There is no doubt that social media marketing is paying rich dividends to businesses that are using it as a part of their larger marketing plan. It’s also given smaller businesses an opportunity to compete against the big players in the niche. Social media marketing brings with it a slew of benefits, but only if done right.
The problem with a socially driven marketing strategy is that there are all chances of it going wrong. If it does go wrong there are some mistakes that can righted, but there are others from which there is no turning back. Such mistakes are like the deadly sins of social media marketing.
Let’s take a look a these sins that will take your chances of marketing success way down, so much so that recovery will be next to impossible.
1. Having no strategy in place
When you are using social media as a part of your marketing efforts, you need a clearly drawn out strategy in place. You need to know why you are doing what you are doing. Does your use of social media fit in with your overall marketing plan, and what do you hope to achieve from social media marketing? These are the two questions that you need to answer before you put in place a strategy that you feel will pay rich dividends.
If you don’t have a strategy in place, you won’t be able to take the right decisions, which will mean that you actually end up wasting time on social media, rather than making any constructive use of it.
2. Losing Patience Quickly
There are some people who think of social media marketing as a platform that delivers super quick results. But if anything, it delivers slow results and you need be patient. Marketers put in a lot of effort and time right at the beginning and then they lose interest if they feel their attempts are not paying off. But, the key here is to keep enga
ging with the followers on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or any other social media platform that they are using. You are using social media to build a personal relationship with your followers and this is not going to happen quickly.
3. Lack of Regular Updates
On social media, your followers are everything, and they will soon get bored of following your profile/account if you don’t make regular updates. So keep posting new links, information, snippets, videos etc. all the time. Don’t allow your strategy to meander otherwise it will fall apart. Regular updates essentially means keeping your marketing strategy active on the specific social media platform. By being passive on your Twitter handle or your Facebook page is not going to help matters. Remember that your target audience has a host of options on offer and there are no second chances on social media. So, keep updating.
4. Minimal Engagement with Followers
Social media gives you an opportunity to step up the levels of interaction with your target audience. So, posting meaningful updates is one thing, but you should also engage with your followers through tweets or by responding to certain comments posted by them or going through their feedback and showing your appreciation for the same. You can strike up a conversation with the follower, who you think takes a lot of interest in your updates.
But, if you don’t do all this, you are actually not using social media the way it should be used. You are wasting an opportunity to bond with your followers, who are essentially your potential or existing customers. This is an unforgivable mistake.
5. The ‘Only Promotion’ Approach
This is an approach that has brought down many a social media marketing strategy. Yes, you want to market yourselves, your business and its products and services, but remember you don’t just need to use this marketing strategy for promotional purposes. You should also take cognizance of what your followers are trying to say to you. There will be upset customers, who might be giving you critical feedback, forgetting to address their concerns will be a crucial error.
A well thought out social media marketing strategy is also about improving your customer relations. Forgetting this aspect, will mean big trouble, so don’t make this mistake.
6. Limiting the Strategy
I have seen businesses, achieve a certain amount of profitability directly as a result of their marketing efforts on social media, and are perfectly happy just following that plan day in and day out. The problem here is that social media and the needs of its users (your followers) are evolving at a rapid pace and your marketing strategy needs to evolve too.
You can’t limit your strategy, but should keep exploring newer avenues to keep pace with the changing requirements of your audience and social media as a whole. Otherwise, you will be trapped in the limitations that you have set for yourself.
In Conclusion
Ignore these mistakes at your own risk. By not giving a thought to the mistakes that you can make while using social media for your marketing efforts, is like laying yourself open for failure. You don’t want that to happen do you?
This article was written by John Siebert, a Tampa web design master of the web with over 10 years of experience in web marketing.