“Yeah,
I made mistakes but…life doesn’t come with instructions.”
Sure
it does not. But that’s not the case with social media - there is certainly
some good advice out there to help you avoid blunders on social media. After
all, mistakes are meant for learning and not repeating, right?
So
what are some of the common mistakes which companies, especially startups, make
while defining and executing their social media strategy? Here is what I have
found -
#1 Incorrect Platforms
Agreed
– Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users (as of Mar 31, 2015). But you
can’t have the whole universe as your target audience. In today’s time and age,
when everyone is spoilt for choice, the most important marketing decision you
need to make is defining the target audience. Targeted marketing is the key of
the game – and targeted marketing is by definition exclusionary. You need to
clearly define your target audience and once that is done, you need to identify
the platforms on which YOUR target audience is active. Remember – nobody
searches for a job on Facebook or looks for a Hotel review on LinkedIn. Being
present on the most popular platform does not make sense if your target
audience is not active there. Here is some quick help when it comes to popular
platforms:
Facebook
– It’s a good platform when
- You
have highly visual content.
- You
want to leverage the community effect
- You
want to build trust in the minds of the users by leveraging their friends
network
- You
are ready to spend on ads – the recent changes in Facebook algorithm have made
it very difficult to organically reach out to the fans
Twitter
– It is a good platform to
- Broadcast
your message
- Join
the on-going conversations
- Connect
with thought leaders and people that matter to you
- Build
a position for yourself
LinkedIn
– Consider using it when
- You
are a B2B company
- You
want to connect with the professional audience and establish your thought
leadership within a group of homogeneously targeted audience
Google+
- Good platform to
- Help
you with your SEO efforts
- Participate
in Google communities to connect with like-minded people
Pinterest
– You can use it when
- Your
primary target audience include women
- You
have highly visual content to share
These
of course are just guidelines. You need to do a more thorough research and
brainstorming to finalize the social platforms for your brand.
#2 Doing Too Much or Too
Little
Once
you choose a social platform, you need to commit to it. Having an inactive
presence on any of the platforms creates a bad impression. Having the last
tweet date as 2 years back is worse than not having a Twitter handle. You need
to show activity on the social platforms and need to have consistency. The
opposite is also true – you just can’t do too much. Don’t bombard your LinkedIn
company page followers with 10 updates a day just because that will give you
more number of impressions!
#3 Ignoring Content Marketing
Content
marketing is the gasoline of your social media efforts. You need to have good
blog articles to showcase your expertise. You need interesting infographics to
share with your audience. eBooks are good to share as a free giveaway.
Whitepapers are excellent way of establishing your thought leadership. You need
content. Period. Just don’t ignore it from your social media strategy. Not
having enough bandwidth to create content cannot be an excuse today.
#4 Inappropriate Content or
Self Promotion
Each
platform has different content need. Don’t make the mistake of pushing the same
content on all the platforms just because there are tools available which allow
you to do so. Each platform requires different tone of messaging and different
type of content. More importantly, you also need to mind the timing of your
updates. Your audience is not going to be present on all the platforms at the
same time. Social media does require some serious time and attention commitment
and it demands that. Don’t get away with easy options of auto schedule without
giving it a serious thought or having a proper plan in place. Another thing to
keep an eye on is the type of content you share. Too much of self-promotion is
a big turn-off. Just because you are excited about your product or services
does not mean that you can talk about it all day long. Have a good balance of
education, industry insights, engagement, and self-promotion in your content
sharing.
#5 No Personal Branding
People
relate with people – and this is especially true for startups where people are
buying the services from the founders more than from the company. So it is
important that startups include the personal branding of their founders in their social media planning and
strategy. You need a face for your company.
Photo Courtesy: http://bit.ly/1P0yIp6
#6 Canned Responses to Negative
Comments
Lot
of companies shy away from social media because of the fear of negative
comments. But note that negative comments are in-fact good opportunities for
you to build trust in the minds of your readers. Read more about it here. One of the foremost thing you need to remember while
handling negative comments on the social platform is that you should NEVER give
a canned response to any negative comment. Be personal and show genuine
interest in solving the problem. Acknowledge the issue, take genuine actions to
resolve it. If the there is a mistake, accept it and take all efforts to
resolve it. Check this example here from Zappos – simply brilliant. Isn’t it?
Photo Courtesy- http://bit.ly/1dNplZm
#7 Not aligning with the target
audience in terms of tone and messaging
Try
and align as much as you can with your target audience – if you are targeting
the youth, introduce some quirkiness in your overall messaging. If you are
targeting CXOs, maintain a professional tone. Just make sure that your
marketing tone matches with your company culture. After all, today, marketing
is no more the job of marketing department only. It is the job of each and
every person representing the company. Here is a latest brilliant example of
this –
Do
share your experience on what worked and what did not work for you. It’s all
about sharing knowledge, isn’t it?
This article was originally published at yourstory.com/2015/05/social-media-marketing-deadly-sins/
