts at the role or look to outsource accordingly.
2: Not Nailing Down Your Social Media Strategy
Another common trend with companies who get their social media activity wrong online is that it isn’t well thought out – many tweet, post or share for the sake of it resulting in a scatter gun approach that isn’t coherent to their target audience and will diminish any brand value. When creating a strategy it must take into account what the ultimate goal is, the various KPI’s along the way, your target audience, a set publication calendar and above all ONE DISTINCT VOICE.
A clearly defined social media strategy allows you to set out your own rules by which you’ll play in the social arena and very quickly you will find yourself with more and more engaging content that will appeal to your target audience who in turn will share themselves.
3: Misidentifying Your Target Audience
Another common mistake that brands can make is they don’t clearly define their target audience and try to be all things to all men. The generic approach may cast a wider net but there’s little or no benefit to fishing that way when the majority of your catch isn’t what you were after in the first place and has to be thrown back! Your target audience are the lifeblood of your brand’s online presence in terms of engaging with you through social media so take the time to clearly identify who they are and what their wants/needs are. By offering tailored content to them you will see a much higher uptake from people who have genuine interest in your brand.
4: Creating Too Many Social Media Accounts
The social media accounts that you choose to operate within should ideally be determined by what you’ve identified already in terms of your target audience and also what you can realistically maintain from a resourcing point of view. Social media is a wonderful space to operate in but it needs to be managed effectively and one of the most widespread mistakes companies make is they spread themselves across too many platforms resulting in poor social media practises in general. Let’s say a company starts their social media presence with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, Instagram, LinkedIn & Google+ and furiously starts posting incoherent content. Very quickly they’ll begin to see the engagement from customers is not what they expected and from a customer’s point of view it will look like the company doesn’t know what they’re doing. The company then decides it isn’t working and abandons half the accounts which looks even worse to customers – a social media account with no activity in months or even years!
By finding out where your target customers like to hang out and interact & working out realistically what your available resources are you can then focus on specific platforms that will deliver the best engagement and gradually build on this over time.
5: Paying for Followers
The ultimate NO in the list of mistakes you can make in social media strategy. Building followers online takes time and effort. Your follower count is the tangible evidence of just how successful this effort has been. Buying followers is highly counterproductive – it’s lazy, it’s underhand and if it’s found out you will do untold damage to your brand. Imagine how your genuine followers would react if they found out you had boosted the numbers by buying them instead of remaining true to the ideals of creating super content & building a loyal fanbase over time. Don’t even consider it, the easy way is not the best way when it comes to social media, put in the hard yards instead to gain those loyal followers, quality will always trump quantity!
6: It’s All About You
Bear with me! Yes, the main aim of any company working within social media is to ultimately drive brand awareness/sales for themselves and no one else and that’s absolutely fine. However, if your social media accounts only contain an endless stream of how great you are and distributes only your content it becomes incredibly off putting for your audience. Relevant content to your target audience doesn’t necessarily have to be your own companies, rather it can come from other areas within the niche sector you operate in. Remember you’re trying to help customers and potential customers alike so give them meaningful information that helps them become more informed – they’ll appreciate it much more than a series of tweets documenting your entire back catalogue!
There is a really useful rule for social sharing called the 5-3-2 rule where if you publish 10 social media posts in a week:
- 5 posts should be relevant content from other sources
- 3 posts should be relevant content from you but with NO sales focus
- 2 posts should be quirky, fun or personal to make your brand seem more human
Ask anyone what is the first thing that springs to mind when you say social media and the majority will cry out ‘hashtags!’ immediately. Their use is synonymous with social media, allowing posts to be linked to various topics for people to find more easily. There are two key points to make with hashtags however – 1) less is more and 2) formatting is important. If you plaster your social media accounts with hashtags in every post it becomes unbearable to try and work out what it is you are trying to say. #why #would #anyone #thinkthiswasagoodidea? Look up topics relevant to your post and link to applicable hashtags associated with those topics.
