A big part of learning how to succeed with social media, is by understanding and avoiding the mistakes that people make. Every small business needs to start somewhere, and this post will give you a great grounding in what you shouldn’t do when you begin. Take heed! These mistakes can be costly.
Courtesy of shopify.com
#1: Bare Minimum or Bust
Posting the occasional update on Facebook and Twitter, and popping up a blog once a month, is not how you succeed in social media. Doing the bare minimum is a waste of time. You need strategy, innovation and creativity to succeed in the social sphere. Avoid making this mistake by planning for success first, with a social strategy.
#2: Responses as an Afterthought
Social media is about two-way communication. If you’re posting like mad, and firing off quick replies: stop! Replies and responses are the most important part of your strategy. Your goal is always to create and stimulate a conversation. Avoid this horrible mistake by spending time replying, with insight and authority.
#3: A 1 Person Social Strategy
There is no way that you can maintain a great social presence on your own. One person social campaigns don’t work, unless they’re done by a pro – who works on it full time. You need help. Avoid this mistake by applying all of your effort to one social page, or hire a team who can dedicate the right resources to your strategy.
#4: Social Media is Free!
Let’s get something straight – social media is not free. It takes investment on your part to make it work. You’ll have to invest in content, SEO, multimedia, strategies and learning resources before you can kick it off properly. It’s extremely rare that someone gets massive returns without investing any money in social media.
#5: Cross Networking is King
For a complete social strategy you have to connect and unify your social sites. You can’t just work on each site individually. Each piece of content you create, needs to be reworked and shared in other formats across all of your networks. Avoid wasting your content themes by only publishing them on one social site!
#6: Ignoring Social Analytics Tools
It’s possible to monitor, track and analyze a ton of data from your marketing efforts on social sites. Yet, people still ignore analytics tools! If you don’t know what works and what doesn’t, you’ll keep making the same mistakes and your campaign will fail. Avoid failure by learning how to use analytics tools before you launch a strategy.
#7: Not Nurturing Real Relationships
It can be an overwhelming task, but you must try and connect with people, to nurture real online relationships. It’s these community members that will go on to buy from you. If you’re distant or not genuinely interested in befriending them, it will show. Avoid this by becoming a people magnet. Make those relationships bonds like steel!
Is there a social media mistake that isn’t on this list? Please add a mistake below, to share your knowledge with our community.
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