If you’ve been working on your social media campaign, and haven’t experienced any great results yet – it’s possible that your campaign is a failure. This is the time to sit up and take stock of what you did wrong, and try to correct it! To help you along your way, here are the top 10 reasons that social media campaigns fail.
Courtesy of buzzom.com
#1: A Sales Heavy Campaign
Surely the most common of all mistakes, is the sales heavy social campaign. You’re selling, marketing and pitching too much, and not giving your community anything of value. Instead, stick to the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent content, 20% sales!
#2: You’re Winging It
Social media is easy-peasy. Who needs a plan? Posting and working with social media without a plan is a one way road to failure. Stop winging it, and create a strategy and a schedule, so that you don’t waste your time.
#3: Automated Nightmare
It’s nice to think that you can automate everything. But you can’t. Spewed out content in bulk is the worst thing you can do for your fan pages. Unfortunately there is no quick fix solution in social media. It takes time and effort. Stop automating!
#4: Same Rubbish, Different Page
If your social strategy has no defining features, of course it isn’t going to work. Why would anyone spend time on a page that always says the same stuff as everyone else? You need to be original, and ADD to the social conversation.
#5: Me, Me, Me, Us, Us, Us
If your social media pages look like a one way conversation, then you’re either not posting on them, or you’re posting one way dialogue. Stop speaking about yourself and start addressing the people that matter – your fans.
#6: Never Giving Back
The keystone of any successful social strategy is to give back to your community. If you don’t give them free things, discounts, coupons, competitions, games – or engage them in any way, they’re not going to care about you.
#7: The Inexperience Killer
Throwing someone that doesn’t know how to work with a social strategy in the middle of yours, isn’t going to turn out well. Social media is fun, but it’s also hard work, and you need to be experienced. Send them on a course, or hire someone better.
#8: Lack of Site Understanding
Each social site can highlight and enhance your business in specific ways. Learning how to use this to your advantage, is key to your overall strategy. Posting the wrong content on the wrong sites will lead to disaster.
#9: It’s All The Same as Print Media
Content drives your social campaigns, but treating this content like you treat print media content is a bad idea. Online content is light hearted, engaging, fun and informative. It’s not journalistic, complex, dense and analytical.
#10: Focusing on Viral Content
Spending all of your time and resources trying to create ‘viral’ content is not a good strategy. Viral content is rare, and there is no real formula to follow. It’s likely that you’ve ended up with more misses than hits. Focus on great content instead.
Why do you think people fail with social media? Add to our list by leaving your comment below!
February 15, 2012 at 6:28 pm
These reasons that social media fail corroborate my contention that social media, when executed well, is very creative and labor intensive. To be effective, it requires constant attention, interaction and tweaking. No wonder so many smaller organizations are feeling overwhelmed by it. To complicate matters, a multi-channel online and offline communications plan is the most effective. It’s not like an organization can off load one in favor of the other. Multi-taskers who know how to effectively execute an integrated communications plan, raise your hands! You are the king of the world!
February 16, 2012 at 8:21 am
@Linda – it’s like we always say, the content monster is always hungry! Thanks for your insight, and you’re right print and online efforts together produce the best results
February 16, 2012 at 8:56 am
Great list – the three I see the most of that seem to happen ALL the time are 1, 3, and 5. The sales heavy approach and the me me me approach are both such turn offs. What is funny is that we see people in our industry touting themselves as experts and leaders trying to sell their products and frankly I question their credibility on everything if they haven’t bothered to take a second to understand the social media landscape… To see them spend that much time working on a social media campaign and be oblivious to what is going on around them on these platforms is frustrating.
February 16, 2012 at 11:49 pm
I am yet to gain from the social media network.
May be I do not understand the features.
While we get the familiarity ofknowing many persons of our interest, we are not able to contact them and interact.
This is my problem
February 17, 2012 at 9:32 am
@Doug – I think people get so excited about the sales potential of social media, that they lose their way. But eventually, they’ll have to stop, take a step back and ask the hard questions. Hopefully, they’ll start living the social ideal, instead of just using it as a tool. My worst are automated posts. They’re so easy to spot!
February 17, 2012 at 9:35 am
@Vedaraman – it’s a common problem for people who are new to social media. My advice is to stop trying to attract people to your pages, and instead go out into your niche and make friends with people on their home ground. If it’s clients you want, then make an effort by becoming an active participator on their networks!