When it comes to the question of using lower case throughout versus uppercase first letters I would always default to the latter. #ImproveYourSalesProcess is a damn sight easier to read than #improveyoursalesprocess. There is also the question of clarity where capitalising can remove any ambiguity or confusion that Susan Boyle’s PR Team probably should have used.
8: No Need to Worry About the Competition
With the advent of inbound marketing and social media has come the ability for small businesses to compete in much larger markets with far wider audiences. Any brand can gain traction with their customers and indeed a much wider spectrum of people with cleverly conceived and executed viral marketing campaigns. That does present its own problems where your social media activity may indeed bring you into the same space as much larger companies who may not be ‘competitors’ in the direct sense but still compete for the same online & social space as you do.
For example, let’s say you are a small painting & decorating firm whose social media campaign is around a series of “Home Decorating Tips”. On its own you may think that might just mean you have to compete with similar local firms and from a service point of view that’s fine but with the social media element you may now find yourself competing for space and attention against Home Decoration publications, Interior Design firms and large DIY retailers. When we talk about the competition in social media terms, remember it’s every other company in that space who are vying for the same audience and not just your direct competition.
9: No Time to Proofread
From a company standpoint, every post made on social media platforms should be treated in the exact same way as any traditional form of communication to your customers, i.e. it should be grammatically perfect with every ‘i’ dotted and every ‘t’ crossed. I personally find nothing more offensive to me as a customer when I see misspellings or incorrect uses of words (‘you’re’ instead of ‘your’ etc.) Simply put, if you cannot respect your audience enough to at least give them content that has been spell checked then why should they give up their time to read it? Grammar Nazi I may be but it’s something I firmly believe in – take that extra minute to sense check your post or ask a colleague to proof read content. It will make all the difference
10: Social Media That Isn’t That Social
The core concept of social media is that ultimately it is people dealing with people and your social media should reflect this. Nobody wants to be made feel like they’re dealing with a machine or a robot with automated responses. By responding directly to queries you allow yourself the opportunity to build trust with your customers which as any marketer will tell you is a huge benefit in ultimately retaining customers and turning them into brand advocates. An injection of fun, humour & playfulness only adds to this so look at your own brand values and work those into your individual social interactions, you will find over time a much closer group of customers who are delighted to be associated with your brand because they know that you care about them.
11: No Need to Measure, It’s Probably Fine
As with every facet of any strategy, the success of a campaign can only be measured by comparing figures with a start point and specific targets. Let’s say I grow my Twitter account by 1,000 followers in a month. If my start point is 100 followers then that is a pretty incredible feat but if my start point was 100,000 follows then it’s less impressive. You must take note of the current state of play and lock down targeted growth numbers by set timelines. Only then can you start to determine if your social media campaign is successful or not. The same applies for site traffic, re-tweets, page view, impression counts, total engagements and other common analytics so do not ignore this common but critical mistake.
12: Sharing Not Spamming
Every company with a social media presence will want to share posts, that’s precisely why social media exists. There is however a really important point to note when it comes to timings – blanket posting one post after another within hours (or, indeed, minutes) of the previous post is a sure fire way to annoy your followers, target audience or existing customer base. The key is consistency, spread out your content over a specific time period so as not to overwhelm your audience with what they’ll consider to be spam. The alternative will be mass unfollowing never to return to your brand again.
13: Cobwebs
Social media platforms are live, fresh and funky places to be for companies as it shows they too are fast paced, engaged with their customers and have their finger on the button when it comes to knowing what’s going on. Whether you are a start-up, SME or large multinational there is nothing worse than a company account with little or no activity on it for weeks, months or even years. Remember your social media accounts are a direct reflection of your brand so if a customer logs on to find a Twitter account with four posts the last of which was over a year prior, your brand is then the exact opposite of everything you sought to be when you started. If you choose to use social media then commit and make sure you are constantly sharing great content all the time!
Social media permeates all areas of our lives today to the point where we are entirely comfortable with it. It offers the online marketer the opportunity to directly communicate with a willing target audience and deliver content that will hopefully see a return over time. By avoiding the mistakes above you can build a social media strategy that can deliver superior results again and again.
