In this first 2009 blog post for my young business entrepreneur blog, I am going to discuss and provide my insights regarding social media marketing for businesses.
If you are not into social media marketing yet, you should definitely try to figure out an integration method for your business to fit into social media. However, just before you do that, there are a few things that you should know. One of them will be the 10 Social Media Marketing Errors Businesses Should Avoid.
10 Social Media Marketing Errors for Businesses to Avoid
These traps can be devastating if a community or a potential customer base that you are trying to tap decide to pass along your wrong social media actions en masse. One false move might shatter both your brand and reputation.
ROI Orientated
If you have decided to take the social media route, you must understand that there will be no proper ROI measurement. You cannot attach a monetary value to relationships and user engagement.
Social media efforts often have a slow start. Getting into social circle of others and initial efforts of providing value might not see any substantial returns at first. Most entities fail at the initial stage because they tried very hard to measure the returns instead of brainstorming for the strategies to be applied into social media.
Boasting Your Expertise
You might be the leading company of your niche but when you are just starting out with social media marketing, you are nothing. In the world of social media, people will not care whether you are a Fortune 500 company representative or a nobody from a suburb.
Shouting does not work on social media platforms. Solve problems for the community if you have ample knowledge about your niche in order to earn respect. Doing so will get their interest because you are talking about the problems they face.
Blatant Advertising/Spamming
Social media boom in recent years has provided more channels for spammers to conduct their activity. Ask yourself, do you like receiving spam mails? I see spammers as people desperate for attention despite their ugly sites and most people have this perception as well.
Some companies hire those so-called “marketing agencies” that do nothing but launch spamming campaigns. Be sure to get a detailed plan on how online marketing companies plan to promote your business on the Internet. If your company sends out spam, bad reputation or worse, legal consequence is something that you cannot avoid.
Spreading Yourself Too Thin
Hop over to the Web 2.0 directory and you will see that there are tons of social media sites or Web 2.0 sites. There are more platforms like these that are popping out everyday. Are you going to participate in all of the communities? Of course not!
You will be wasting a lot of time and effort trying to cover all of them. Give new communities a trial period. Cross out communities with culture and tones that you are not comfortable with. Starting out with niche social media sites is also a good choice.
Bribing
Bribing a community is an easy way for you to launch a social media campaign and witness instant effect. However, the way you bribe the community must be properly planned.
You don’t want to force bloggers to write positive reviews filled with hype about your company. You must also think twice before purchasing social media votes because lame contents that are not supposed to be featured will be promptly down voted by genuine users.
Not Finding Evangelists
Your social media efforts might bring in doubled or even quadrupled results if you focus on evangelists. Evangelists are the early adopters of your new products and they are the “unsolicited marketers” that promote you to their friends, family members and people that they are able to get in touch with.
Nowadays, people trust their friends more than advertisements. Pick evangelists out of the social media communities. Make them amplify their love and endorsement towards your company or products by simply spotlighting them on your company blog or newsletter. No extra cost is needed for this and you can save on the effort of trying to impress the mass public.
Give In to All Detractors
Social media platforms like Twitter is now being perceived as a place where you can get direct customer support from companies. Big companies like Starbucks, Dell, Comcast and more are already having a Twitter presence.
Social media platforms get you closer to your prospects and customers but it also expose your company to endless critics from detractors. Some companies spoilt these detractors by treating them as Kings and Queens. You don’t have to do so. Jason Falls wrote How To Engage Detractors In Online Conversations and Amber Naslund’s blog post, Dealing with Detractors might help you on this issue.
Decorative Presence
Having a company account on social media sites does not equal to a social media campaign. If you are not interacting with your subjects, you are not really into social media.
It is pointless if you leave your customers and prospects out in the cold, disabling the purpose of a wonderful customer and presale support platform. Also, social media is worthless if you are not interacting with the community.
Inconsistent Social Media Policies
Some companies or business owners do not have a clue about what they are going to achieve with social media. They get into these platforms just because of all the rush towards social media or perhaps because their competitors are doing it.
Are you going to tweet about happenings behind the office walls? Are you going to post valuable niche contents instead of company updates on your company blogs? Are you going to provide customer support via social media? Are random conversations allowed to happen? All these require careful planning in order to achieve goals that your business desire.
Thinking Social Media Is Everything
It is plain naive for business owners or companies that plan to discard all the advertisement budgets and current marketing strategies for social media campaigns. As mentioned earlier, social media marketing does not bring direct and instant results.
It acts as an addon for your marketing strategies. It is not a channel for you to solely rely on unless your business is directly related to social media.
Conclusion: Social Media Marketing – A Proven Marketing Strategy
For those of you that still think that the whole social media thingy is just a hype, you might not understand the power of it yet. Twitter made Dell $1million in revenue. Based on the 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009 blog post by Joe Pulizzi, most of the predictions made by marketing experts are pro-social media.
Although not all businesses can be integrated seamlessly into this social media wave, you should definitely perform some thorough research about the trend.
What do you think about the social media marketing errors above? Have you gone through a social media marketing error which you would like to share?
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